Business
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The company that owns the copyrights to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” is suing a Ford dealership near the rapper’s native Detroit for using the iconic track in TikTok videos that warned viewers they “only get one shot” to buy a special edition truck.
In a lawsuit filed on Monday (Jan. 27) in Michigan federal court, Eight Mile Style accuses LaFontaine Ford St. Clair — which owns several dealerships near Eminem’s hometown — of blasting the song in the social media videos even though “at no time” did it get a license to do so.
“This is an action for willful copyright infringement … against LaFontaine for its unauthorized use of the composition in online advertisements for one or more car dealerships in blatant disregard of the exclusive rights vested in Eight Mile,” the company’s attorneys write.
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The lawsuit says the videos, which allegedly appeared on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook in September and October, used “Lose Yourself” to boost a special Detroit Lions-themed Ford truck, telling viewers: “With only 800 produced, you only get one shot to own a Special Edition Detroit Lions 2024 PowerBoost Hybrid F-150.”
Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram provide huge libraries of licensed music for users to easily add to their videos. But there’s a key exception: The songs can’t be used for commercial or promotional videos posted by brands. That kind of content requires a separate “synch” license, just like any conventional advertisement on TV.
That crucial distinction has led to numerous lawsuits in recent years. The restaurant chain Chili’s has been sued twice for using copyrighted songs in social videos, including once by the Beastie Boys over “Sabotage” and again by Universal Music Group for allegedly using more than 60 songs from Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and many others. The hotel chain Marriott and more than a dozen NBA teams have also recently faced copyright lawsuits over the same thing.
In the current case, Eight Mile Style pointedly noted that it had previously approved car commercials involving “Lose Yourself” — something of a natural fit, given the song’s connections to the Motor City.
“The composition was licensed and featured in a two-minute Chrysler television commercial that aired during the 2011 Super Bowl,” Eight Mile’s lawyers write. “Chrysler generated millions of dollars of new and used automobile sales across the world from this use of the composition.”
But LaFontaine’s decision to use the song without approval “usurped Plaintiffs’ exclusive rights to determine when and under what terms the composition may be used for commercial endorsements and advertising,” the company’s lawyers write.
Spotify general counsel Eve Konstan is exiting her role at the streaming giant “to step away from full-time corporate life,” she announced via LinkedIn on Monday (Jan. 27). “This marks the end of a chapter that’s been filled with unforgettable experiences and immense personal growth,” Konstan wrote, “and while it’s bittersweet to step away from […]
Deborah F. Rutter, who has served as president of the Kennedy Center since 2014, has announced her decision to step down at the end of this year. The Center’s board of trustees has formed a search committee to identify her successor.
“After more than 10 extraordinary years in Washington, D.C., collaborating with some of the most phenomenal artists, cultural leaders, diplomats, philanthropists, volunteers, and administrators, I have come to believe it is time to pass the torch,” Rutter said in a statement.
“Deborah’s visionary leadership has transformed the Kennedy Center,” said Kennedy Center board chairman David M. Rubenstein (who will continue to lead the board through September 2026, the Center announced in November). “Her legacy will be the Center’s increased relevance, visibility, and physical footprint.”
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Throughout her tenure, Rutter has expanded programming to represent the diversity of arts in America, most notably introducing hip-hop culture and social impact as two central areas of programming.
Under Rutter’s leadership, the Kennedy Center has grown its operating budget (expenses) to $268 million. Earned revenues have grown to $125 million, in addition to $95 million in contributed funds; $45 million in federal appropriations for the operation, maintenance and improvement of the memorial; and a $4 million draw from the endowment in fiscal year 2024.
In her first year, Rutter broke ground on a transformative arts facility and first-ever campus expansion, the REACH. After successfully delivering on a $250 million capital campaign raised entirely through private contributions, the REACH opened in September 2019.
As part of the Center’s 50th anniversary season, Rutter oversaw the development of “Arts & Ideals: President John F. Kennedy,” an immersive, permanent 7,500 square-foot exhibit exploring President Kennedy’s connection to arts and culture. Since its opening in September 2022, the JFK exhibit has welcomed nearly 1 million visitors.
