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Youtube AI Google Music

YouTube in Talks With Record Labels Over AI Music Deal (ft.com) 44

Posted by msmash from the aggressive-expansion dept.
YouTube is negotiating with major record labels to license songs for AI tools that clone popular artists' music, according to Financial Times. The Google-owned platform is offering upfront payments to Sony, Warner, and Universal to secure rights for training AI software, aiming to launch new features this year. But there are roadblocks to the deal, the story adds: However, many artists remain fiercely opposed to AI music generation, fearing it could undermine the value of their work. Any move by a label to force their stars into such a scheme would be hugely controversial. [...]

YouTube last year began testing a generative AI tool that lets people create short music clips by entering a text prompt. The product, initially named "Dream Track," was designed to imitate the sound and lyrics of well-known singers. But only 10 artists agreed to participate in the test phase, including Charli XCX, Troye Sivan and John Legend, and Dream Track was made available to a just small group of creators.
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YouTube in Talks With Record Labels Over AI Music Deal

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  • I don't even want to try to imagine how bad 'AI' generated 'music' will be.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 ) *

      Don't have to wait- it is indeed horrid. I was trying to use it to get around copyright issues on YouTube for kids's baseball walkup music, I couldn't get it to generate anything without lyrics, let alone anything inspiring.

      We've come a long way from copyleft protection of Woody Guthrie (copied from the Wikipedia Anti-copyright page): "This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good frien

    • It's got to be more creative than any blues song using the "duh-nuh-nuh-duh-duh" motif.
    • And they'll shove it up your ass by sheer ubiquity, same as they did with autotune and other music-destroying abominations.
    • People don't understand how many nuances there are to music physically played on an instrument. Small changes in tempo and volume that come from the artist's very interpretation of the music. I like electronic music but I understand why a lot of people don't. AI music will not capture any of that.

      • People don't understand how many nuances there are to music physically played on an instrument. Small changes in tempo and volume that come from the artist's very interpretation of the music. I like electronic music but I understand why a lot of people don't. AI music will not capture any of that.

        Pop music spends has, over the decades, spent countless hours and wasted a *LOT* of tech on trying to beat that human touch out of music and make everything as "polished" and "perfect" as possible. The digital audio workstation movement made that a *LOT* easier, and everybody could churn out milquetoast "radio ready" songs from their bedroom. Granted, everybody could also grab instruments and record them themselves to great quality, but that's not what we're discussing here. (DISCLOSURE: I'm a hobby musicia

    • I don't even want to try to imagine how bad 'AI' generated 'music' will be.

      Don't be so sure. When Rick Beato is impressed [youtube.com] it's time to take this seriously.

    • You don't have to imagine it... It's already up and running and funny as hell.

      So far, it's all "dirty" parody stuff that sounds "something like" something else.

      Yes, it MAY reduce the "value" of real performers, but then again, IP law and practice allows for this.

      Too bad. So sad.

      People can now use tools to turn out schlock for other people to choose vs the schlock the industry has been churning out for decades.

      The complaint is a BIT like the law suit Ed Sheeran had to endure recently because he used chords

  • Much of pop music... (Score:3)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2024 @10:29AM (#64579715)

    ...is made in a way that is not very different from the way current AI works
    Teams of expert marketoids, trendmongers, composers, lyricists, engineers, producers, choreographers, lighting designers and others analyze the current popular trends and craft stuff that feels familiar, comfortable and safe for the intended market. They don't want creativity or originality, they are mercenaries, making artless industrial products, and their only goal is profit

    Meanwhile, actual creative musicians make stuff in home studios and are mostly ignored

    • Yeah but AI means they only have to pay 1/10th the number of workers & the record companies make money out of their back catalogues probably without having to share any of the profits with their authors/artists. GenAI is basically a giant plagiarism machine that'll make the fat cats fatter & leave creative artists & the people who support them, i.e. composers, lyricists, engineers, producers, choreographers, & lighting designers, high & dry.

    • Wait, what? Are you saying famous people are famous and unknown people don't have huge fan bases?

      This is terrible, just truly terrible! We need a law and some regulations, a new social justice movement and government subsidies! We can start by naming next month, "Unknown Musicians' History Month". Why, I can feel things changing already! I'm going to listen to some Taylor Swift to celebrate!

  • AI music, which can computationally make any possible music, has destroyed the concept of music. See it as a set of possible notes and human artists have staked copyright out of specific combinations. When all music is possible, it's either worth infinity money or zero money. We have to choose which option we want. Because even if YouTube pays the RIAA, thousands of illegal music generators won't.

    • I think it's going to have to go to a new level. Not just tune, not just pieces, but the ENTIRE performance needs to be copyrighted, as a whole.

      Change a note, change a lyric, and you've got a parody or a cover, not a copy.

  • But only 10 artists agreed to participate in the test phase, including Charli XCX, Troye Sivan and John Legend

    Ok....I'm guessing why these folks agreed.

    I heard these names and my first thought was...who?

  • It's looking like we're heading for 'only humans are allowed to create based on inspiration from other humans without paying a license fee'.

