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YouTube is currently in talks with record labels about licensing their songs to artificial intelligence tools that clone the music of popular artists, hoping to win over the skeptical industry by charging upfront fees.
The Google-owned video site needs the labels’ content to legally train AI song generators as it prepares to launch new tools this year, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The company recently offered large sums of money to major record labels – Sony, Warner and Universal – to persuade more artists to allow their music to be used in training AI software, say several people briefed on the talks.
However, many artists remain vehemently opposed to AI-based music generation, fearing it could undermine the value of their work. Any attempt by a label to force its stars to use such a system would be highly controversial.
“The industry is wrestling with this. Technically, the companies own the copyrights, but we have to figure out how to deal with it,” said an executive at a major music company. “We don’t want to be seen as Luddites.”
YouTube began testing a generative AI tool last year that lets users create short music clips by entering a text prompt. The product, initially called “Dream Track,” was designed to imitate the sound and lyrics of popular singers.
However, only ten artists agreed to participate in the testing phase, including Charli XCX, Troye Sivan and John Legend, and Dream Track was only made available to a small group of artists.
YouTube plans to sign “dozens” of artists this year to launch a new AI song generator, two people familiar with the matter said.
YouTube said: “We have no plans to expand Dream Track, but we are in discussions with labels about other experiments.”
Licenses or litigation
YouTube is looking for new deals at a time when AI companies like OpenAI are striking licensing agreements with media groups to train large language models, the systems that power AI products like the chatbot ChatGPT. Some of these deals are worth tens of millions of dollars to media companies, insiders say.
The situation would be different with the contracts being negotiated in the music sector. These are not blanket licenses, but apply to a select group of artists, say people who are informed about the talks.
It would now be up to the labels to encourage their artists to participate in the new projects. This means that the final amounts that YouTube would pay the labels have not yet been determined at this point.
The deals were more similar to the one-time payments social media companies like Meta or Snap make to entertainment groups for access to their music, rather than the royalty-based agreements labels have with Spotify or Apple, these people said.
YouTube’s new AI tool, which likely won’t be branded as Dream Track, could become part of YouTube’s Shorts platform that competes with TikTok. Talks are ongoing and deal terms could still change, the people said.
YouTube’s latest move comes after major record labels on Monday sued two AI startups, Suno and Udio, for allegedly illegally using copyrighted recordings to train their AI models. A music industry group is seeking “up to $150,000 per infringed work,” according to the filing.
After facing extinction following the rise of Napster in the 2000s, music companies are trying to get ahead of disruptive technology this time around. Labels want to get involved in licensed products that use artificial intelligence to create songs using their music copyrights – and get paid for it.
Sony Music, which did not participate in the first phase of YouTube’s AI experiment, is currently negotiating with the tech giant to make some of its music available for the new tools, a person familiar with the matter said. Warner and Universal, whose artists participated in the testing phase, are also in talks with YouTube about expanding the product, these people said.
In April, more than 200 musicians, including Billie Eilish and the estate of Frank Sinatra, signed an open letter.
“Without control, AI will trigger a race to the bottom that will reduce the value of our work and prevent us from being fairly compensated for it,” the letter says.
YouTube added: “We’re constantly testing new ideas and learning from our experiments; it’s an important part of our innovation process. We’ll continue down this path with AI and music as we build for the future.”
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