Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Nearly twenty years ago, Grammy Award winning producer Timbaland got
Speaker 2: in the studio and made a song that would go
Speaker 2: on to become one of his most iconic from clubs
Speaker 2: and wedding receptions to Bob mitzvahs and everything in between.
Speaker 2: If you were alive in two thousand and seven, you
Speaker 2: couldn't escape its hypnotic.
Speaker 1: Beat, unique.
Speaker 2: De'spadiation right that song, The Way I Are, would peak
Speaker 2: at number three on the Billboard Hot one hundred chart.
Speaker 2: Critics were into it. That memorable synth line felt like
Speaker 2: a peek into the future. When I talked to Timbaland
Speaker 2: earlier this month, he told me he's always tried to
Speaker 2: embrace new technology in his music production. For The Way
Speaker 2: I Are, he and his team experimented with mix effects
Speaker 2: and synthesizers.
Speaker 1: I just felt and I'm like, ooh, that's a dope pattern.
Speaker 1: So it's steal my taste.
Speaker 2: Timberland made that song in his thirties. He's fifty two. Today.
Speaker 2: A lot's changed in music production. Sense. New tools have
Speaker 2: introduced new questions about how the over twenty eight billion
Speaker 2: dollar reported music industry makes its core product and artists,
Speaker 2: whether they're making songs in their bedrooms or at a
Speaker 2: big time music studio, have had to grapple with those shifts. Today,
Speaker 2: Timberland is an outspoken advocate for the tech that he
Speaker 2: thinks is going to most change the music industry next AI.
Speaker 1: I look at it as an amazing too that I
Speaker 1: wish it was available in my early twenties or thirties.
Speaker 2: Timberland says that AI tools help him focus on being
Speaker 2: a better artist, and that at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: he's the one pulling the levers, the one with the vision.
Speaker 2: But as AI changes the way music is made, labels, artists,
Speaker 2: and listeners are left wondering who stands to benefit from
Speaker 2: these tools and who has the most to lose. Today,
Speaker 2: on the show how AI broke through in the music industry,
Speaker 2: the sticky questions it raises, and where it could be
Speaker 2: headed Next, this is the big take from Bloomberg News.
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holberg. Ashley Carmen covers all things audio for Bloomberg,
Speaker 2: and she says, right now, there are three major ways
Speaker 2: AI is starting to show up in the industry. The
Speaker 2: first is the most obvious and perhaps the most controversial
Speaker 2: generative AI.
Speaker 3: I think AI was bubbling up for a while. Real
Speaker 3: prognosticators in the space sat coming and they were like, Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is going to be something where you can generate
Speaker 3: a song at the top of a button, and this
Speaker 3: is going to eliminate the need for commercial libraries. For example,
Speaker 3: you know the background music you hear on Netflix, or
Speaker 3: you license maybe catalog of songs and you can just
Speaker 3: use them royalty free for eternity. But then I think
Speaker 3: what started to really bubble up was more of these
Speaker 3: use cases where yes, you could generate a song at
Speaker 3: the top of a button, but actually maybe you're going
Speaker 3: to use it in a way that is going to
Speaker 3: allow you to either use someone's likeness to get some
Speaker 3: attention for your song. You're going to distribute that song
Speaker 3: on streaming services and try to get streams.
Speaker 2: When you say someone's likeness their musical likeness, or their
Speaker 2: physical likeness, voice.
Speaker 3: Musical stylings, sound essentially. So that's kind of more of
Speaker 3: the side where you see the labels and other rights
Speaker 3: holders kind of racking their heads about this, like what
Speaker 3: are we going to do.
Speaker 2: One of the more high profile cases of this came
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three, when an anonymous creator released a
Speaker 2: hip hop track called Heart on My Sleeve. It was
Speaker 2: generated using AI, but you can hear how it's designed
Speaker 2: to sound a lot like the artist Drake.