Programs that evolved under Rutter’s leadership include Sound Health (Network), a collaboration with artistic advisor Renée Fleming exploring the neurological and health benefits of music. In 2024, the Center introduced its new Arts & Wellbeing series, reflecting the full spectrum of the arts and their impact on mind, body, and soul. This spring, the Kennedy Center will present “Earth to Space: Arts Breaking the Sky,” which will explore humans’ ambitions to navigate space.
The Kennedy Center serves as the home to the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) and Washington National Opera (WNO). With more than 2,000 performances each year — and two major televised awards shows, the Kennedy Center Honors and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor — the Center attracts 1.5 million ticketholders and more than 2 million visitors annually. Rutter has also guided the Center’s global network of more than 40 education initiatives, making it the nation’s largest provider of arts education by reaching more than 2.1 million individuals. She is also credited with landing Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda as the NSO’s music director in 2016.
In the summer of 2006, Madonna touched down in New York for a run of shows at Madison Square Garden in support of her album Confessions on a Dance Floor. One young attendee was Val Blavatnik. “It was my first live-music experience and I was just so blown away,” he recalls. “I knew from then, even before our family acquired Warner, this was an industry I wanted to be involved in.”
Blavatnik’s father, Len, founder of Access Industries, subsequently bought Warner Music Group in 2011. A dozen years later, Val made good on his childhood dream, starting as senior director of business development at Warner Chappell Music. In April 2023, he was elected to WMG’s board of directors.
Val currently attends Harvard Business School, but he has been in close conversation with the company’s executive leaders, including his friend Elliot Grainge, the new chief executive of Atlantic Music Group. “Elliot and I got very close” during the negotiations that preceded WMG’s purchase of 51% of Grainge’s 10K Projects label in 2023, Val explains. “I advocated for the original 10K acquisition and for Elliot in his new role at Atlantic.” He clarifies, however, “As a board member, I am proud of my role, but it was [WMG CEO] Robert [Kyncl’s] decision.”
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You spent a few years at Warner Chappell and investment bank LionTree before joining the WMG board. Why was it the right time to make that move?
Well, I was very honored to be invited, and I take the responsibility extremely seriously. There are a wide range of perspectives on our board. It’s a very collaborative room to be in. Being the youngest person on the board, I’ve tried to make my role about bringing a different perspective to the conversation. I’m also one of the people on the board who has worked directly with artists, managing them, being in the studio, helping to sign them. That on-the-ground, in-the-room experience is vital.
How closely do you work with leadership?
Robert is always open-minded, and we have some fascinating and productive discussions. Learning about publishing from Guy [Moot] and Carianne [Marshall] was invaluable, and I’ve been very fortunate to work with Tom [Corson] and Aaron [Bay-Schuck] on signing two young acts we’re very passionate about. [Blavatnik declined to name the acts.]
I’m probably most involved with Atlantic. The team and I have a fantastic, ongoing open dialogue. I’m fortunate to be able to help in any capacity which benefits the business — from strategizing about the future, to helping close an artist signing, all the way through giving my two cents on a song.
Why is Grainge the right pick to lead AMG?
Elliot is an incredibly talented leader. It’s been an absolute pleasure to work and collaborate with him. Most importantly, artists love him, his team is unbelievably passionate and committed. He has brilliant creative instincts, he’s fantastic at creating huge cultural moments, and he has a deep grasp of business. That makes him a triple threat.
Do you think the music business needs a generational changing of the guard?
The music business should constantly evolve and innovate, like any other successful business. It’s not so much about a generational shift, but more about having executives with bold, fresh ideas and the ambition to deliver outstanding results.
This story appears in the Jan. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.
As the legal battle over Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us” gets underway, both sides have retained top attorneys – with Drake hiring a lawyer who battles conspiracy theories and Universal Music Group turning to one of its favorite law firms.
Filed last week, Drake’s case accuses UMG of defaming him by boosting Lamar’s track, which attacks Drake as a “certified pedophile” and has become a chart-topping hit in its own right. The star says his own label “waged a campaign against him,” spreading a “malicious narrative” that it knew was false.
The courtroom showdown has drawn intense publicity, and it’s not hard to see why: It pits one of the world’s biggest stars against the world’s biggest music company after a lucrative, decade-plus partnership, over a smash hit song by a critically-adored rapper – one who’s set to perform at the Super Bowl next month, by the way. It also represents something of an unprecedented move in the history of hip hop: A lawsuit over a rap beef that allegedly went too far.
