Names, Images, Likenesses

Behind the scenes, music insiders are looking into an artificially intelligent future and seeing stars, for better and for worse. “The music biz is on the brink of the biggest technological shift I’ve personally seen,” our friend TROY CARTER at VENICE MUSIC tweeted Wednesday. “Artists will have access to deeper insights, analysis, optimization of listener metrics, fan behavioral data, and social media patterns in seconds.” But in corner offices a few miles away, there are questions about what AI itself will have access to. Like, for example, the entire industry’s intellectual property. “We will not hesitate to take steps to protect our rights and those of our artists,” UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP wrote in emails to SPOTIFY, APPLE MUSIC and other streaming companies, which it’s asking to block AI companies from downloading and scraping its artists’ music. The unsurprising concern, the Financial Times reports, is that AI systems are being trained on the music of artists like TAYLOR SWIFT and HARRY STYLES—without permission or monetary agreements—and will eventually spit out what will amount to Taylor and Harry fakes. UMG has already been issuing takedown notices for AI-generated songs “left and right,” a source told the FT’s ANNA NICOLAOU.

The FT story is paywalled; for a non-paywalled version, here’s the Guardian’s take, partly scraped from FT, as news stories often are. It isn’t only futuristic computer programs doing this sort of thing. I’m very much inclined to stand with the humans and their labels in this brewing battle—and with the visual artists engaged in parallel battles in court. But it could be a messy, complicated fight. There’s little legal precedent for any of this, and someone somewhere is no doubt going to note that the same labels who don’t want AI systems scraping and regurgitating musicians’ creative work are the same labels who’ve loudly complained when their musicians were hauled into court on accusations of essentially scraping other artists’ ideas. You can not, and should not, equate tech companies feeding computer systems millions of actual sound recordings with a handful of human artists absorbing and scraping a bit of the vibe from an existing song or two. They’re very, very different things. But there are nonetheless some blurry lines buried within, and lawyers may very well attempt to draw them.

It would be much easier, of course, for the labels, publishers, artists and AI companies to get together, maybe in a creatively adorned virtual room, and work out clear guidelines for what is and isn’t allowed and clear agreements for how future AI creations will be credited and monetized. But those things, as we’ve repeatedly learned, take time, and the parties aren’t always on the same timetable, and the music companies would be crazy not to press every cease and desist button within reach in the meantime, and to scrape the scrapers any way they can.

Dot Dot Dot

“ST. LOUIS BLUES,” “STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN,” “ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU” and the theme song from the video game SUPER MARIO BROS. are among the 25 recordings newly added to the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS’ NATIONAL RECORDING REGISTRY. The registry, which now houses 625 songs, albums and sound recordings, cited KOJI KONDO’s 1985 Super Mario "GROUND THEME" as “the most recognizable video game theme in history”... Traveling with a bipartisan group of US senators, BRAD PAISLEY met with Ukrainian PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY Wednesday and performed two songs in Kyiv’s Mikhailovsky Square. “It’s an emotional experience seeing all of this firsthand,” said the country singer, who performed his Ukraine tribute song “SAME HERE” along with a Ukrainian folk song... Latin music revenues in the US topped $1 billion for the first time in 2022, with a year-over-year growth of 24%. Ad-supported streams on YOUTUBE and the free version of SPOTIFY were a key part of that growth, the RIAA reports... A concert safety innovation who's time has definitely come... WINAMP still exists, and it's going mobile... An AVETT BROTHER turns his attention to JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

Rest in Peace

Jazz pianist, vibraphonist and composer KARL BERGER... Dub reggae soundsystem pioneer JAH SHAKA.