Speaker 3: I can my eggs, and the song sounded like Drake
Speaker 3: and Weekend had collaborated. And when it came out, I
Speaker 3: think there was all this speculation like, is this a
Speaker 3: real song from Drake in the Weekend, Like we didn't
Speaker 3: know it was coming. It's a surprise drop. Certainly sounds
Speaker 3: like them. Eventually, when it was realized that it's an
Speaker 3: AI song, that just kind of started this whole conversation
Speaker 3: around AI in the music business because Drake and The
Speaker 3: Weekend are both signed to Republic, which is owned by
Speaker 3: Universal Music Group. Universal Music Group very much vocally said
Speaker 3: we're concerned about AI. We don't want AI songs to
Speaker 3: overwhelm the streaming services and essentially take market share away
Speaker 3: from human artists.
Speaker 2: The song went viral, it even looked like it was
Speaker 2: on track to chart, but then it started disappearing from
Speaker 2: streaming platforms one by one. UMG wouldn't comment on it directly,
Speaker 2: but it issued a statement saying that training generative AI
Speaker 2: on music from their artists violated copyright law and that
Speaker 2: music platforms have a quote fundamental legal and ethical response
Speaker 2: ability to prevent the use of their services in ways
Speaker 2: that harm artists unquote, But some artists are embracing AI
Speaker 2: generated music. Just a week after Hard on My Sleeve
Speaker 2: was released, the singer songwriter Grimes, who's been a vocal
Speaker 2: proponent of AI for years, invited fans to make music
Speaker 2: using AI versions of her voice, but she asked them
Speaker 2: to register the music on her website so they could
Speaker 2: split royalties fifty to fifty. It was an example of
Speaker 2: the conflicting ways different players in the industry feel about
Speaker 2: AI and how fast those perspectives are evolving. Fresh off
Speaker 2: the copyright controversy around Hard on My Sleeve, UMG has
Speaker 2: also been promoting what the company sees as more responsible
Speaker 2: uses of the tech.
Speaker 4: Twenty twenty four was a really big year for AI.
Speaker 2: Ashley spoke to Michael Nash, who's the executive vice president
Speaker 2: and chief Digital officer at UMG, about the second main
Speaker 2: way AI is being used in music production, behind the
Speaker 2: scenes to up recordings and in the studio by engineers
Speaker 2: who mix and master work. He told her about how
Speaker 2: UMG revived old music by the Beatles, a band the
Speaker 2: label represents and whose members aren't all alive, to re
Speaker 2: record the.
Speaker 4: Story there is recordings in nineteen seventy seven by John
Speaker 4: Lennon were used to produce some singles in the nineties,
Speaker 4: but there was one track now and then which wasn't
Speaker 4: possible to use because the piano part was like kind
Speaker 4: of banging over the vocal and becoming intermingled in a
Speaker 4: way that the vocal track was not previously usable.
Speaker 3: They used AI to extract John Lennon's vocals from this
Speaker 3: old recording that they had and essentially make it sound
Speaker 3: really nice and use it in the song.
Speaker 4: So no part of that vocal was AI generated, but
Speaker 4: it was AI excavated.
Speaker 3: It's now now needed for a Grammy.
Speaker 2: Michael told Ashley that UMG is also interested in exploring
Speaker 2: another type of a music product. The third category of
Speaker 2: AI material that's cropping up in the industry content tailored
Speaker 2: to a specific listener.
Speaker 4: There's an interesting component around hyper personalization, where the consumer
Speaker 4: can use the AI technology to customize the music listening experience.
Speaker 2: Sony Music Entertainment, one of UMG's competitors, tried this last fall,
Speaker 2: the company worked with David Gilmour from Pink Floyd to
Speaker 2: offer fans a personalized AI track and artwork remixed from
Speaker 2: portions of the album.
Speaker 3: So the idea really was, you're a fan, you want
Speaker 3: a special experience. You want to feel like you really
Speaker 3: own that album in a different way than anyone else,
Speaker 3: So you would get customized artwork based on your prompts
Speaker 3: as well as a song.
Speaker 2: But whether there's consumer demand for this is another question entirely.
