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Futureverse — a multi-hyphenate AI company — published a new research paper on Thursday (June 9) to introduce its forthcoming text-to-music generator. Called Jen-1, the unreleased model is designed to improve upon issues found in currently available music generators like Google’s MusicLM, providing higher fidelity audio and longer, more complex musical works than what is on the market today.
“Jen is spelled J-E-N because she’s designed to be your friend who goes into the studio with you. She’s a tool,” says Shara Senderoff, co-founder of Futureverse and co-founder of Raised in Space, about the model in an exclusive first-look with Billboard. Predicted to release in early 2024, Jen can form up-to three minute songs as well as help producers with half-written songs through offering ‘continuation’ and ‘in-painting’ as well.
‘Continuation’ allows a music maker to upload an incomplete song to Jen and direct the model to create a plausible idea of how to finish the song, and ‘in-painting’ refers to a process by which the model can fill in spaces of a song that are damaged or incomplete in the middle of the work. To Aaron McDonald, the company’s co-founder, Jen’s role is to “extend creativity” of human artists.
When asked why Jen is a necessary invention during a time in which producers, songwriters and artists are more bountiful than ever, McDonald replied, “I think musicians throughout the ages have always embraced new technology that expands the way they can create music,” pointing to electronic music as one example of how new tools shape musical evolution. “To imply that music doesn’t need [any new] technology to expand and become better now is kind of silly… and arbitrary.”
He also sees this as a way to “democratize” the “high end of music [quality],” which he says is now only accessible to musicians with the means to record at a well-equipped studio and with trained technicians. With Jen, Johnson and Senderoff hope to satisfy the interests of professional musicians and to encourage newcomers to dabble in songwriting, perhaps for the first time. The two co-founders imagine a world in which everyday people can create music, and have nicknamed the products of this type of user as ‘AIGC,’ a twist on the term User Generated Content (or ‘UGC’).
Futureverse was formed piecemeal over the last 18 months, merging eleven different pre-existing AI and metaverse start-ups together into one company to make a number of creative AI models, including those that produce animations, music, sound effects and more. To power their inventions, the company employs the AI protocol from Altered State Machine, a company that was founded by Johnson and included in the merger.
Senderoff says Jen will also be a superior product because Futureverse created it with the input of some of music’s top business executives and creators, unlike its competitors. Though Senderoff does not reveal who the industry partners are or how Jen will be a more ethical and cooperative model for musicians, but she assures an announcement will be released soon providing more information.
Despite its proposed upgrades, Futureverse’s Jen could face significant challenges from other text-to-music generators named in the new research paper, given some were made by the world’s most established tech giants and have already hit the market, but McDonald is unperturbed. “That forces us to think differently. We don’t have the resources that they do, but we started our process with that in mind. I think we can beat them with a different approach: the key insight is working with the music industry as a way to produce a better product.”
Universal Music Group is in the early stages of talks with Google about licensing artists’ voices for songs created by artificial intelligence, according to The Financial Times. Warner Music Group has also discussed this possibility, The Financial Times reported.
Advances in artificial-intelligence-driven technology have made it relatively easy for a producer sitting at home to create a song involving a convincing facsimile of a superstar’s voice — without that artist’s permission. Hip-hop super-fans have been using the technology to flesh out unfinished leaks of songs from their favorite rappers.
One track in particular grabbed the industry’s attention in March: “Heart On My Sleeve,” which masqueraded as a new collaboration between Drake and the Weeknd. At the time, a Universal Music spokesperson issued a statement saying that “stakeholders in the music ecosystem” have to choose “which side of history… to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.”
“In our conversations with the labels, we heard that the artists are really pissed about this stuff,” Geraldo Ramos, co-founder and CEO of the music technology company Moises, told Billboard recently. (Moises has developed its own AI-driven voice-cloning technology, along with the technology to detect whether a song clones someone else’s voice.) “How do you protect that artist if you’re a label?” added Matt Henninger, Moises’ vp of sales and business development.
