Thrash-metal band Megadeth launches NFT collection and metaverse community

December 6, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Michael Jackson’s first-ever studio demo to be released on blockchain

December 6, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Artists

Over five decades after Michael Jackson recorded a demo version of the song “Big Boy,” it’s set to be released globally on the blockchain as digital vinyl through the blockchain music platform Anotherblock.

In a historic move, the first-ever studio recording of a young Michael Jackson, kept under wraps for over five decades, will be released on Dec.

The track, titled “Big Boy (One-Derful Version),” will be digitally published through the blockchain music platform Anotherblock and accessible through the platform’s player alongside images of the master tape and song stems.

*Michael Jackson's “Big Boy (One-Derful Version),” NFT Limited Edition version. Source: Anotherblock*

Dating back to July 13, 1967, the recording captures eight-year-old Michael Jackson, along with his brothers, in their inaugural studio session at One-Derful in Chicago.

The release is the result of a collaboration between Recordpool, the owner of the recording, and the Swedish blockchain-based music and royalty marketplace, Anotherblock.

The “digital vinyl” revolution

Anotherblock has already worked with other major artists like Rihanna, The Weeknd and Justin Bieber.

“Doing this drop as a digital vinyl on-chain makes it possible to build stories and community around the song and elevate it beyond being just a commodity.”

“Some songs, and this one in particular, deserve a special home where they won’t disappear in the sea of hundreds of thousands of tracks released every day,” he said.

He said he’s excited about the release and sees it as a continuation to “shake things up in the digital ownership scene of the music industry.”

*Michael Jackson’s original demo of “Big Boy.” Source: Anotherblock*

Katherine Jackson, Michael’s mother, expressed her excitement about the release and is quoted as saying, the “recordings of our musical heritage find a new rhythm for the digital age.

YouTube says creators must disclose gen AI use or face suspension

November 15, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Artists

YouTube’s updated community guidelines include new disclosure requirements for AI-generated content, its new standards for “sensitive topics,” and the removal of deep fakes.

YouTube, the video streaming social platform, released new community guidelines relating to the disclosure of artificial intelligence (AI) used in content.

The platform published a blog on Nov. 14 saying that the updates will have creators on its platform inform their viewers if the content that is being shown is “synthetic.”

“We’ll require creators to disclose when they've created altered or synthetic content that is realistic, including using AI tools.”

An example given in the update was an ai-generated video that “realistically depicts” something that never happened or content of a person saying or doing something that they did not.

This information will be displayed for viewers in two ways, according to YouTube, with the first being a new label added to the description panel and if the content is about “sensitive topics” a more prominent label to the video player.

Sensitive topics according to YouTube include political elections, “ongoing conflicts,” public health crisis and public officials.

YouTube says it will work with creators to help its community better understand the new guidelines, however it said for anyone who does not abide by the rules their content is subject to removal, “suspension from the YouTube Partner Program, or other penalties.”

The platform also touched on the topic of AI-generated deep fakes, which have become both increasingly common and realistic. It said they’re integrating a new feature that will allow users to request the removal of a synthetic video that “simulates an identifiable individual, including their face or voice, using our privacy request process.”

Recently, multiple celebrities and public figures such as Tom Hanks, Mr. Beast, Gayle King, Jennifer Aniston and more have battled with deep fake videos of themselves endorsing products.

AI-generated content has also been a thorn in the side of the music industry over the last year, as many deep fakes of artists using illegal vocal or track samples have also plagued the internet.

In its updated community guidelines YouTube says it will also remove AI-generated music or content that mimics an artist’s unique singing or rapping voice as requested by its “music partners.”

Over the summer YouTube began working on its principles for working with the music industry on AI technology. Alongside the community guidelines, YouTube recently released new experimental AI chatbots that chat with viewers while watching a video.

Magazine: ‘AI has killed the industry’: EasyTranslate boss on adapting to change

Grimes collaboration with music platform makes 200+ AI songs available for creators

November 6, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Artists

Grimes’ manager Daouda Leonard and music platform Slip.stream explain the importance of artists owning their data and controlling their rights to stay ahead in their approach to AI.

