State Champ Radio artificial intelligence
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Trending on Billboard
Paul McCartney will contribute a ‘silent’ track to a compilation album that is protesting the U.K. government’s recent changes to copyright law.
The LP Is This What We Want? was first released digitally in February and was co-signed by over a thousand U.K. artists. The LP runs for 47 minutes, and features the silence of an empty recording studio in order to highlight the need for human musicians in the age of artificial intelligence. The album’s track listing spells out the message: “The British government must not legalize music theft to benefit AI companies.”
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Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn, Billy Ocean, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, and more were all credited as ‘co-writers’ of the LP. Upon release, it reached No. 38 on the U.K.’s Official Albums Chart.
McCartney’s contribution will appear as a bonus track to the physical edition of the LP, which will be released on Dec. 8 via record label The state51 Conspiracy. The vinyl is available for pre-order here, with all profits from sales to be donated to the musicians’ charity Help Musicians.
It’s not the first time that McCartney has protested against the U.K. government’s controversial approach to copyright law in the era of artificial intelligence. In May, McCartney was among 400 British musicians alongside Elton John, Dua Lipa, and Coldplay, to sign an open letter calling on U.K. prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to update copyright laws to protect their work from AI training models. They were backed by industry heavyweights Sir Lucian Grainge (Universal Music Group CEO), Jason Iley MBE (Sony Music UK CEO), and Dickon Stainer (Universal Music UK CEO) who also signed the letter.
The U.K. government proposed an ‘opt out’ approach for rightsholders in relation to their work being used to train artificial intelligence models. Critics say that the burden should not fall on artists to approve or deny tech companies the use their material, and that ‘opt out’ models are unenforceable.
During the summer, the U.K. government was involved in a ‘ping pong’ debacle whereby amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Bill proposed by the House of Lords were rejected five times. The amendments would have given rightsholders visibility over when their work was being used against their wishes by AI companies. The bill eventually passed and received Royal Assent in late June, and is expected to be be phased into law by mid-2026.
Ed Newton-Rex, the organizer of the album, said: “The government must commit to not handing the life’s work of the country’s musicians to AI companies for free. Doing so would be hugely damaging to our world-leading creative industries, and is totally unnecessary, only benefiting overseas tech giants. It should listen to Paul McCartney and the 1,000 other musicians who took part in this album, and resist calls to legalize music theft from the big tech lobby.”
Trending on Billboard
Just because an AI-generated track makes— or even tops — a Billboard chart doesn’t mean it’s very popular.
Take, for example, Breaking Rust, an AI-assisted artist that attracted global attention for reaching No. 1 on the Country Digital Song Sales chart. Breaking Rust’s track “Walk My Walk” amassed approximately 3,000 track downloads in the week ending Nov. 6, according to Luminate. “Don’t Tread on Me” by Cain Walker, another AI-assisted country artist, is currently at No. 3 after selling approximately 2,000 downloads in that same week. That’s all it takes to top a genre download chart these days.
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The digital download is a relic of an era when iTunes ruled the music industry and streaming was in its infancy. Over the years, as consumers shifted to subscription streaming platforms, downloads have all but disappeared from the landscape. In 2024, downloads accounted for $329 million, according to the RIAA, approximately 2% of U.S. recorded music revenue. That’s down 86% from 2015, when downloads generated $2.3 billion and represented 34% of the U.S. market. Revenue from subscription streaming platforms, which now play a major role in the most well-known charts, climbed 860% to $11.7 billion over the same time span.
Pop songs put up much better numbers. As Billboard noted in an article on country executives’ reactions to Breaking Rust and Walker, the top track on the all-genre Digital Song Sales chart, Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia,” sold 29,000 copies. But even the most popular pop download doesn’t do the numbers seen just a decade ago. The No. 1 track in the same first week in November 2015, “Hello” by Adele, sold a whopping 636,000 units.
To put Breaking Rust and Walker’s popularity into a better context, it helps to know where they rank amongst their human peers. For the week ended Nov. 6, Breaking Rust was ranked No. 228 among country artists in terms of equivalent album units (EAUs, which combine streams and sales into a single metric). No. 1 country artist Morgan Wallen had 113 times more EAUs and 227 times more EAUs than Walker, who was No. 359. It would take 13 Breaking Rusts and 25 Walkers to equal the No. 18 artist, Bailey Zimmerman.
