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Recent PostsHere are some article excerpts from Drake's label concerning their stance on AI:
Article from 2023 from the same label Drake is under.
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This is the head of the label Drake is under. From earlier this year
Universal Music Chief Lucian Grainge Praises Company’s Progress on AI, Artist-Centric Streaming Model in New Year’s Memo
Also Lucian
So which one is it Drake/Universal? Artist need fair compensation for their work and AI is bad? Or your top artist can use it and not pay Snoop, Tupac's estate and possibly Dre if AI used the learning model they are against to create the beat?
My take is that there are no laws on the books that can legally stop this. Nothing was sampled, period. Therefore it's not really Snoop, Pac or Dre. There is always going to be someone in the world that looks and/or sounds like someone else. That doesn't mean that the music industry can come in and claim the rights to said appearance and/or voice.
What's going to happen here is what's being hinted at in Lucian's memo and it's simply that: The industry will create it's own AI system, gain control of the current ones and then AI will be a good thing all of a sudden. All while petitioning the government to changes laws in their favor. It's the exact same play the music industry did with streaming. First the file sharing networks were bad, then downloads, then streaming. Now you can go on YT and stream music and download it.
The music industry needs to be hit with a RICO indictment and the books need to be opened. Every copyright for ever piece of music needs to be looked at and every dollar needs to be accounted for. Once all of their affairs are in order, then we can get to the issue of AI. I don't want to hear about royalties and copyrights when too many artist haven't received a proper accounting of their money.
Quote
That’s the case with perhaps the most notable AI-generated song so far, “Heart on My Sleeve,” which went viral earlier this month for its somewhat convincing pantomime of a Drake and The Weeknd song. The song, posted by an anonymous TikToker going by the name of Ghostwriter, amassed millions of streams before Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, and YouTube removed it. In the case of YouTube, the culprit for removal was what felt like an unforced error: the otherwise original song inexplicably included a Metro Boomin production tag at the beginning. Universal Music Group claimed it was an unauthorized sample and successfully got the song pulled. In this case, a copyright claim worked — but just barely. Other original songs, like an AI Drake song called “Winter’s Cold,” have been pulled from streaming platforms, too, based on alleged copyright infringement.================================================================
“Heart on My Sleeve” is exactly the kind of thing UMG wants streaming platforms to crack down on, saying AI companies are violating copyright law by training their models on artists’ songs (both Drake and The Weeknd have deals with UMG).
Article from 2023 from the same label Drake is under.
Quote
The music group sent urgent letters in April to streaming platforms, including Spotify (SPOT) and Apple Music, asking them to block artificial intelligence platforms from training on the melodies and lyrics of their copywritten songs.https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/18/tech/universal-music-group-artificial-intelligence/index.html
The company has “a moral and commercial responsibility to our artists to work to prevent the unauthorized use of their music and to stop platforms from ingesting content that violates the rights of artists and other creators,” a spokesperson from Universal Music Group, or UMG, told CNN. “We expect our platform partners will want to prevent their services from being used in ways that harm artists.”
The move by UMG, first reported by the Financial Times, aims to stop artificial intelligence from creating an existential threat to the industry.
Artificial intelligence, and specifically AI music, learns by either training on existing works on the internet or through a library of music given to the AI by humans.
UMG says it is not against the technology itself, but rather AI that is so advanced it can recreate melodies and even musicians’ voices in seconds. That could possibly threaten UMG’s deep library of music and artists that generate billions of dollars in revenue.
“UMG’s success has been, in part, due to embracing new technology and putting it to work for our artists — as we have been doing with our own innovation around AI for some time already,” UMG said in a statement Monday. “However, the training of generative AI using our artists’ music … begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on.”
The company said AI that uses artists’ music violates UMG’s agreements and copyright law. UMG has been sending requests to streamers asking them to take down AI-generated songs.
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This is the head of the label Drake is under. From earlier this year
Universal Music Chief Lucian Grainge Praises Company’s Progress on AI, Artist-Centric Streaming Model in New Year’s Memo
Quote
Last January, for example, I wrote to you about the streaming royalty model. A new model was needed, one that would properly reward the artist-fan relationship and disincentivize fraud and gaming the system. Because artists are at the center of everything we do, we called it the “Artist-Centric Model.”
I’m proud to say that in just a matter of months, several global platforms, including the world’s largest music platform, have already adopted artist-centric principles that will transform the way artists are compensated for their work. In the coming months, I believe you will see more platforms adopting these principles. Why? Because it is the right thing to do both for artists and for the wider music ecosystem. As this new model becomes widespread, the impact will be profound: a healthier, more equitable and more vibrant music ecosystem that rewards all artists—be they major, indie or DIY—at all stages of their careers.
Also Lucian
Quote
We launched our Responsible AI initiative this year with two goals in mind. First, to lobby for “guardrails,” that is public policies setting basic rules for AI. In the U.S., for example we are lobbying for legislation that would establish a federal right of publicity to harmonize the protections of artists’ image, likeness and voice from AI deepfakes. We were the first music company to call upon the U.S. Congress to protect artists against unethical uses of AI.https://variety.com/2024/music/news/universal-lucian-grainge-ai-artist-centric-streaming-1235866258/
So which one is it Drake/Universal? Artist need fair compensation for their work and AI is bad? Or your top artist can use it and not pay Snoop, Tupac's estate and possibly Dre if AI used the learning model they are against to create the beat?
My take is that there are no laws on the books that can legally stop this. Nothing was sampled, period. Therefore it's not really Snoop, Pac or Dre. There is always going to be someone in the world that looks and/or sounds like someone else. That doesn't mean that the music industry can come in and claim the rights to said appearance and/or voice.
What's going to happen here is what's being hinted at in Lucian's memo and it's simply that: The industry will create it's own AI system, gain control of the current ones and then AI will be a good thing all of a sudden. All while petitioning the government to changes laws in their favor. It's the exact same play the music industry did with streaming. First the file sharing networks were bad, then downloads, then streaming. Now you can go on YT and stream music and download it.
The music industry needs to be hit with a RICO indictment and the books need to be opened. Every copyright for ever piece of music needs to be looked at and every dollar needs to be accounted for. Once all of their affairs are in order, then we can get to the issue of AI. I don't want to hear about royalties and copyrights when too many artist haven't received a proper accounting of their money.