Speaker 2: Right now, the industry is in the spaghetti at the
Speaker 2: wall phase of AI, trying things out, seeing what sticks,
Speaker 2: and making case by case to decisions about what feels
Speaker 2: ethical coming up after the break, How companies like UNNG
Speaker 2: and musicians like Timbaland draw those lines and the legal
Speaker 2: battles that could define them more clearly. If you ask Timbaland,
Speaker 2: AI is just like any technology he'd use to help
Speaker 2: him make music, but more powerful, and he's been leaning
Speaker 2: into it. In October, he announced a partnership with Suno,
Speaker 2: an AI music generation tool.
Speaker 1: He's like going to the record store picking out samples,
Speaker 1: and when you get that right sample or that right record,
Speaker 1: it allows you to get more creative.
Speaker 2: But Suno also lets users create whole songs. You just
Speaker 2: put in keywords, click a button, and generate a track.
Speaker 2: To understand how tools like Suno really work. Ashley and
Speaker 2: I gave it a test drive ourselves. Have you tried
Speaker 2: this before?
Speaker 3: No, let's do it? Okay?
Speaker 2: What should we make a song about?
Speaker 3: Should we try to do? Like a Christmas song?
Speaker 2: Definitely a Christmas song about New York and the beach,
Speaker 2: because I wish I was at the beach in the.
Speaker 3: Style of Mariah Carey.
Speaker 2: Mariah Carey, create a song. I'm so excited. In just
Speaker 2: a few seconds we had our custom song New York.
Speaker 3: Noelle, Okay, let's play. It doesn't sound like Mariah Carey
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 2: Christmas Tree, Sandy Grain. Christmas Tree is so bold and pretty,
Speaker 2: but I'm dreaming of Sandy Grains. It should be playing
Speaker 2: in the elevator.
Speaker 3: That's exactly the thing. Like could this past for elevator
Speaker 3: music or podcast music?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Like background music. I don't know. I want to believe
Speaker 3: that between the two of us we could write better
Speaker 3: lyrics for a Christmas song. I want to believe that,
Speaker 3: but I haven't actually tried. Definitely, wouldn't say Sandy Green.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have never thought that sentence in my entire life.
Speaker 2: The way Timbaland describes how he uses technology like Suno
Speaker 2: is pretty different. He told me it would be hard
Speaker 2: to just auto generate a hit. That making music is
Speaker 2: still about a person's own creativity, something AI can only amplify.
Speaker 1: I don't like to say the word train, but it
Speaker 1: is like a training. I'm transferring energies to a machine.
Speaker 2: So do you have any concern that other artists might
Speaker 2: use Suno or a tool like it and recreate the
Speaker 2: Timbaland sound?
Speaker 1: Just never going to give you me unless you know
Speaker 1: how I think you know everybody tastes ain't great. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, That people are making stuff that
Speaker 1: they like to make music, but it ain't good music.
Speaker 2: But UMG and two other major record labels have a
Speaker 2: deeper concern with the way Suno works. They've sued the
Speaker 2: company and a similar one called Udio, accusing them of
Speaker 2: training their software on cop be writed materials. Suno and
Speaker 2: Udio have argued that what they're doing is covered by
Speaker 2: fair use, that they're allowed to use copyrighted material when
Speaker 2: developing technology that creates what are sometimes called quote non
Speaker 2: infringing new works in a court filing, Suno wrote, like
Speaker 2: a human musician, Suno did not develop its capabilities in
Speaker 2: a vacuum. It is the product of extensive analysis and
Speaker 2: study of the building blocks of music. The lawsuits are
Speaker 2: still ongoing.
Speaker 3: Honestly, we're just waiting for the courts to decide.
Speaker 2: While they wait, UMG has started to make its own
Speaker 2: judgments about what it deems ethical use of generative AI.
Speaker 2: One example came this holiday season when the label released
Speaker 2: a new version of a Christmas song originally recorded in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 3: So Brenda Lee's famous song Rocking around the Christmas Tree.
Speaker 3: We all certainly know it. They used AI to essentially
Speaker 3: train on her voice as a young teenager and record
Speaker 3: the song that sounds like her in Spanish.