The rapid emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) into the public sector has proven to be one of the biggest developments of the year on a global scale.

Major industries have been turned upside down with AI now on the scene. In the creative sectors, the music industry in particular, AI is often seen as a double-edged sword: a creativity kickstarter and a thief in the night of copyrights.

The popular musician and producer Grimes, however, has had a different approach to being an artist in the time of emerging AI. She was one of the first artists to be vocal about the technology after its explosion in popularity in late 2022 with the release of ChatGPT.

In April, Grimes famously said she would split 50% of the royalties with the creators generating AI music using her vocals. It was after this that Grimes announced her new platform elf.tech, an open-source software program solely dedicated to legally replicating her voice for music creation.

HOW TO MAKE MUSIC FEAT GrimesAI
- we can distribute it for you and you can earn royalties from your work: https://t.co/p598CXaXnD
— Grimes (@Grimezsz) April 30, 2023

In September, Grimes was included as one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 People in AI. Recently, Grimes and her team partnered with music creation platform Slip.stream to make 200+ GrimesAI songs available for use by creators.

Cointelegraph spoke with Grimes’ manager and CEO of research studio for musician’s IP rights CreateSafe, Daouda Leonard, along with the team behind Slip.stream, to understand how creatives can get ahead in their approach to AI.

Daouda pinpointed the current moment on the timeline of the technological revolution as the “DARQ ages (Distributed, Artificial, Reality and Quantum). “The only way through it is to use it,” he said. “I think all industry executives, artists, and companies need to be experimenting with new emergent technologies.”

“By rights holders allowing new technology platforms to train with their data, they can be proactive about striking lucrative deals for their artists and catalogs.”

With AI, creators can now utilize artists’ voices, for example, in their own creations, and AI companies are taking creative data to train their systems. Therefore, a strong content management system and royalties mechanism need to be a priority.

Grimes’ management said it’s also using another emerging technology, smart contracts, to make this happen and manage metadata information about “who did what, when and what they’re owed.”

Slip.stream, being the platform that houses the available Grimes AI tracks, echoed the sentiment saying:

“It’s up to forward-thinking artists, executives, and companies to dream up and experiment with its applications to better protect their clients and capture any upside… It takes guts to zig when others zag.”

When artists and management don’t manage to stay on top of such things, it could become too late.

Lawsuits against AI companies have been springing up throughout the year, be it the Author’s Guild launching a class-action lawsuit against OpenAI - the creator of ChatGPT- or Universal Music Group (UMG) suing Anthropic AI, both over creative copyright infringement.

Leading by example, Grimes is showing the industry what is possible when artists both own their data and control the rights to it.

“Owning your masters and publishing is only good if you know what to do with it,” said Daouda. “I don’t know if there is a perfect artist to do such a move. Grimes felt that it was important to experiment and see what’s possible.”

“I think every artist who is open to taking risks and curious about how technology can be a benefit to their career is the perfect for doing this, so I’m sure there are a lot of them.”

Many industry insiders who have wrapped their heads around the possibilities AI can present to artists and are trying to proactively find ways to reap the benefits without losing sovereignty have touted the technology as a “creative amplifier” of sorts.

Slip.stream said when artists are proactive with their rights and content shows that “AI is not about replacing humans with robots, but establishing new norms and structures for artistic collaboration that were unavailable to the masses before CreateSafe and Grimes.”

“To give anyone in the world the ability to collaborate with their favorite artist, opens up groundbreaking possibilities for creative output and fan engagement.”

Grimes herself posted a similar sentiment on X, formerly known as Twitter, a few days after the announcement of her collaboration with Slip.stream:

Basically now is the time to transition from being competitive to being collaborative
— GrimesAI (@GRIMES_V1) October 27, 2023

Daouda ended by saying that he believes what is happening with AI is even bigger than samples and collaborations.

“Generative AI or computational creativity makes it possible for people to go from idea to distribution in minutes, maybe even seconds,” he said.