Billboard
The most successful AI artist is currently Xania Monet. Her creator, Telisha Jones, writes the lyrics and uses an AI platform to create the music. Monet has been on Billboard charts such as R&B Digital Song Sales, Hot Gospel Songs and Emerging Artists. But among artists of all genres, Monet ranked only No. 927 in terms of EAUs in the week ended Nov. 6, about equal to Cyndi Lauper and French Montana — artists who, unlike Monet, aren’t currently being promoted to terrestrial radio and attracting worldwide fascination.
To be sure, many human artists would love to have the sales and streaming numbers of these AI-assisted artists. Walker and Breaking Rust are No. 9 and No. 11, respectively, on the Emerging Artists chart, right behind country singer Alexandra Kay, who is signed to BMG-owned BBR Music Group and regularly sells out theaters around the country. In the U.S., Breaking Rust has 9.3 million streams to date, while Walker has 1 million, according to Luminate — the kind of numbers achieved by developing artists backed by record labels and artist managers.
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But the AI artists attracting headlines and creating consternation within the music industry don’t have popularity to match the attention they’re getting. They are making noise mainly by getting onto download charts, which don’t reflect how most Americans consume music. Nor are they likely to have the longevity of other artists. Walker, ranked No. 359 amongst country artists, is just a few spots below country legend Hank Williams. But nobody is saying that Walker matches the popularity of Williams, an inductee into the Country Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
That’s not to say AI artists aren’t having an impact. They’re quickly growing in numbers, and it’s not difficult to imagine that they could soon gobble up much more market share.
Take the 10 AI-generated or AI-assisted artists mentioned in Billboard’s Nov. 4 article about AI artists who landed on the charts. The 10 artists mentioned in that article — including Juno Skye, Enlly Blue, Unbound Music, Ruby Darkrose and ChildPets Galore — have an average EAU in 2025 of approximately 7,200 units. That’s not much. But 1,000 of these AI artists, in aggregate, could have a legitimate impact: 1,000 artists at 7,200 units is 7.2 million units — equal to a 0.7% year-to-date U.S. market share. That’s on par with large independent record labels like Big Machine Label Group (0.78%), BMG (0.77%) and Secretly Distribution (0.75%). Two thousand AI artists with an average of 3,600 AEUs would have the same collective market share. Or 4,000 AI artists with an average of 1,800 AEUs.
An invasion of AI music may feel like a dystopian future to most people, but it’s a plausible scenario. A person reading about Xania Monet or Breaking Rust could experience the same spark of inspiration felt by teenagers seeing punk rock bands in the mid to late ‘70s. Punk grew quickly because starting a band required a passion for music, not musical expertise. When millions of people read about AI artists on the charts, some of them will have the same realization that kids had in the ‘70s: “If they can do it, why can’t I?”
Billboard determines if a charting title is AI or AI-assisted through checking the artists’ official pages, some of which say they are generated with the help of AI; cross-checking the songs using Deezer’s AI detection tool, which adds a flag to all AI-generated content on the platform; and reaching out to the creators themselves, among other methods.
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Songscription, a startup that uses AI to turn recorded music into musical notation, has raised $5 million in a round led by previous investor Reach Capital. Additional backers in the round include Emerge Capital, 10x Founders, Dent Capital, and guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, an advisor to the company whose résumé includes an eight-year stint with Guns N’ Roses.
The San Francisco-based company’s technology can turn a recording into sheet music, tablature or interactive piano roll. The cloud-based platform accepts multiple audio formats such as MP3, WAV, MP4, MIDI files and YouTube links. After using AI to analyze the audio, Songscription can output printable sheet music or MIDI, MusicXML or Guitar Pro file formats. Users can also download and edit their transcriptions directly within the Songscription platform. The company claims to have drawn over 150,000 users from over 150 countries.
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The funding will be used to expand Songscription’s available instruments and notation outputs, among other needs. The platform currently supports piano, violin, flute, guitar, bass guitar and trumpet. Ultimately, the company says it wants to become a necessary composition tool that captures performances and renders the music as notation and MIDI to enable easy recreation.
Thal predicts that Songscription “will change musicians’ lives” by providing time-saving assistance to both music teachers and players. “Even us professionals can use it to save hours of time trying to recall what we played on albums we recorded years ago,” he said in a statement. “It’s a real game changer.”
While some AI companies are engaged in legal battles with music rights holders, Songscription intends to be a friend, not foe, of the music industry. “For Songscription, ethics are top of mind, and we are working closely to sign deals with more industry players, including major publishers, to ensure their service honors all stakeholders,” advisor Elizabeth Moody, a partner at Granderson Des Rochers, said in a statement.