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To handle that kind of high-profile case, Drake has hired Michael Gottlieb, a former federal prosecutor who once served as a former associate counsel in the Obama White House. Gottlieb is currently a partner at the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, a national firm with a well-known music industry practice that has repeatedly been featured on Billboard‘s yearly Top Music Lawyers.
Based on his recent work, Gottlieb is unlikely to be intimidated by the media attention surrounding Drake’s lawsuit. He’s currently representing two Georgia poll workers in efforts to collect a huge verdict against Rudy Guiliani over his lies about election fraud, a case that just settled last week after high-profile court hearings in New York. He’s also repping Blake Lively in her battles against “It Ends With Us” co-star Justin Baldoni, including her harassment case as well as Baldoni’s libel countersuit – cases that have transcended the courtroom and crossed firmly into the messier world of public relations.
In Lively’s suit, she says she was the victim of a sophisticated “digital retaliation campaign” centered “manipulation” of social media designed to destroy her reputation across the internet. Those kinds of claims are nothing new for Gottlieb, who has made a name for himself in recent years filing defamation lawsuits on behalf of alleged victims of online disinformation.
In 2023, he won the $148 million defamation verdict against Giuliani. Before that, he represented the brother of Seth Rich, a Democratic staffer whose murder became grist for right-wing conspiracy theories, as well as the owners of the D.C. pizzeria at the center of Pizzagate — an infamous online hoax centered on false claims of child sex trafficking that later sparked a real-life shooting.
In bringing Drake’s case to court, Gottlieb has raised similar allegations against UMG. He argues that the label used secret payments and bot streams to help spread a “dangerous conspiracy theory” about his client on the internet, putting the rapper at risk of serious physical harm. He even cites the Pizzagate shooting by name, calling a shooting at Drake’s house the “2024 equivalent” of that earlier incident: “UMG’s greed yielded real world consequences.”
Defending against those claims, court records show that UMG has retained the law firm Sidley Austin — one of the largest of the country’s elite “BigLaw” firms, and one that has repeatedly repped the music giant in past legal battles.
Sidley attorneys represented UMG when the label was the named as a defendant in the copyright lawsuit filed by Marvin Gaye’s heirs over Robin Thicke and Pharrell’s chart-topper “Blurred Lines” – a case that transfixed the music industry for years. The firm also handled certain stages of a long-running copyright case filed by UMG’s Capitol Records against the video sharing site Vimeo over internet takedown rules.
More recently, Sidley defended UMG against a class action accusing the label of unfairly refusing to allow hundreds of artists win back control of their copyrights — eventually winning a key ruling that effectively gutted the case. The firm also won a decision last year killing another case filed by the hip hop duo Black Sheep, who accused UMG of securing its stake in Spotify by giving the streamer a “sweetheart” licensing rate that left artists underpaid by millions.
The firm has also handled numerous music matters outside the UMG orbit. Sidley attorneys have also repped Warner Music Group – including in transactional work like the label’s joint venture deal with Elliot Grainge’s label 10K Projects and its $400 million acquisition of 300 Entertainment, as well as defending the company against litigation like a copyright termination case filed by Dwight Yoakam.
As of Monday, the only Sidley attorney to formally appear in Drake’s case is Nicholas P. Crowell, a New York attorney focused on complex commercial litigation, though he’ll almost certainly be joined by other firm attorneys as the case progresses. Top members of the music team at Sidley include litigator Rollin A. Ransom and deals attorney Matthew C. Thompson – both of whom have also repeatedly been named to Billboard’s list of Top Music Lawyers.
If recent work is any indication, the attorneys at Sidley will take an aggressive approach to a lawsuit that UMG itself has already publicly blasted as “illogical” and “frivolous.”
Ransom and other Sidley attorneys are currently defending UMG against Limp Bizkit’s $200 million royalties lawsuit, a case filed in October that claims the band had “not seen a dime in royalties” because of “systemic” and “fraudulent” policies. The lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case just a month later, ripping the lawsuit’s “entire narrative” as “fiction” and “based on a fallacy.” Last week, a judge sided with those arguments and rejected core aspects of the band’s case.
The firm will file its first response to Drake’s lawsuit in March.