“Whether that’s a good or bad thing is subjective, but what is objective is that now a lot of people can do it and it opens up modes of expression that ultimately could lead to a certain type of healing that many people can participate in. Music is healing and when we can participate in it that’s powerful.”

Magazine: BitCulture: Fine art on Solana, AI music, podcast + book reviews

Universal Music releases Beatles ‘last song’ with help from AI

November 3, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The final Beatles song “Now and Then” has been released and made possible with a little help from AI to produce John Lennon’s vocal track.

The Beatles have released what they’re calling their “last song” featuring vocal tracks of the late John Lennon developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) on Nov. 2.

“Now and Then” was released by Universal Music Group (UMG), one of the world’s leading music companies, and was accompanied by a short documentary detailing how they came to create the track using new technologies

The video explains how director Peter Jackson developed software while working on his comprehensive Beatles documentary “Get Back” that allowed the team to uncouple John’s vocals from his piano part in the original cassette tape recording of “Now and Then” from the late 1970s that Lennon initially made as a demo.

“[We developed] a technology which allows us to take any soundtrack and split all the different components into separate tracks based on machine learning.”

In a separate interview, the track’s co-producer Giles Martin explained that AI can be taught to recognize voices.

"So if you and I have a conversation and we're in a crowded room and there's a piano playing in the background, we can teach the AI what the sound of your voice, the sound of my voice, and it can extract those voices.”

Paul McCartney, one of the four original Beatles members, said after they heard of Jackson’s new technology they “better send John’s voice to them off the original cassette.”

Thus the new track got off the ground with a little help from AI. John Lennon’s son Sean Ono Lennon commented in the video that his dad “would’ve loved that because he was never shy to experiment with recording technology.”

McCartney echoed the sentiment saying:

“To still be working on Beatles music in 2023... wow. We’re actually messing around with state-of-the-art technology, which is something the Beatles would’ve been very interested in.”

Along with John Lennon, the track features the two remaining members of the Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, and the late George Harrison.

On McCartney’s post, fans have called the new track “beautiful” and a “work of art and perfect way to end the discography.” One fan even said she hopes AI will help make “Beatles live hologram concert on stage” for those who missed opportunities to catch them live.

However, there has already been mumbling from others about the use of AI and the “fake” Beatles song.

In a recent survey of musicians conducted by Pirate music studios, 53% of respondents said they have “concerns about how their audience might perceive music created with the assistance of AI.”

The survey also inquired why musicians were reluctant to use AI, with 58% reporting that “loss of authenticity” was the primary concern.

Magazine: BitCulture: Fine art on Solana, AI music, podcast + book reviews

Universal Music Group sues Anthropic AI over copyright infringement

October 19, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Artists

Universal Music Group, Concord Publishing and ABKCO Music & Records alleged that Anthropic “unlawfully” copied and disseminated “vast amounts of copyrighted works” from the publishers.

Universal Music Group (UMG), Concord Publishing and ABKCO Music & Records have filed a lawsuit against the artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic on accusations of the latter committing copyright infringement in training its AI chatbot Claude.

The lawsuit was filed on Oct. 18 and claims that Anthropic “unlawfully” copied and disseminated “vast amounts of copyrighted works - including the lyrics to myriad musical compositions” that are under the ownership or control of the publishers.

It called Anthropic’s use of the works “widespread and systematic infringement” and said the defendant cannot reproduce, distribute and display copyrighted works to build a business without the proper rights.

“This foundational rule of copyright law dates all the way back to the Statute of Anne in 1710, and it has been applied time and time again to numerous infringing technological developments in the centuries since. That principle does not fall away simply because a company adorns its infringement with the words “AI.”

The lawsuit claims that Claude can generate identical or nearly identical copies of songs such as “What a Wonderful World,” “Gimme Shelter,” “American Pie,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Every Breath You Take” and at least 500 more.

In this case, the publishers provided examples of Claude being able to deliver an almost word for word replication of UMG’s song “I will survive” by Gloria Gaynor.

The plaintiffs have asked the court to order that the alleged infringement is put to an end, along with monetary damages.