The answer is probably licensing: Develop a system in which artists who are fine with having their voices cloned clear those rights — in exchange for some sort of compensation — while those acts who are uncomfortable with being replicated by technology can opt out. Just as there is a legal framework in place that allows producers to sample 1970s soul, for example, by clearing both the master and publishing rights, in theory there could be some sort of framework through which producers obtain permission to clone a superstar’s voice.
AI-driven technology could “enable fans to pay their heroes the ultimate compliment through a new level of user-driven content,” Warner CEO Robert Kyncl told financial analysts this week. (“There are some [artists] that may not like it,” he continued, “and that’s totally fine.”)
On the same investor call, Kyncl also singled out “one of the first official and professionally AI-generated songs featuring a deceased artist, which came through our ADA Latin division:” A new Pedro Capmany track featuring AI-generated vocals from his father Jose, who died in 2001. “After analyzing hundreds of hours of interviews, acappellas, recorded songs, and live performances from Jose’s career, every nuance and pattern of his voice was modeled using AI and machine learning,” Kyncl explained.
After the music industry’s initial wave of alarm about AI, the conversation has shifted, according to Henninger. With widely accessible voice-cloning technology available, labels can’t really stop civilians from making fake songs accurately mimicking their artists’ vocals. But maybe there’s a way they can make money from all the replicants.
Henninger is starting to hearing different questions around the music industry. “How can [AI] be additive?” he asks. “How can it help revenue? How can it build someone’s brand?”
Reps for Universal and Warner did not respond to requests for comment.
The music industry has progressed rapidly over the last decade. TikTok is launching music careers, sites like YouTube are creating new distribution channels and artists like Grimes are open-sourcing their vocals for generative AI creation. But for all of that progress, the opaque systems that control the industry are not in favor of artists driving culture. As listeners, we’ve seen the tip of the iceberg with Taylor Swift’s highly publicized re-recording of her masters and Megan Thee Stallion’s legal dispute with her record label over unpaid royalties.
Music is the most consumed category of art on the planet, and it’s time to evolve the system so that all artists — from top recording stars to indie creators to those who are just getting their careers started — are set up to succeed. But to really grasp what’s needed to shift the power dynamic in the direction of artists, it’s important to peel back the complexities of music revenue.
Changing the narrative on music revenue
There’s a false narrative that is pervasive in the media that says music doesn’t generate any money, driven in large part by the litany of really bad record deals that draw public attention (like the aforementioned Megan Thee Stallion example). But in reality, music makes money — it’s the artists who don’t get paid what they deserve.
The streaming revolution of the 21st century has transformed the way people consume music. But despite streams making up 80-90% of the industry’s revenue, artists see few of those dollars after industry players take their inevitable cuts. Though record labels serve a valuable role in the music ecosystem (from marketing and developing an artist to licensing and distribution), artists can be haunted for decades by bad deals signed early in their careers that unknowingly give away creative control and a significant portion of their future earnings. Artists who have signed contracts with unfavorable terms typically don’t earn negotiating power until they’ve amassed a large following and a fruitful career.
Why the bad deals?
Most artists simply don’t know what they’re signing — it’s not necessarily that they’re making a bad decision. As an artist myself, I experienced this firsthand early in my career. It would take years for me to get paid for my songs — and as someone who’s proficient in accounting from my time studying business in college, my inability to see how much I made from my music was mind-boggling.
The reason that deals are so opaque is that music revenue is growing and coming from more sources than ever before, which creates a complex web of intermediaries within the ecosystem. Every different distributor has a different deal with every different streaming service, and every label has a different deal with every streaming service. And the streaming services are not transparent about how their rates differ across these various deals. Beyond that, there are numerous types of royalties — from performance royalties to mechanical royalties to in-app streaming royalties. Therefore, when it comes to signing on the dotted line, artists must blindly place their trust in a network of counterparties, lacking any real visibility into their actual earnings once every entity has taken their cut. All of this is perpetuated because record labels are incentivized to control information so they can make more competitive deals with artists.
