‘Music company UMG wants streaming services to block AI developers’

According to the Financial Times, Universal Media Group wants streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music to block access for generative AI developers to their services. The AI ​​developers would use copyrighted UMG material to create their own music.

The music company would have asked Spotify and Apple, among others, to make it impossible for generative AI services to scrape melodies and lyrics from copyrighted UMG material. That writes the Financial Times based on viewed e-mail traffic. In one of the emails, UMG says “not to hesitate to take steps to protect our rights and those of our artists.” It is not clear what steps UMG is considering.

At the moment, there are generative AI music services that use existing songs to create new music based on them. An anonymous FT source says Universal regularly sends takedown requests to streaming services to take this AI music offline. Users could ask the services to create music with combinations of lyrics, voices and themes from different artists. Apple and Spotify did not respond to questions from the medium. Earlier, Google decided not to release a generative AI music tool because of the copyright issues.