Speaker 4: Brand Lee's vocals were used as the training set to
Speaker 4: develop a vocal model, and then a Spanish language performance
Speaker 4: by an artist that was in the right vocal range
Speaker 4: for a match that provide a guide track, and then
Speaker 4: in the production studio, by merging the guide track with
Speaker 4: the AI voice clone, Wila, you have Brenda Lee performing
Speaker 4: Rocking around the Christmas Tree in Spanish for the first time.
Speaker 3: She's an eighty year old woman. This is not her
Speaker 3: singing today. She did give her permission. They did this
Speaker 3: with her approval, but it is certainly her younger voice
Speaker 3: singing in Spanish.
Speaker 2: To UMG, what's the difference between Heart on My Sleeve
Speaker 2: and AI generated AI assisted songs that they put out
Speaker 2: this year? What's the key distinction there in their mind?
Speaker 3: UMG says they did not provide the permissions to release
Speaker 3: that song to train on Drake's voice or the Weekend's voice,
Speaker 3: that this had to have been trained on their copyrighted material,
Speaker 3: so therefore they do not approve.
Speaker 2: But for some artists and companies, the fears around AI
Speaker 2: go beyond copyright concerns and their fears that pre date
Speaker 2: AI too.
Speaker 3: There's kind of these bigger issues around how do you
Speaker 3: make money as a musician, as an artist, as a producer,
Speaker 3: how do I break through as an artist, how do
Speaker 3: I actually make money from streaming? How do I affordably tour?
Speaker 2: AI makes some of those questions more pressing. If streaming
Speaker 2: platforms are flooded with AI generated tracks, for example, it
Speaker 2: could get harder for artists to break through the noise
Speaker 2: and get paid.
Speaker 3: There's tons of tracks being uploaded a day. I think
Speaker 3: it's over one hundred thousand at this point now a day.
Speaker 3: The way streaming is paid out is out of a
Speaker 3: pie basically, So if Taylor Swift accounts for fifty percent
Speaker 3: of listening on Spotify, she gets fifty percent of the royalties.
Speaker 3: So it's taking away that market share and that money
Speaker 3: from legitimate arts.
Speaker 2: Michael Nash from UMG says he doesn't believe a machine
Speaker 2: will ever be able to mimic the artistry or the
Speaker 2: emotion that goes into making a truly great song.
Speaker 4: What fans really care about is the expression of human
Speaker 4: artists telling their stories about you know, their lived experiences,
Speaker 4: about people falling in love, about people having great friends,
Speaker 4: about people having a wonderful time on a Saturday night.
Speaker 4: That's what fans are really interested in. They're not interested
Speaker 4: in knockoff derivative soundlike content.
Speaker 2: Whether or not listeners actually connect with music that's been
Speaker 2: touched by AI or even no AI was involved. The
Speaker 2: genie is now out of the bottle, and even Timbaland
Speaker 2: acknowledged that comes with trade offs. How might this have
Speaker 2: changed your process working on some of your earlier songs,
Speaker 2: Like would the way I are have sounded different if
Speaker 2: I had.
Speaker 1: Existed, You know that's funny. I think I think it
Speaker 1: would have the same. It would just be the same
Speaker 1: way I'm using it now. It would just be more
Speaker 1: helpful and we would have put out way more music.
Speaker 1: The process has been way more faster. The reason why
Speaker 1: I'm glad that it wasn't back in because it wouldn't
Speaker 1: allow me to collaborate with people. If it was available
Speaker 1: backed in, it would have been like me in the machine.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was edited
Speaker 2: by Aaron Edwards, Felix Gillette, and Dana Walman. It was
Speaker 2: mixed and sound designed by Alex Uguerira. It was fact
Speaker 2: checked by Audreyanna Tapia. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven.
Speaker 2: Our senior editor as Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is
Speaker 2: Nicole Beamsterboord Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. If
Speaker 2: you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and review
Speaker 2: The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps
Speaker 2: people find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back
Speaker 2: on Thursday.
Speaker 4: Hmm.