As a result, artists gravitate to what comes naturally — the music. They don’t want to worry about the business side of things because the system isn’t set up in a way that empowers them to ask questions or negotiate favorable deals, and it distracts them from doing what they love.
Finding the opportunity in technology
To rewrite the way music institutions approach music revenue and income, we need to make it as transparent as possible. It seems like a lofty goal for an industry that has long been set in its ways, but technology is making it possible. My company Royal recently launched a free tool that allows any artist to estimate the streaming revenue for their songs. The hope is that artists become more empowered to make deals that uplift their careers.
I’ve also been bullish on crypto since its earliest days, for a variety of reasons, including its ability to transform the music industry with transparency. Blockchain is inherently transparent — in fact, the one thing you can’t do on a blockchain is hide information. It’s all there, at all times. It’s also time-stamped which establishes a clear provenance (traceability of ownership over time). This is especially useful in the music business, where copyright infringement plagues artists and record labels alike. Perhaps most importantly, leveraging tokens that represent rights enables artists to see the value of their songs and create tangible benchmarks upon which to negotiate better deals. With more information always comes more power.
Artists don’t know how much money they’re missing out on, but they could. And it doesn’t have to be a public battle when they do find out. If we embrace technological progress to improve outdated systems, we can create an open data ecosystem that gives artists not only more transparency into their earnings and fan bases but more control over their artistic careers. Better deals alongside more creative freedoms is a winning combination that can define the next 30 years of music — we just have to be willing to change.
Why should artists even care?
As much as streaming has changed the music industry for the better, there are still unanswered questions about how value accrues in this system. Do we equate the value of passively listening to a sleep playlist in the background to actively listening to your favorite album with friends?
This talk of numbers and questions of value may seem like a distraction for artists who just want to spend their time making music — but ignoring this topic completely opens the door to predatory industry practices that threaten musicians’ longevity and entire legacies.
More industry transparency should improve all the variables that play into an artist’s career and result in musicians keeping more ownership of the art they create. Having the humility to acknowledge what music is actually worth is the first step in unlocking more value in this new era of the industry.
Justin Blau is CEO of Royal and a world-renowned musician and producer, known as 3LAU. An early crypto adopter, Justin has been advocating for building the investable layer of music on blockchains since 2017. In 2021, he founded Royal to empower artists to share their music with fans and give people the opportunity to invest in music.
“Fake Drake” and similar controversies have gotten most of the attention, but not all uses of artificial intelligence in music are cause for concern.
The clock is ticking. Two weeks ago, TikTok announced the launch of the beta for its new streaming service in three new markets – Mexico, Australia, and Singapore – just a few weeks after it shared plans to roll out the app in Brazil and Indonesia. This suggests that the social media giant might also soon bring TikTok Music to the United States – although a source close to the matter claims TikTok has “no current plans” to do so.
However, if it does, TikTok Music could push the industry into a new, second generation of music streaming fueled by social media – and make ByteDance one of the most powerful and vertically integrated companies in the modern music business.
TikTok teased in a recent press release that TikTok Music will provide a “social music streaming” experience. Though it remains to be seen what the U.S. version of the forthcoming service will look like, a move to prioritize social interaction and cross pollination between the TikTok social app and its music streaming counterpart plays on the company’s greatest asset – and arguably also targets the incumbents’ greatest weakness.
The streaming services could be more social. It’s hard to find any examples of a music influencer that grew their following primarily on Spotify, Apple or Amazon. There is no longer a direct messaging feature on Spotify. There are practically no ways to engage with music beyond adding it to your personal library or clicking a “heart” icon. Unless, of course, the user leaves the app and shares a song to an Instagram story.
Instead, the current streamers invested in company-selected editorial playlists and radio stations. This allowed them to gain control in the promotion and marketing of music in the late 2010s and early 2020s as the streaming market in the United States began to mature. Top curators and hosts employed at Spotify and Apple in particular – like Zane Lowe or Tuma Basa – became modern kingmakers, much like radio DJs, MTV VJs, journalists and bloggers had been before.
