Last year, YouTube launched Dream Track, an experimental project backed by 10 artists (including Charli XCX, John Legend, and T-Pain) that showed off the potential of AI to create original music. Now, the Google-owned video platform is seeking permission from major labels to clone even more musicians, according to the Financial Times. The plan is not to expand Dream Track, but to continue talks with labels about more experiments. The goal is to license songs from “dozens” of artists, which will be used to train new AI tools that YouTube plans to launch later this year.
YouTube is willing to pay Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records substantial sums of money in exchange for licensing their songs for training purposes. While the amount of the licensing has not been disclosed, YouTube appears to prefer one-time payments rather than royalty-based deals. This approach may be a strategic move to overcome resistance from record labels. Despite YouTube’s enthusiasm, both artists and labels may need time to be convinced. Sony Music, for example, has repeatedly warned AI companies against unauthorized use of its content. UMG, for its part, was ready to temporarily withdraw its music catalog from TikTok due to insufficient protections against AI-generated music, leading to the collapse of licensing negotiations.
In January, more than 200 artists, including Billie Eilish, Pearl Jam, and Katy Perry, called on tech companies to stop using AI to “violate and devalue the rights of human artists.” This shows how delicate the balance between technological innovation and protecting artists’ rights is. News of YouTube’s negotiations comes just days after the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents labels including Sony, Warner, and Universal, filed copyright infringement lawsuits against two of the leading generative AI companies in music. The labels accuse Suno and Udio of producing music using “unauthorized copies of sound recordings on a massive scale,” and are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per infringement.