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To train its model, Songscription has used material from the public domain and partnerships with artists and businesses. CEO Andrew Carlins told Billboard that Songscription’s need for licensing deals “is still a gray area…but because empowering artists is core to our mission, we have decided to proactively approach the publishers to sign deals that will include rights for both the input and output regardless of where the legal line is drawn,” he said.
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French streaming service Deezer reported on Wednesday (Nov. 12) that roughly 50,000 songs delivered to the platform daily are now fully AI-generated, in what amounts to the company’s fourth report on the surge of AI-generated content on its service this year.
Along with that statistic, Deezer also released the findings of a new survey about AI’s use in the music industry, including the stat that 97% of people can’t tell the difference between human-made and fully AI-generated musical works.
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According to Deezer’s proprietary AI detection tool — which only searches for fully AI-generated songs from select popular models, including Suno and Udio — the number of fully AI-generated songs delivered daily has been rapidly increasing throughout 2025. In January, it reported that the figure was 10,000 songs a day; in April, it noted the figure was 20,000 songs daily; and in September, it reported the number had risen to 30,000 songs daily.
In an interview with Billboard about the company’s AI research in May, Aurelien Herault, Deezer’s chief innovation officer, and Manuel Moussallam, its director of research, said that part of the reason why they were finding a growing number of fully-AI generated songs was simply that their “data got better” — as well as the fact that the overall volume of fully AI-generated songs had increased as more users adopted AI tools like Suno and Udio.
Beyond flagging AI use, Deezer has taken a proactive approach to regulating this content on its platform. To create transparency, Deezer adds a tag to any fully AI-generated work it detects on the platform, while removing it from algorithmic and editorial recommendations and playlists.
To continue its research into the emerging technology and its impact on the music business, Deezer also produced a new survey on the perceptions and attitudes around AI music. The study was executed by Ipsos with a total of 9,000 participants across eight countries — the United States, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Japan. Below, you can check out the study’s top findings.
General perceptions about AI:
98% have at least heard of AI
72% used AI at least a few times
55% of the respondents place curiosity as one of their first overall sentiments towards AI
19% place trust among their first feelings towards this new tool
Music discovery creation with AI:
46% think that AI can help them discover more music they like
51% think that AI will play a significant part in music creation in the next 10 years
51% think that AI will lead to the creation of more low-quality, generic-sounding music on streaming platforms
64% believe that AI could lead to a loss of creativity in music production
Recognition and consumption of AI-generated music:
97% couldn’t tell the difference between fully AI-generated music and human-made music in a blind test with two AI songs and one real song
52% felt uncomfortable with not being able to tell the difference between AI and human-made music
66% of music streaming users say they would listen to 100% AI-generated music at least once, out of curiosity
45% of music streaming users would like to filter out 100% AI-generated music from their music streaming platform
40% of music streaming users say that they would skip without listening to 100% AI-music if they came across it
Transparency:
80% agree that 100% AI-generated music should be clearly labeled to listeners
73% of music streaming users would like to know if a music streaming service is recommending 100% AI-generated music
52% of respondents feel that 100% AI-generated songs should not be included in charts alongside human-made songs on the main charts
Only 11% believe that 100% AI-generated music should be treated equally on charts
58% of music streaming users believe that their music streaming platform never recommended 100% AI-generated music to them, while 25% are uncertain
Trending on Billboard
As artificial intelligence moves further into the music space, how concerned should the country community, which has built its reputation on authenticity and a trusted connection between artists and fans, be?
One-third of the top 10 on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart dated Nov. 15 is composed of AI-assisted artists, including “Walk My Walk,” attributed to Breaking Rust, which spends its second week at No. 1; Cain Walker’s “Don’t Tread on Me” which stands at No. 3; and Walker’s “Ain’t My Problem,” which debuted at No. 9. (Walker’s “Freedom” also debuted on the 15-position chart at No. 11).
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“Walk My Walk,” which is spending its second week at No. 1, has a gospel, stomping feel, while Walker’s tunes are more dark country rock. All three share similar “stand my ground, don’t mess with me”-type lyrics with boisterous vocals.
The songs are selling relatively small numbers: Breaking Rust’s “Walk My Walk” sold more than 2,000 copies in the U.S. for the tracking week ending Nov. 6, according to Luminate, while Walker’s “Don’t Tread on Me” sold more than 1,000 copies, and his “Ain’t My Problem” sold slightly under 1,000. By comparison, the top-selling song on Billboard‘s all-genre Digital Song Sales chart for the week ending Nov. 6, Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia,” sold 29,000 copies.