But Billboard found that by late 2022, this was no longer moving the needle quite like it did just a few years before. At the peak of this model in 2019, a few high placements on key playlists often guaranteed a drastic influx of streams and interest from record labels, but its potency has since waned considerably. “There used to be a world where an unknown artist would get the cover of the Fresh Finds playlist [on Spotify] and they would get between 60,000 and 100,000 streams a week,” said one manager who works primarily with developing acts. “Now you’re looking at more like 15,000 to 20,000 streams a week.”
Instead, listeners – particularly Gen Z – increasingly turned to TikTok to find their new favorite songs, likely for its more interactive and organic feel; and labels in turn began offering lucrative contracts to artists who fared well on TikTok in the same way that they once offered deals to talent who landed on key playlists. In the words of MIDiA Research’s Tatiana Cirisano, the streaming services “cultural capital” was giving way to the China-based company which had become the most important place to market and promote music. As Chris Anokute, an A&R rep-turned-manager, previously put it to Billboard, “The biggest game in town is TikTok.”
The move into streaming, if successful, will allow TikTok to not only wield power over the marketing and promotion of music, but also the consumption of it. This, coupled with its popular music distributor and artist services company SoundOn, has the potential to make the company the most powerful in the industry today. With distribution, promotion, marketing and consumption all vertically integrated, ByteDance becomes a one-stop shop. (To take it even further, ByteDance also recently launched a music AI tool called Ripple, also inching the company into the music production process too).
SoundOn already has certain advantages over competitors like AWAL, Virgin and The Orchard: It can leverage access to TikTok data that lets signees identify promotional opportunities within the app. It can also afford to be a loss-leader, given that music is not ByteDance’s primary source of revenue. If SoundOn could add in the promise of editorial playlisting on a popular streaming service, it would be an even more formidable challenger for its competition. Today, traditional artist services companies cannot guarantee playlisting on any platform – all they offer is that their team will try. Imagine if an artist services company could guarantee social media success and playlisting for an emerging artist.
In many ways, TikTok’s democratization of music discovery is an exciting thing in that it has allowed artists without industry connections a chance to build an audience. But this comes at a cost. Today’s gatekeeper is not a music professional, it is an elusive, ever-changing algorithm, created by a company already criticized for its lack of transparency. In January, Forbes discovered that TikTok employees have access to a private “heating button” that can be employed to induce an uptick in video plays, and in March, a coalition of lawmakers cited potential issues with data privacy as a reason to ban the app nationwide. (Since then, Congress has gone mostly quiet on the idea of a TikTok ban.)
The incumbent streamers still have the upper hand against TikTok Music given their robust user bases. Though video streamers like Netflix, Hulu, and MAX struggle with constant cord cutting as users hop from service-to-service depending on their current film and TV offerings, music streamers generally offer the same catalog. This builds user loyalty to their music services and could possibly insulate Spotify, Apple and Amazon from a shiny new opponent like TikTok Music, even if that opponent’s experience proves better in some ways.
TikTok, however, has already influenced the rollout of new features on streaming services before it entered the streaming business itself. Take, for example, Spotify’s announcement earlier this year of a new vertical, swipeable discovery feed that sparked comparisons to the short-form video app, or its prior recruitment of TikTok-based music influencers – like Ari Elkins and Dev Lemons – to help popularize its now-defunct live audio app, Spotify Live. So even if TikTok can’t launch a streaming service that clinches the top market share, it will certainly continue to influence its competition even more than it already has. At the very least, TikTok Music’s launch signals the start of “music streaming 2.0,” – if not an even more seismic shift in power in the overall business.
Triller, a short-form video app in the style of TikTok, is planning to sell its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange through a direct listing under the ticker “ILLR,” according to the company’s S-1 filing released Wednesday (Aug. 2). The filing did not provide a date of the direct listing.