In early December, Island Records co-chairmen/co-CEOs Justin Eshak and Imran Majid traveled to the north coast of Jamaica to visit the 87-year-old founder of the label they now run, Chris Blackwell. The executives were coming off one of the best years in Island’s recent history, and three weeks before their visit, two of Island’s recent breakthroughs, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, both scored Grammy nominations in the categories of record, song and album of the year and best new artist — the first time in history a label had two acts nominated for each of those honors in the same year.
That wasn’t the reason for the trip, however. It was about “respect,” Majid says. The two had visited Blackwell at his Goldeneye resort in 2021, before they officially took over Island at the beginning of 2022, to meet him and pay homage to the institution he had launched in 1959, which became the label home of Bob Marley, U2, Cat Stevens and Grace Jones.
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This time, “It kind of felt like visiting family or a friend,” Eshak says. “As opposed to last time when we were like, ‘Oh, f–k!’ ”
During those three years, Eshak and Majid have taken Island from a label with an illustrious past but moribund present to one of the premier destinations for artists to break — and 2024 was when it all came together. First came Carpenter, who scored her first top 40 hit on the Hot 100 in January with “Feather” before steadily building momentum through the spring. “Espresso,” her first top 10, followed, and by June, Carpenter had her first No. 1 with “Please Please Please.” At the end of August, her album Short n’ Sweet debuted atop the Billboard 200.
Roan’s ascent was almost simultaneous, fueled by strong word-of-mouth and a series of increasingly bigger festival appearances that crested in the summer, when her single “Good Luck, Babe!” reached No. 4 on the Hot 100; her album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, climbed into the top five of the Billboard 200; and she broke an attendance record for her Lollapalooza performance in Chicago. So when the Grammy nominations arrived, Island’s chief executives were not surprised. “Once the two of them started to control the zeitgeist,” Eshak says, “it just felt like the appropriate result.”
From the outside, the rise of the two artists — one a former Disney star who refashioned herself through clever live shows and radio, the other a budding queer pop icon who had been dumped by the major-label system early on and rebooted her career by touring and building a fan community — appeared to have reached that point through different paths. Eshak and Majid don’t see it that way. “You almost had to be at the shows before the success to understand,” Majid says. “That was what we bet on really early — [they were] artists that had such an engaged fan base from touring, streaming almost came secondary to that. At one point we were like, ‘Once this hits the masses, it could have a global impact.’ ”
By mid-2024, the narrative was set: Carpenter and Roan were leading a roster of artists who built cross-sectional fan bases that pushed beyond typical genre or cultural tropes. And for the first time in years, Island Records had returned to the roots Blackwell had nurtured in the latter half of the 20th century — a label where artists felt comfortable, heard and supported, and where good music was more important than commerciality.
Which is not to say that Island hasn’t succeeded commercially. The label ended 2024 with a 2.49% current market share — quadrupling the 0.62% it had in 2023. Island’s market share is included under Republic Records, but broken out on its own, it is the ninth-best of last year despite a wide reorganization at Universal Music Group in February that included extensive layoffs that affected all labels at the company.
Eshak and Majid’s greatest achievement, then, was to take a label with 30 dedicated employees (sharing some services like radio and marketing within REPUBLIC Collective) and create a culture that let its artists and staff flourish creatively, commercially and artistically.
They are now reaping the rewards. As 2024 wound down, new signees Gigi Perez and Lola Young landed their first Hot 100 hits, “Sailor Song” at No. 22 and “Messy” at No. 54, respectively.
Now, some in the industry are comparing Eshak and Majid’s success to that of John Janick’s at Interscope, which has turned young artists like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo into superstars at a time when it’s becoming increasingly difficult to break artists.
The trick is to maintain that success and future-proof against inevitable cold streaks. “What humbles you is when you think you have magic and it doesn’t work,” Majid says. “Justin and I are fortunate that we have 20 years of experience of what we think the right attitude to have is and what is not.”
“We just feel like there’s a new wave of artists that fit our ethos and that we can plug into what we do and give them a bespoke campaign,” Eshak says. “And we feel like we have the team. It felt really great going to Jamaica. Imran and I were sitting there like, ‘Our team’s got this.’ ”
This story appears in the Jan. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.