This case joins the many popping up against major AI developers on the grounds of copyright infringement.

OpenAI, the developer of AI chatbot ChatGPT, has been sued for similar reasons by the Author’s Guild. Meta is currently facing a lawsuit by author Sarah Silverman and others for copyright issues. Google is involved in a lawsuit regarding its data scraping policy for AI training purposes.

As far as the music industry’s involvement is concerned, UMG has been vigilant about protecting its catalogue and the rights of its artists from AI-related copyright violations. On Oct. 18 it entered into a strategic partnership with BandLab Technologies focusing on ethical AI usage to protect artist and songwriter rights.

Over the summer, UMG and Google were reportedly in talks to create a tool that would allow for the creation of AI tracks using artists’ likenesses in a legal way.

Magazine: ‘AI has killed the industry’: EasyTranslate boss on adapting to change

Universal Music Group enters partnership to protect artists’ rights against AI violations

October 18, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Artists

The new partnership between Universal Music Group and BandLab Technologies focuses on ethical AI usage to protect artist and songwriter rights.

Universal Music Group (UMG) announced a new partnership with social music creation platform BandLab Technologies on Oct. 18 to promote responsible practices with artificial intelligence (AI) in the industry.

The partnership says its focus is on the “ethical use of AI,” with one of the main goals being to protect the rights of artists and songwriters.

Michael Nash, the executive vice president and the chief digital officer of UMG, added that:

“This is more important than ever right now as AI assumes an increasingly prominent place in the evolution of music creation tools.”

Nash commented that along with protecting artists' rights, the two plan to create responsible approaches to using AI in creative processes to “champion human creativity and culture.”

A similar sentiment was expressed by the CEO of the Recording Academy, the institution behind the Grammy Awards, in an interview with Cointelegraph when he said AI could be an “amplifier” of human creativity.

This is not the first time UMG has taken on AI-related issues. In August, UMG and Google were reportedly in talks over ways to combat AI deep fakes through the development of a new tool that would allow for the creation of AI tracks using artists’ likenesses in a legal way.

Shortly before UMG and Google began talking about taking AI copyright issues, YouTube released its own set of principles for working with the music industry on AI tech.

YouTube said it had been in talks with major music industry players such as UMG over how to develop the principles. One was the introduction to its new “Music AI Incubator.”

The struggle for copyright infringement matters between artists, musicians and creators regarding AI has even reached the courts. In August 2023, a United States judge denied copyright for AI art.

Magazine: BitCulture: Fine art on Solana, AI music, podcast + book reviews

Water & Music’s Cherie Hu says Web3 and AI will revolutionize creativity: The Agenda

September 20, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Water & Music founder Cherie Hu explains how technology is evolving the music industry — but is it to the benefit of musicians?

Curiosity might have killed the cat, but for musicians, it’s often the launchpad of creativity and innovation. 2023 saw the rapid growth of OpenAI’s powerful ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool, and technologies like Midjourney and Dall-E have provided content creators the ability to literally become a one-man band — or a one-person production studio.

Keeping pace with the rapid evolution of technology and its impact on relevant industries can be a challenge for the average busy person, and one of the goals of Water & Music is to offer a more research-backed approach for music industry professionals to inspect, discuss and experiment with new technologies.

On Episode 19 of The Agenda podcast, hosts Ray Salmond and Jonathan DeYoung speak with Cherie Hu, the founder of Water & Music — “an independent newsletter and research community on a mission to make the music industry more innovative, cooperative, and transparent.”

Change is inevitable

When asked about what’s new in the music industry, Hu recognized that “the old music business very much was driven by a small group of gatekeepers,” and she suggested that the pandemic, new technology and perhaps even some of the ideology that backs the Web3 movement would eventually change this status quo.

“The pandemic, I think, woke a lot of people up,” Hu said. “I think it encouraged people to become a lot more proactive about speaking out about and advocating for changes that they wanted to see.” She added:

“A lot of the most critical, like deeply critical, conversations I’ve heard about streaming have come in the last three years just because, due to the pandemic, artists were put in a position where they had to essentially rely solely on digital sources of income to make ends meet without touring. And then they look at their streaming checks and are like, ‘This is this is nothing. I can’t live off of this.’ And so, there have been a lot more productive conversations around alternative models to monetizing music in a digital context. Web3, of course, has played a huge, huge role in this.”