The direct listing — not an initial public offering, or IPO — will not have an underwriter that assumes the financial risk of selling the listed shares to institutional investors. Popularized by Spotify in 2018, a direct listing avoids the IPO’s road show and book-building process that establishes an initial selling price. Triller will not receive any proceeds from shares offered in the direct listing by its shareholders.
While TikTok had an estimated $9.4 billion in revenue in 2022 and is becoming an important source of royalties for record labels and music publishers, Triller is a far smaller affair. In the first quarter of 2023, the self-described “artificial intelligence powered technology platform” had revenue of $9.1 million and a net loss of $28.8 million. In calendar 2022, Triller had a net loss of $195.6 million on revenue of $47.7 million.
The S-1 paints a picture of a financially troubled company with numerous outstanding issues. Triller had just $2.2 million of cash and cash equivalents as of March 31. The company’s S-1 warns that Triller has incurred losses each year since its inception — not unusual for a high-growth tech startup — and has an accumulated deficit of $1.29 billion. Triller may incur additional costs related to outstanding litigation with Universal Music Publishing Group, as one example, and admits to not being in compliance with the payment obligations of “a significant number” of its music licensing contracts and “overdue on payments” to vendors that provide Triller with engineering, marketing and legal services, among other parties.
The S-1 also reveals that Triller entered into a confidential settlement agreement with Sony Music Entertainment on July 21, 2023, that requires it to make payments to SME for a breach of contract lawsuit brought by SME in 2022. On May 16, Triller was ordered to pay SME nearly $4.6 million. The settlement provided Triller with a payment plan. With 15 days of the direct listing, Triller will be obligated to pay SME under the settlement agreement.
Triller will have two classes of common stock: a Class A common stock with one vote per share and Class B common stock with ten votes per share. Upon completion of the reorganization, Proxima Media and Bobby Sarnevesht, Triller’s founding partners, will own about 15.4% of Triller’s common stock and have 60.6% of the company’s total voting power. In addition to Proxima Media, the other shareholders with greater than a 5% share of outstanding common stock are Paul Posner, CEO of Carnegie Technologies, and Tsai Ming Hsing. As of March 31, Triller had 282,017,038 shares of Class A common stock and 46,651,382 shares of our Class B common stock outstanding.
Triller claims to have over 550 million user accounts and had over 2.4 million creators as of March 31 — almost 100,000 more than it had two years earlier. It built its user base with acquisitions such as its 2021 purchase of Verzuz, the livestream platform created by of Swizz Beats and Timbaland that shot to fame during the pandemic. Swizz Beatz and Timbaland filed a $28 million lawsuit against Triller in August 2022 over unpaid monies promised in the deal. That lawsuit was settled out of court one month later.
Meta has launched AudioCraft, a new suite of AI models that generate music and audio based on text prompts, the company announced on Wednesday (Aug. 2). The technology consists of three models: MusicGen (music), AudioGen (sound effects) and EnCodec (higher quality music). It acts as new competition for Google’s MusicLM, a text-to-music generator that launched […]
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Twitter is caught in controversy yet again, as Elon Musk is threatening to sue a group that’s been reporting on the increase of hate speech on the platform.
The social media platform which is now known as X is threatening legal action against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The group states that it received a letter from their attorney Alex Spiro expressing that intent on July 20th from the company accusing them of “a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically,” claiming it had used improper methodology in its research. A blog post claimed that a lawsuit was filed in Northern California on Monday (July 31st).
The CCDH has published numerous reports highlighting research that alleges that the social media platform is failing to protect its users from rampant hate speech, particularly from those who subscribe to Twitter Blue. A recent study done by the group showed that the company refused to take action against 99% of hate speech that originated with those subscribers. It also follows previous studies from the group that Twitter failed to act on 89% and 97% of posts that had anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate speech, respectively.
In the letter, Spiro claims that CCDH’s findings weren’t credibly supported, continuing: “to the extent that CCDH is passing off as impartial “research” material that is, in fact, being funded in support of an ulterior agenda, your representations are all the more misleading.”