    So what happens next is some desperate musicians - the kind who make musak for department stores - start pumping out tunes that are cheap copies of popular musician's output to be used as license-free training data. They get a wage for a while, then AI starts churning out Tayl0r Sw1f7 and not even Tay Tay's business empire can stop it.

    • No kidding. This is reminding me of when I used to go out to the local weekly flea market, where I'd see all these cheap knock-offs of brand-name products ('Suny' or somesuch instead of 'Sony', etc). They might even go so far as to generate fake band videos and try to convince the unwary it's real people. Broadcast radio will be full of this junk.
      • I'm reminded of when the Xerox machine was a controversial piece of technology and included warning labels against copyright theft. Remember that? It was sitting right there in the library but it said, "well, you can copy 10 pages of a given book, but you better stop there!!"
    • They get paid for the creativity that happens between inspiration and the finished product. If there is no creativity they don't get paid or even sued. Where does AI's creativity come from? A random number generator?

      • Where do you think human creativity comes from? It's not magic.

        • No it's their life experiences. They are born and perceive life in a different way than the rest of us. Many artists had abusive parents or drug or alcohol abuse. Maybe they remember a smell from their childhood. When they put that into their work that is what makes art. A human is not a random creation, they are the sum total of their life experiences.

      • No, it comes from the initial input prompt and the iterations/feed back to get to the "desired" end product.

        • Yes, an artist's life experiences affect their art. Otherwise they wouldn't be looked at as artists, they would be looked at as regurgitating other people's ideas. Granted, there are a lot of people selling disney trademarks and such that are flying under the radar but I don't really call that art.

          • ...And those decisions (made by the human using the tool) to modify and/or re-interate don't reflect, in some way, those life experiences?
            Making the output not art?

            • They aren't making any decisions, they are just making a mathematical atomata that generates itself based on things already created.

              • You've never used one of the tools then.

                Humans DO make decisions.
                This is what a text prompt is.

                The tool operator (human) also, sometimes, feed "seeds" in along with the text prompt.

                Sometimes a result output is fed back in along with adjustments to the prompt to get differences in a new output.
                This might also be fed back in in a later iteration.

                All of the previous describes the use of some generative AI tools and the HUMAN creative decision making that goes into the use of them.

                Now you are a bit better educa

                • You're making the case that the small amount the person types into the text prompt is a replacement for all of life's experiences??
  • As an AI artist, I find the opposition to AI music to be counterproductive to my music career. Freelance AI art has supplemented my income and I think, if only I could write prompts to make music I could take those gigs too
    • AI music won't be held back for long. An artists's guild may be able to prevent their recordings from being used to train it, but they over-estimate any impact that would have on the output.

  • I predict that training a music AI is going to get progressively more difficult as time passes. Soon popular culture will be polluted with AI-generated music, which newer AI's will ingest as part of their training data. When one AI eats the brains of another, well, you saw what happened when we fed cows to cows.

    • Yup, GIGO. At which point they'll become increasingly more belligerent and gaslight-y in trying to brainwash audiences to lower their standards. Same thing the movie industry has been doing for years.

      • Yup, GIGO. At which point they'll become increasingly more belligerent and gaslight-y in trying to brainwash audiences to lower their standards. Same thing the movie industry has been doing for years.

        The piracy conspiracy talk will continue until everyone buys our music!

    • AI killed the streaming star?

    • I predict that training a music AI is going to get progressively more difficult as time passes. Soon popular culture will be polluted with AI-generated music, which newer AI's will ingest as part of their training data. When one AI eats the brains of another, well, you saw what happened when we fed cows to cows.

      I've been referring to what's beginning to happen to the web as the coming crapflood apocalypse. AI spouting shit into the void, being picked up by either other AI or the same AI to be regurgitated and then spit back out again? It's starting to seep into the social networks and news sites. And it won't be long before it's everywhere else. We'll see the same thing in the music world. It'll just lag by a few months with the sometimes still text-based web.

  • will actually go to the artists?

  • Eventually young people will realize that the only way to actually be 'the person know for their cool music tastes and collection' will be to be the person that goes to shows where live people are performing on instruments and purchase their music on a physical format independently produced by the performers.

    There will never be anything 'cool' about AI generated music.

    • It's already here. Expect more. Unfortunately my teen kid dances around to ear bleeding AI generated Japanese techno pop.

      There is no accounting for taste but never overestimate the taste of young people. They don't know any better.

      • My tween kid listens to ear bleeding electronic gabber made by a transfeminine furry... https://lapfoxtrax.fandom.com/... [fandom.com].

        Funny thing is I've actually started to appreciate the skill of the artist. I spent my teens listening to Severed Heads, Brian Eno, and Kraftwerk so I guess they've taken after me.

  • I'll do it for far less than it costs to run an AI cluster. Kazoo, slide whistle, tambourine... I'm a multi instrumentalist. Emphasis on the MENTAL.

  • Music industry (Score:3)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2024 @02:03PM (#64580337) Homepage

    However, many artists remain fiercely opposed to AI music generation, fearing it could undermine the value of their work. Any move by a label to force their stars into such a scheme would be hugely controversial

    Thankfully, the music industry is famous for having great integrity and never screwing over its artists. ;)

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