Historically, breaking into the music industry meant artists either needed to know the right people to get picked up or be able to fund their endeavors in a way that created enough ripples to capture a wider audience. Hu believes that within the traditional music industry, “a lot of those mechanisms haven’t really changed for like the last 10, 20, even 30 years,” but she also acknowledges that new technologies have opened up new methods for creators to completely circumvent the conventional path to success.

Hu said:

“The way that culture is moving, especially if you look at apps like TikTok and the impact that ecosystem has on music culture and what music, what songs get big, it just moves so quickly. The unfortunate part of the music industry is that the financing element has not caught up to it.”

According to Hu, Water & Music aspires to take a more analytical approach to how the music business is evolving and being impacted by emerging technologies.

“So when we think about the new music business, we definitely focus on new technologies that enable people to participate in the music industry. You know, whether it’s creating music, marketing music, building communities around it, monetizing it in totally new ways. We’re interested in that entire stack.”

Web3 ideas and practices could become endemic to the music industry

Blockchain-based gaming, nonfungible token collections and other Web3 gimmicks were all the rage in 2020 and 2021 when the broader crypto space was in a bull market, but host Salmond wondered how relevant these tactics are today, particularly in the music industry.

Hu explained that with gaming, there are currently “more opportunities for building experiences than for monetizing them and building a business out of them. I would say that element is still missing and still challenging for a lot of indie artists.”

The infrastructure, time and overhead required to build out entire worlds is labor-intensive and not necessarily proven to be sticky, except for major gaming platforms like Roblox. Hu explained that a more pragmatic opportunity for artists might be sync licensing. According to her:

“Sync, or synchronization, licensing is the music industry term for licensing music for any kind of audio-visual multimedia experience, so like a film or a podcast or a game. And there are actually a lot of mobile games, especially, which I think is probably one of the more underexplored areas of music and gaming partnerships. You normally think of these huge games like League of Legends or Fortnite, but there are a lot of emerging mobile games, a lot especially built around music, that are looking for partnerships with the music industry.”

To hear more from Hu’s conversation with The Agenda — including her deeper explanation of how subscribers have benefited from the research published by Water & Music — listen to the full episode on Cointelegraph’s Podcasts page, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don’t forget to check out Cointelegraph’s full lineup of other shows!

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

AI music sending traditional industry into ‘panic’, says new AI music platform CEO

September 15, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Artists

Can Ansay the founder of AI streaming and marketplace platform Musixy.ai, says AI-generated music is revolutionary and brings efficiency and lowers costs to productions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been making waves in various industries across the globe. However, the conflict between its usefulness and its ability to infringe on intellectual property (IP) has seen a particular struggle in the creative industries.

Major players in the music industry from artists and record labels to institutions like the Grammys and YouTube have all had to factor in AI in some form.

In the midst of traditional spaces in the music industry dealing with technology, new platforms are popping up that are embracing the technology from the start. Musixy.ai launched on Sept. 14 to serve as a streaming platform, label and marketplace for music exclusively generated by AI.

Cointelegraph spoke with Can Ansay, the CEO and founder of Musixy.ai, to better understand how giving AI-generated music its own space could shape the future music industry.

Musixy.ai said that it aims to become the “Spotify for AI hit songs,” particularly those that have been banned from other platforms. Over the last year, Spotify and other major streaming platforms have become more vigilant after Universal Music Group sent out an email asking them to step up their policing of copyrighted AI tracks.

Ansay said “the establishment” or major labels are in panic mode again, “as it was back then with Napster, because they fear revenue losses due to a new disruptive technology.”

“Unlike back then, the AI revolution is not only perfectly legal, but even threatens the existence of record companies; music is not only produced much more efficiently but also cheaper.”