AXS, AEG’s ticketing and event access platform, is launching a new global biometric authentication feature for its mobile app across all smart phone devices. The technology marks the first time a ticketing smart phone app utilizes biometric security features, such as fingerprint or facial recognition, to provide users with a secure way to access their […]
Perplexity AI has presented a new proposal to TikTok’s parent company that would allow the U.S. government to own up to 50% of a new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok’s U.S. business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The proposal, submitted last week, is a revision of a prior plan the artificial intelligence startup had presented to TikTok’s parent ByteDance on Jan. 18, a day before the law that bans TikTok went into effect.
The first proposal, which ByteDance hasn’t responded to, sought to create a new structure that would merge San Francisco-based Perplexity with TikTok’s U.S. business and include investments from other investors.
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The new proposal would allow the U.S. government to own up to half of that new structure once it makes an initial public offering of at least $300 billion, said the person, who was not authorized to speak about the proposal. The person said Perplexity’s proposal was revised based off of feedback from the Trump administration.
If the plan is successful, the shares owned by the government would not have voting power, the person said. The government also would not get a seat on the new company’s board.
ByteDance and TikTok did not immediately responded to a request for comment.
Under the plan, ByteDance would not have to completely cut ties with TikTok, a favorable outcome for its investors. But it would have to allow a “full U.S. board control,” the person said.
Under the proposal, the China-based tech company would contribute TikTok’s U.S. business without the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app, according to a document seen by the Associated Press. In exchange, ByteDance’s existing investors will get equity in the new structure that emerges.
The proposal seems to mirror a strategy Steven Mnuchin, treasury secretary during Trump’s first term, discussed Sunday on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures — that a new investor in TikTok could simply “dilute down” the Chinese ownership and satisfy the law. Mnuchin has previously expressed interest in investing in the company.
“But the technology needs to be disconnected from China,” he added. “It needs to be disconnected from ByteDance. There’s absolutely no way that China would ever let us have something like that in China.”
The Perplexity proposal comes as several investors are expressing interest in TikTok. President Donald Trump said late Saturday that he expects a deal will be made in as soon as 30 days.
On a flight from Las Vegas to Miami on Air Force One, Trump also said he hadn’t discussed a deal with Larry Ellison, CEO of software maker Oracle, despite a report that Oracle, along with outside investors, was considering taking over TikTok’s global operation.
“Numerous people are talking to me. Very substantial people,” Trump said. “We have a lot of interest in it, and the United States will be a big beneficiary. … I’d only do it if the United States benefits.”
Under a bipartisan law passed last year, TikTok was to be banned in the United States by Jan. 19 if it did not cut ties with ByteDance. The Supreme Court upheld the law, but Trump then issued an executive order to halt enforcement of the law for 75 days.
Trump, on Air Force One, noted that Ellison lives “right down the road” from his Mar-a-Lago estate, but added, “I never spoke to Larry about TikTok. I’ve spoken to many people about TikTok and there’s great interest in TikTok.”
TikTok briefly shut down in the U.S. a week ago, but went back online after Trump said he would postpone the ban. Trump had unsuccessfully attempted a U.S. ban of the platform during his first term. But he has since reversed his position and has credited the platform with helping him win more young voters during last year’s presidential election.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew attended Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20, along with some other tech leaders who’ve been forging friendlier ties with the new administration.
Congress voted to ban TikTok in the U.S. out of concern that TikTok’s ownership structure represented a security risk. The Biden administration argued in court for months that it was too much of a risk to allow a Chinese company to control the algorithm that fuels what people see on the app. Officials also raised concerns about user data collected on the platform.
However, to date, the U.S. hasn’t provided public evidence of TikTok handing user data to Chinese authorities or allowing them to tinker with its algorithm.
Universal Music Group and Spotify have struck a new direct deal, impacting both the company’s recorded music and publishing royalty rates, the companies announced today (Jan. 26). In a statement, UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge said that the deal is “precisely the kind of partnership development [UMG] envisioned” as part of its idea for “Streaming 2.0,” the company’s proposed changes to revamp streaming royalty rates and improve remuneration for its artists on streaming platforms.
Under the new agreement, UMG and Spotify “will collaborate closely to advance the next era of streaming innovation,” according to a press release. “Artists, songwriters and consumers will benefit from new and evolving offers, new paid subscription tiers, bundling of music and non-music content, and a richer audio and visual content catalog,” the press release continues. The deal also includes continued protection for UMG through Spotify’s fraud detection and enforcement systems.