“It’s a notable wake-up call but not yet an existential threat — more like a symptom of broader disruptions in how music is created, distributed and consumed,” says FEMco founder Leslie Fram. “In country, where authenticity and storytelling are core, this could erode trust if fans feel manipulated, but it’s mostly confined to sales charts so far, not airplay or streaming staples.”
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Yet. But AI has already spread to another genre’s airplay chart: Xania Monet, who signed to Hallwood Media after bidding offers reached $3 million, became the first known AI artist to earn enough radio airplay to rank on a Billboard radio chart when she debuted at No. 30 on the Adult R&B Airplay chart dated Nov. 11. Several other AI or AI-assisted acts have also debuted on Billboard charts in recent weeks, including Childpets Galore on Christian Digital Song Sales, Unbound Music and Emily Blue on Rock Digital Song Sales, and contemporary Christian artist Juno Skye on the Emerging Artists chart.
Terrestrial country radio stations have not yet added Breaking Rust or Cain Walker to their rotations, and country radio consultant Joel Raab says that’s wise. “Listeners react negatively to the idea of AI voices on their stations,” Raab says, citing research done on the question of AI use in general. “Listeners don’t like the idea of AI voices, so by association, I don’t think they’d like the music.”
Furthermore, other than playing the songs for curiosity value, “leaning on that type of programming consistently seems very shortsighted considering radio makes money off of touring advertising and other artist-driven revenue,” says F2 Entertainment Group president/CEO Fletcher Foster, who manages MORIAH and other artists.
Fram agrees. “[Country] stations prioritize ‘real’ voices tied to tours and endorsements, so Breaking Rust might need active promo (e.g., fake ‘artist’ interviews or tie-ins) to cross over,” she says. ”It’s going to be a real conversation for gatekeepers. If [the song] hooks listeners, they may want to play it — radio’s job is curation, not purity tests.”
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For real artists and their managers, though, the AI disruption could potentially make a difficult job even harder. “The artist development process has never been easy. Over the past few years, especially since COVID and the massive switch to DSPs, it has never been more challenging,” Fletcher says. “It’s incredibly detrimental to have AI-generated songs taking up precious spots on the chart because not only do they clog up the chart, but they take positions away from a well-rounded artist that can have a career generating revenue and publishing, touring, brand partnerships, etc.”
Some labels are embracing AI. Last month, Universal Music Group (UMG) announced a deal with Udio that settled UMG’s involvement in a lawsuit it had filed last year against the AI music startup, along with Sony and Warner — and paved the way for a version of Udio that would create a new commercial consumption and streaming experience that would pay participating UMG artists for lending their work to Udio’s AI model.
Country artist Martina McBride is among the artists who have been vocal about protecting artists and their voices. Earlier this year, she testified in support of the NO FAKES Act, bipartisan legislation that gives individuals the right to protect their voices and likenesses from being replicated by AI without their consent, both in music and in a broader context. “AI technology is amazing and can be used for so many wonderful purposes. But like all great technologies, it can also be abused,” she wrote in a guest column for Billboard published in May.
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Raab and Fram are betting on the human race over deep fakes, even though there may be challenging times looming. “Looking ahead, the realness of human music with heart and human soul will win every time,” Raab predicts.
“Casual streamers might shrug — ‘If it sounds good, who cares?’, but dedicated fans — especially in genres like country — crave the human ‘mistakes’ that add soul, per a study on what makes tracks memorable,” Fram says. “Bottom line: Fans will stream AI songs short-term, but loyalty? That’s earned through real stories, not algorithms…Over time, ‘fake’ acts risk fizzling like one-hit wonders; true superfans bet on humans who evolve with them. AI might open doors, but only flesh-and-blood keeps ’em coming back for encores.”
Trending on Billboard
Under a new partnership between Universal Music Group (UMG) and Udio, Taylor Swift will soon be able to flip the AI-music switch and allow users to create all the songs they want in the superstar’s style — as would every other artist signed to the world’s biggest label.
“It’s their choice,” Udio’s CEO, Andrew Sanchez, told Billboard shortly after the deal was announced. “But yeah, in the new service, you would be able to do that, and you’d be able to make extraordinary music.”
