Universal says struck first licensing deal for AI music

Pedestrians stand outside Universal Music Group headquarters in Santa Monica, California, U.S. on Friday. June 4, 2021.

Recording industry giant Universal Music Group said Thursday it had struck a licensing deal with AI music generation startup Udio, in an industry-first tie-up aiming to launch an AI creation platform next year.

Universal and Udio said in a statement that their platform, as yet unnamed, “will be powered by new cutting-edge generative AI technology that will be trained on authorized and licensed music”.

They added that they had settled an outstanding copyright infringement case, without specifying the financial terms.

The agreement comes as artists, from authors to musicians and video game developers, fear eventual replacement by AI models trained on decades of human-produced creative output, while music streaming platforms already report a rising flood of computer-generated songs.

AI firms from industry leader OpenAI to music specialists like Udio and competitor Suno have previously been accused by major record companies of using their songs to “train” artificial intelligence models which can produce music that apes human artists.

Rightsholders have demanded stricter limits on the AI developers’ activities, including transparency on what source material they have used and guarantees for their revenue.

Startups were “engaged in the largest copyright infringement exercise that has been seen,” International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP) boss John Phelan told AFP last month.

And the Recording Industry Association of America, a US trade group, filed a lawsuit in June 2024 against both Udio and Suno.

By contrast, Thursday’s tie-up showed the way towards “a healthy commercial AI ecosystem in which artists, songwriters, music companies and technology companies can all flourish,” UMG chief Lucian Grainge said.

Broader talks between music companies and tech firms on how to license works for AI remain under way.