Importantly, the agreement includes a direct deal between Spotify and Universal Music Publishing Group, the first direct deal between Spotify and a publisher since the passage of the Music Modernization Act in 2018. One top publishing executive tells Billboard that this change “sounds like Spotify is raising the white flag” about the so-called “bundling” dispute which has soured relations between many publishers, writers and Spotify since it launched last year. In March, Billboard reported that Spotify’s payments to music publishers and songwriters would be cut significantly to account for Spotify bundling in audiobooks as part of its premium tiers. Instead of paying out royalties for these tiers purely to music publishers and writers, Spotify began splitting the payments between music and books publishers.
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Billboard estimated the losses to be about $150 million in the first year the bundled audiobooks took effect. Now, nearly a year later, Universal Music Publishing Group appears to be back in a better position with Spotify. One source familiar with the deal said it has improved royalty payments for UMPG songwriters, although the two companies declined to state the specifics of how the new publishing royalty model (or the one for recorded music) works.
“Spotify maintains its bundle, but with this direct deal, it has evolved to account for broader rights, including a different economic treatment for music and non-music content,” a Spotify spokesperson clarified in a statement to Billboard.
“[This deal] makes sense,” the publishing executive tells Billboard. “[Spotify is] despised in the songwriting industry. Their main competitor, Amazon, has already left them isolated and alone. And they claim to want to expand into more videos but can’t get deals done. It was monumentally stupid for them to put themselves in this position but perhaps they are finally trying to get out of the bind they put themselves in.”
Grainge said, in his complete statement about the deal, “When we first presented our vision for the next stage in the evolution of music subscription several months ago — Streaming 2.0 — this is precisely the kind of partnership development we envisioned. This agreement furthers and broadens the collaboration with Spotify for both our labels and music publisher, advancing artist-centric principles to drive greater monetization for artists and songwriters, as well as enhancing product offerings for consumers.”
“For nearly two decades, Spotify has made good on its commitment to return the music industry to growth, ensuring that we deliver record payouts to the benefit of artists and songwriters each new year,” Spotify founder/CEO Daniel Ek said in a statement. “This partnership ensures we can continue to deliver on this promise by embracing the certainty that constant innovation is key to making paid music subscriptions even more attractive to a broader audience of fans around the world.”
Paul McCartney is speaking out against proposed changes to copyright laws, warning that artificial intelligence could harm artists.
The British government is currently considering a policy that would allow tech companies to use creators’ works to train AI models unless creators specifically opt out. In an interview with the BBC, set to air on Sunday (Jan. 26), the 82-year-old former Beatle cautioned that the proposal could “rip off” artists and lead to a “loss of creativity.”
“You get young guys, girls, coming up, and they write a beautiful song, and they don’t own it, and they don’t have anything to do with it. And anyone who wants can just rip it off,” McCartney said. “The truth is, the money’s going somewhere… Somebody’s getting paid, so why shouldn’t it be the guy who sat down and wrote ‘Yesterday’?”
The U.K. Labour Party government has expressed its ambition to make Britain a global leader in AI. In December 2024, the government launched a consultation to explore how copyright law can “enable creators and right holders to exercise control over, and seek remuneration for, the use of their works for AI training” while also ensuring “AI developers have easy access to a broad range of high-quality creative content,” according to the Associated Press.
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“We’re the people, you’re the government. You’re supposed to protect us. That’s your job,” McCartney told the BBC. “So you know, if you’re putting through a bill, make sure you protect the creative thinkers, the creative artists, or you’re not going to have them.”
The Beatles’ final song, “Now and Then,” released in 2023, utilized a form of AI called “stem separation” to help surviving members McCartney and Ringo Starr clean up a 60-year-old, low-fidelity demo recorded by John Lennon, making it suitable for a finished master recording.
As AI becomes more prevalent in entertainment, music and daily life, the debate around its impact continues to grow. In April 2024, Billie Eilish, Pearl Jam and Nicki Minaj were among 200 signatories of an open letter directed at tech companies, digital service providers and AI developers. The letter criticized irresponsible AI practices, calling it an “assault on human creativity” that “must be stopped.”