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Unsurprisingly, Swift was unavailable for comment. But would artists be open to tossing their songs into a generative AI machine to see what the robots can do with them? Maybe, some top managers say. Sia, for example, “views Sia as an avatar,” says Jonathan Daniel, who manages the “Chandelier” hitmaker as well as Miley Cyrus and UMG artist Lorde. “It’s like anyone can be a pop star. That’s why she wears the wig.”
On Oct. 29, UMG was the first major label to settle a lawsuit with Udio, one of the top AI-music services, agreeing to develop a new creation and streaming platform that’s set to launch next year. Under the deal, artists will be able to opt in to the platform in “granular” ways, according to Sanchez, allowing them to choose — by essentially selecting from a menu of options — exactly how fans are allowed to use their music and voices to create songs.
Although Daniel says many of his other clients, including Green Day and Nirvana, are unlikely to submit their catalogs to AI, he adds, “Not all artists, but certainly a lot of artists, are less worried about AI music than people that sound worried about it. Artists are in the magic business, right?”
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AI has spent 2025 creeping into the music business, as artists like Xania Monet and Unbound Music have hit the Billboard charts via streaming and track sales. As Matt Pollack — a senior manager at Monotone Inc., which represents Jack White, Vampire Weekend, LCD Soundsystem and others — puts it, artists, managers and labels must suddenly contend with a future that “wasn’t happening eight weeks ago, and now it is.”
The idea of opting into an AI-music service, even if it’s legal under the terms of the UMG-Udio deal, remains daunting for many artists. (The other two major labels, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, have pending litigation against Udio and, along with UMG, another AI-music firm, Suno; their complaint alleges infringement on “an almost unimaginable scale.”) “Once you start to put words in an artist’s mouth, you’re in a real danger zone,” says Jeff Jampol, CEO of Jam Inc., which manages the estates of The Doors, Janis Joplin, Charlie Parker and others. “The legacy is the art and their voice. Do I want to take that and co-opt it and twist it? No, I don’t.”
Corey Smyth, owner and CEO of Blacksmith Holdings, a management company for Vince Staples, De La Soul, the Max Roach estate and others, worries about the idea of major labels managing the AI future of the business. In his view, label executives profited greatly from the streaming revolution, while many artists received pennies for their work. “They’re going to screw you on it,” he says. “The industry’s not built like that. They’re not building it for you.”
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As for whether his Universal-signed artists might agree to the AI treatment, Smyth says, “It depends on where you are, what your business model is. Are you a legacy artist, [or] are you just a flash in the pan? Most artists are driven by the idea of creating. Anyone who wants to just have the thing done isn’t trying to create art — they’re creating commerce.” Daniel, manager of Sia and Green Day, adds that AI is a “great tool” that “might replace pretty good music,” but “great artists have a point of view. Is AI going to write American Idiot? I don’t think so.”
At Monotone, the management company, AI music is a central topic at weekly staff meetings, Pollack says, including the implications of their clients “opting in” to AI systems, as Sanchez suggested after the Oct. 29 settlement with UMG. One of Montone’s artists is working on short-form video content on a low budget and uses AI to save time and money. But he also finds the concept of managing an AI artist that is “not a breathing entity” a bit too surreal, whether major labels allow the possibility or not. Says Pollack: “That’s insane.”
“The reality of it is, I don’t really know,” he adds. “Nobody ever really planned for this. This was a science-fiction notion up to a year and a half or two years ago.”
Trending on Billboard
Last week, GoldState Music founder and managing partner Charles Goldstuck gathered his investors along with a collection of music’s most brilliant minds for “Conversations in Music,” a three-day conference about the future of the business.
Goldstuck has been convening exclusive thought-leadership meetings for decades in his many roles: he’s the founder of The Sanctuary at Albany, a state-of-the-art recording studio and music academy in the Bahamas; the executive chairman of TouchTunes Interactive Networks, and a major-label veteran who ran business operations for BMG’s music labels and co-founded J Records with Clive Davis, building it into the RCA Music Group.
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But the South African philanthropist said that this year’s event — which he hosted at the luxurious Pier Sixty-Six resort in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida — marked his first event of such scale and urgency, reflecting the speed at which industry dynamics are changing.
Each expert-moderated conversation was packed with insight, and reflected Goldstuck’s own keen interest in the intersection of AI and music — he is currently funding the AI & African Music initiative at his alma mater, Witz University in Johannesburg, to empower creatives to use AI to preserve, teach or co-create African musical traditions and sounds, and recently published a paper arguing that music companies ought to negotiate deals with AI companies to set precedent before courts and lawmakers weigh in.