“Elon Musk’s actions represent a brazen attempt to silence honest criticism and independent research,” CCDH’s chief executive Imran Ahmed said when contacted by the New York Times, also adding that owner Elon Musk aimed to “stem the tide of negative stories and rebuild his relationship with advertisers.” Roberta Kaplan, the lawyer representing the CCDH, wrote in a statement: “These allegations not only have no basis in fact (your letter states none), but they represent a disturbing effort to intimidate those who have the courage to advocate against incitement, hate speech, and harmful content online.”
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Podcasts continue to thrive in the streaming world with everything from album release breakdowns, murder mysteries and even daily news updates being listened to every day. The phenomena has even been explored through TV shows like the Only Murders in the Building (which has a new trailer and season coming up) and the Peacock Original show Based on a True Story. With all that said, it’s not hard to create your very own podcast, you just need the right podcast equipment.
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If you’re ready to channel the podcaster within you and do deep dives into topics that you’re passionate about, you can pursue it with the right podcast equipment and mics. Just like the characters from the shows above, you need to make sure you have the proper tools to put on a successful podcast show.
From microphone stands to podcast mics, we did the research for you so you can skip scrolling Internet for the best deal and quality, and skip to making your hit show. No matter what topic you plan on covering make sure to stock up on these eight essential tools to help your recording session go as smoothly as possible.
Keep reading to shop our picks for podcast microphones and other equipment needed.
Amazon
TONOR USB Microphone
$31.99 $46.99 32% OFF
To start out, you’ll want to invest in a proper podcast mic like this TONOR USB model, which will help capture recordings with as little background interference as possible. It comes with a foldable three-legged stand that has a detachable shock absorber, and just needs to be plugged in to get connected and recording ready.
Amazon
MAONO Plug & Play Podcast Condenser Mic Kit
$54.99 $61.99 11% OFF
If you’d prefer a more adjustable podcast microphone, this MAONO version features a bendable stand that can be customized to your liking. It also comes with a condenser mic that’ll help provide crystal clear recordings, while the attach magnet ring will assist in isolating sound and deflecting background noise. If you plan on having guests on your show, it’ll help to have an extra microphone.
Amazon
M-Audio HDH40 – Over-Ear Studio Headphones
$39.00
Whether you’re recording audio or listening to playback, you need to make sure you and your podcast guests have a the best over-ear headphones. Our suggestion? These M-Audio headphones as they’re not only an Amazon Choice for recording headphones, but have a 4.7 rating and over 19,000 five star reviews with shoppers praising its “excellent sound quality.”
Best Buy
Audio-Technica – ATH-M20x Monitor Headphones
$49.99
Another under $50 headphone pick are these Audio-Technica ones, which come with a side cable exit for minimal cable interference. The contoured ear padding add additional comfort while helping to isolate sound with less bleeding.
Amazon
BILIONE Adjustable Desk Mic Stand
$19.99 $25.99 23% OFF
Help your recordings pick up the clearest sound bites with a sturdy mic stand. If you’re short on space, try this BILIONE desk microphone stand, whit is adjustable and comes with a detachable shock absorber.
Cicano Microphone Stand
$45.99
Get that real in-studio feel with this adjustable boom mic stand, which includes a table mounting clamp, adjustable head and customizable angle setting, a pop filter and a podcast mic cover. Did we mention it’s also under $50?
Amazon
MAONO Audio Interface
$95.99 $159.99 40% OFF
This will be one of the more splurgey tools, but still essential as an audio interface will help with capturing the best audio possible. With it you can adjust microphone levels and comes with podcaster mixer technology to upload sound bites, clips and more with.
Walmart
Donner Podcast Bundle
$99.99 $119.99 17% off% OFF
One of the easiest ways to save on buying podcast equipment is by snagging a bundle like this Donner Podcast Bundle. The set comes with an audio interface for mixing your podcast and a podcast mic, which will capture your voice before you’re ready to take it to edits.
For product recommendations, check out our roundups of the best laptop deals, speakers for music lovers and celebrity headphones.