He said AI presents “talented producers” with the ability to produce and monetize a hit song with any famous voice in any language. Musixy.ai particularly emphasizes the creation of new and covered hit songs with AI-generated vocals of well-known artists.

Musixy.ai also works with Ghostwriter, who produced a viral song with AI-generated vocal tracks of artists Drake and the Weeknd called “Heart on My Sleeves."

The song initially was said to be eligible for a Grammy, though the sentiment was later clarified by the Grammy CEO highlighting that it was taken down from commercial streaming platforms and didn’t receive permission from the artist or label to use the vocal likeness and therefore doesn’t qualify for nomination.

Ansay said if Musixy.ai is recognized as a streaming platform by the Recording Academy:

“For the first time these amazing AI-assisted songs could rightfully win the Grammy recognition they deserve, produced with the help of AI.”

“This is especially true for those songs that unofficially use the vocals of famous singers with the help of AI that were arbitrarily banned from all other recognized streaming platforms,” he continued.

Ansay argues that from a legal perspective, vocal likeness is not “protectable,” as it would violate professional ethics and make it difficult for singers to work having a voice similar to another more famous voice.

Instead he suggests that AI vocal tracks should be marked as "unofficial" to avoid confusion.

Recently Google and Universal Music Group were reportedly in negotiations over a tool that would allow for AI tracks to be created using artists’ likenesses in a legal way.

When asked if AI-generated music be "competing" on the same level as non-AI-generated music in terms of awards and recognition or have its own playing field - he said both directions could be viable.

“For that to happen, one must legitimately, legally, and arguably under the rules of the Grammys, distinguish what tasks AI is used for in music production and to what degree.”

Otherwise, he believes a new category should be created such as "AI Song of the Year" or something similar. "Because according to the Grammys' mission statement on their website," he argued, "they also want to recognize excellence in 'science.'"

Magazine: Tokenizing music royalties as NFTs could help the next Taylor Swift

Grammy CEO clarifies AI Drake song ineligible for award over copyright issues

September 13, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Artists

The Record Academy executive clearly stated that the track is “not eligible” and cited that the vocals were not legally obtained nor were they cleared by the label or artist.

The CEO of the Recording Academy, which hosts the yearly Grammy Music Awards, has cleared up misconceptions regarding the eligibility of an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated Drake song for an award nomination.

On Sept. 8, Harvey Mason Jr. took to Instagram and released a video clearly stating that the track is “not eligible for Grammy consideration” and wanted to be extra clear that:

“Even though it was written by a human creator, the vocals were not legally obtained, the vocals were not cleared by the label or the artist, and the song is not commercially available — because of that, it’s not eligible.”

He said the topic of AI is both “complicated” and “moving really quickly” while also commenting that he takes it “very seriously” and anticipates more evolution and changes in the industry.

While music with AI components can be eligible for Grammy nominations, the track must meet specific requirements, most importantly that the part up for nomination was created by a human. For example, for a track to win an award for vocal performance, it must have been performed by a human.

Mason Jr. reiterated this element in his most recent statement by saying:

“Please, do not be confused: the Academy is here to support and advocate and protect and represent human artists and human creators period.”

In a previous interview with Cointelegraph, he also stressed this aspect, saying “The role of the Academy is always to protect the creative and music communities.”

In addition to the human element, the other aspect stressed by Mason Jr. is that in order to be eligible for an award, the track must be commercially available. This includes availability on major streaming platforms, such as Spotify and Apple Music.

However, the track in question was removed from platforms due to its copyright violations and lack of approval from the artist and label.

Labels have been advocating for platforms to be vigilant in removing content that infringes on the intellectual property of artists. Back in April, Universal Music Group (UMG) asked streaming services, including Spotify, to remove AI-generated content.

Most recently, UMG and Google announced a collaboration to combat AI deep fakes. The two are in negotiations for licensing melodies and vocal tracks for use in AI-generated music.

Magazine: BitCulture: Fine art on Solana, AI music, podcast + book reviews

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The “digital vinyl” revolution

Change is inevitable

Web3 ideas and practices could become endemic to the music industry

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