Among the conference highlights: Water & Music’s AI analyst and music producer Yung Spielberg demonstrated how to make songs using Suno. MIT professors showcased the cutting-edge music technology their top students are building. DAYA, a GoldState artist who shot to fame with her feature on Chainsmokers’ “Don’t Let Me Down,” revealed how she’s navigating the modern industry and shared her new music. Dr. Tamay Aykut, founder and CEO of Sureel, broke down the possibilities for how to determine which rights holders should get credit for music produced with AI models trained on their works.
We asked Goldstuck for his five top takeaways from the invite-only affair – here’s what he pointed to.
Publishers are gaining leverage. The deal between Kobalt and ElevenLabs establishes a 50-50 split between publishers and recorded-music rights holders, a big improvement from streaming and sales, which have paid out lower rates to publishers. This sets a new precedent for future generative AI licensing deals, with publishers now in a position to secure stronger economic outcomes as the landscape evolves. Industry surveys estimate that more than half of younger creators already use AI tools in their workflows, suggesting that generative AI could make songwriters more productive.
Laurent Hubert (Left), CEO of Kobalt Music, Mary Megan Peer (Center), CEO of peermusic, and Kristin Robinson (Right), Senior Correspondent at Billboard – at the GoldState Conversations in Music Conference
Courtesy of GoldState Conversations in Music Conference
Music catalog deal volume is at a record high. Buyers include both established music companies and financial investors. There have been no significant defaults or financial problems across these transactions in recent years, fueling the highest level of investor confidence seen in the sector since the Napster era. The market is competitive, but investors are employing more sophisticated knowledge and due diligence thanks to increased transparency from the digital music ecosystem. And yet, there are only two major players in the catalog valuation space. Is there room for more?
The indies are rising. Independent music companies claim nearly half the global market share and the majority of new releases in 2025. Improved creator tools, the proliferation of distribution options, and the ease of accessing audiences across more than 700 digital and social platforms worldwide are powering the expansion of independent distributors like Symphonic Distribution, Too Lost, Create Music Group, and Empire, all of whom are posting double-digit annual growth. Financing for independent creators is getting more sophisticated too, with leading distro platforms now offering artists advances based on real-time consumption data.
Ghazi Shami (Left), Founder and CEO of EMPIRE, and Priyanka Khimani (Right), Founding Partner of Khimani & Associates – at the GoldState Conversations in Music Conference
Courtesy of GoldState Conversations in Music Conference
Investing in China and India is about to get easier. Historically, Western artists and rightsholders lacked clarity on Chinese consumption, but Luminate’s new licensing partnership with Tencent Music promises new transparency from the world’s fifth-largest music market. Luminate is also ramping up its Indian market data coverage, as Billboard launches in India.
AI detection and attribution technologies will be key. Only a handful of formal licenses have been announced for generative AI platforms and music, but commercial and licensing momentum is building. Landmark agreements include those between Kobalt and ElevenLabs, Merlin and ElevenLabs, and the Universal Music Group with Udio. As Goldstuck wrote in his paper, Past Precedent, Future Proof: Towards a New Commercial and Legal Framework for AI-Generated Music, generative AI platforms and rightsholders should move towards collaboration through negotiated settlements, not litigation, so as to pave the way for a more standardized commercial licensing regime for AI-generated music. Accurate detection will help monitor the use of tracks for training, while new attribution systems will be critical for properly crediting and compensating rights holders and creators for outputs. Platforms like Deezer, which offers detection, and Sureel, which specializes in attribution, are showing early promise in moving the industry towards proactive AI music tracing and licensing, but widespread adoption will require a lot more work.
Charles Goldstuck (Left), Recording Artist Daya (Center), and David Conway (Right), President of Hard 8 Working Group and Daya’s Manager – at the GoldState Conversations in Music Conference
Courtesy of GoldState Conversations in Music Conference
Next week, Harbourview Equity founder and CEO Sherrese Clarke Soares brings her investors to Miami for another series of panel conversations, as the investor-conference circuit continues.
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On Oct. 29, Universal Music Group (UMG) announced a landmark deal with AI music startup Udio. As part of the agreement, Udio, which UMG was suing for widespread copyright infringement along with the two other major music companies, offered a compensatory settlement with UMG, effectively ending UMG’s part of the lawsuit and paving the way for a new version of Udio, set to release in 2026, which would be a “new commercial music creation, consumption and streaming experience” that would remunerate participating UMG artists.
To survey the industry’s reaction to the deal, Billboard spoke with professionals who have been following the development of AI music closely from various vantage points, including labels, investment firms, AI music start-ups, the songwriting community and consultancies.
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“This deal is beneficial for the music industry,” one label professional tells Billboard. “My question is, though, is it beneficial for Udio? In the short term, they’re going to go through some tension as they do a reset, but this could be great. It’s early.”
To most who spoke to Billboard for this story, the timing of the deal wasn’t entirely surprising. One label executive points out that news of the agreement was cleverly released just hours before UMG’s Q3 earnings call. Still, Sean Power, CEO of Musical AI, says he “expected a deal in Q1 of 2026, not now.”
Since this summer, reports have circulated that the majors have been discussing settlements with Suno and Udio, leading many to believe the talks were getting close. But as the year wore on, some grew skeptical that settlements would be reached by the end of the year. Though the UMG-Udio deal represents the start of reconciliation, these lawsuits are far from over — Warner Music Group and Sony Music are still pursuing their claims against Udio, and all three majors are still pursuing their lawsuit against Suno.
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Vickie Nauman, founder of music-tech consultancy CrossBorder Works, says she’s been watching out for this deal since Lucian Grainge, UMG’s chairman/CEO, released a letter on Oct. 13 expressing the company’s plans to pursue AI deals. “I saw that as Lucian putting a stake in the ground about AI,” Nauman says. “When I read that, I thought, ‘He wouldn’t say this unless he’s pretty sure he will reach a deal soon.’ That letter exuded confidence.”
As part of the deal with UMG, Udio is pivoting its offerings, launching a new version of the service in 2026 that will be focused on building fandom and encouraging engagement with existing music, rather than just offering brand-new songs at the click of a button, as it does now. The new version of Udio will feature a number of tools that will allow users to remix, mash up and riff on the songs of participating UMG artists. Users will also be able to create songs in the style of participating artists and use some artists’ voices on songs.
One investor, who has not invested in Suno or Udio and spoke to Billboard on the condition of anonymity, said that he fears Udio will run into the same problems as AI film company Runway, which signed a deal with Lionsgate to adapt their intellectual property — a partnership that, one year later, has yet to produce results. “The Lionsgate catalog is too small to create a model,” a person familiar with the situation told The Wrap. “In fact, the Disney catalog is too small to create a model.”
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A label executive, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, adds: “I’d like to see Udio succeed, because I think they’re trying to get on the right side of history. Do I think this deal puts them in a little bit of a box, though? Yes.”
Songwriter/producer Oak Felder raised another point in my TikTok comment section: “The question is: how does [this deal] affect catalogs that are split between Universal and Sony or any other publisher without a deal[?] Udio can’t utilize a song in Universal’s catalog that’s split between writers on non-Universal publishers, right?” (A UMG rep declined to provide specific details on that point.)
Udio and UMG’s deal allows artists to opt in with “granular” controls, as Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez told Billboard shortly after the deal was announced, over which parts of the new Udio service they want to participate in — seen as a win for artists’ autonomy. But the investor asks: “How many of these artists are actually going to opt in?”
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Another possible challenge for Udio: there are already multiple companies offering, or planning to offer, remixing and fan-focused AI features. This includes MashApp, Hook and Spotify, which recently announced that it’s working on AI music products, including remixing features, with the consent of the majors and some large independent music companies.
“It’s a calculated risk,” says Nauman about Udio’s decision to pivot, but she notes that trying to build a business that allows everyone to create quick songs was a risk, too. “I think that just the idea of being able to prompt a few songs easily is kind of a fad, so this [new Udio service] could be interesting. But users will be the ultimate arbiter here.”
Executives interviewed for this story were mixed on how they think Udio’s deal with UMG will impact Suno. “If I were Suno, I would be feeling a lot of pressure after this deal,” says Power. “But also, I don’t imagine that its investors are scared of litigating this to the end.”
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Barclays Research recently pointed out that Suno’s fundraising better insulates it from the impact of these lawsuits with the majors than Udio: “Even a [tough] settlement…would likely only mean the disappearance of Udio, while…Suno may have the necessary financial firepower.”
The anonymous investor adds, “One thing that helps Suno here is they will capture all the Udio users that are going to unsubscribe,” given that Udio is pivoting to become a different service. As part of the UMG deal, Udio prevented its users from exporting their work from Udio, effective immediately. This led to backlash among users, who felt they should’ve been warned about the change. Soon after, Udio allowed users to export their work during a 48-hour window.
Nauman says the UMG-Udio deal “puts every single AI music company, including Suno, on notice. I’ve already seen a number of comments from people in music who are saying Udio is very impressive and friendly. That’s an important piece to this. When engaging with rights holders and licensing, it’s both incredibly transactional but also very relationship and trust-driven. Udio is in a strong position by earning that trust.”
Most interviewed for this story saw the deal as an important step forward for the music business. But does it make Warner and Sony more likely to come to the table? “What Sony and Warner do here, I’m not exactly sure,” says Power. “I’m going to be very interested to see where things land, and I’m really thinking about Universal here. They’re now the ones who can say they made the big move.”
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AI was an omnipresent topic at the Music Tectonics conference in Santa Monica, Calif., earlier this week, creeping into seemingly every panel discussion and casual poolside conversation. Everybody can see that AI will transform the music business. That’s a 30,000-foot view. Zoom in, however, and there’s far less certainty about how, exactly, AI will disrupt the status quo.
“Not everybody wants to be a creator” was a frequently heard sentiment. Lucas Cantor Santiago of Mindset Ventures has a particular point of view as a composer. The setup he currently uses to write music would have cost $200,000 15 years ago. Now, somebody can get “basically the same tools” from a trip to the Apple Store. But Cantor Santiago doesn’t believe access to tools has led to more creators. “It’s just caused people like me to start writing music faster, and maybe people who didn’t have classical training to be able to start writing music,” he said on a panel.
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AI’s ability to help human creators, not replace them, was a common theme at Music Tectonics. Granted, the conference was heavy on consumer technology brands such as Yamaha, Roland and Fender. Had AI anarchists been invited to speak, there would have been more diversity of thought. But the opinions of people who actually make music for a living carry a lot of weight, as they’re on the front lines of making music that eventually finds an audience. To this crowd, AI slop has little redeeming value and won’t find a meaningful audience.
The historical record doesn’t fully support the idea that AI won’t increase the ranks of creators, though. Greater access to inexpensive production and distribution tools has already transformed the music business. Artists who were previously locked out of nationwide distribution — it was impossible for a DIY artist to get Tower Records to stock their CDs — now have access to tens of millions of consumers through digital distributors and digital service providers (DSPs) such as iTunes and Spotify. “When I owned a record label and house label in Chicago in the ‘80s, there were 100 new records a week,” said Matt Adell, co-founder and COO of Musical AI, on a panel. “When I left [EDM download store] Beatport, there were 27,000 new records a day. There are now over 150,000 new songs a day hitting the DSPs.”
Given easier tools, people are already creating more music. Many of the 150,000 songs a day cited by Adell — or whatever the number is currently — were created by AI. French music streamer Deezer said in September that 28% of tracks uploaded are created wholly by generative AI, underscoring the fact that AI tools could lead to more music being created. Unpopular, long tail music may not attract much attention, but it creates markets where none previously existed. DIY distributors such as DistroKid, CD Baby and TuneCore can operate because production tools are inexpensive — sometimes free — and artists can afford the modest fees to distribute their songs globally.
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AI’s biggest impact could be to turn everybody into a small-scale creator. Kristen Bender, senior vp of digital innovation strategy and business development at Universal Music Group (UMG), noted during a panel that 30% to 40% of all music content on social media platforms has been manipulated by AI in some way, suggesting there are more creators than people might think. “We think that AI is going to enable so [much] hyper-personalization and interesting ways to interact with content,” she said.
Along those lines, Liz Moody, a partner at law firm Granderson Des Rochers, described how AI tools will allow fans to interact with artists in new ways. Moody, who worked on Udio’s recent licensing deal with UMG, told the audience Udio could create “a fan-focused experience where fans can work with their favorite artists to make personalized music, maybe with the artist’s voice, or maybe create some mashups between two songs that they love.”
When AI tools first appeared, the initial conversation focused on AI-generated music’s potential to supplant the popularity of human-created songs. But Bender and Moody — who have visibility into where these business models are headed — encouraged people to think smaller. It’s easy to imagine a licensed, industry-sanctioned generative AI platform partnering with well-known artists to create personalized renditions of “Happy Birthday” for their subscribers. But it’s a lot harder to imagine anyone other than the creator wanting to hear their personalized version.
Trending on Billboard Another day, another flood of music industry deals. How does one keep track? In an effort to provide an overview of the latest acquisitions, mergers, joint ventures, licensing agreements and more, Billboard publishes a list of all of the latest pacts that have hit our radar every other Thursday. Intellectual property rights […]
