Feature

      he Warner Music Group and Suno AI have made a deal, and it’s going to be a problem.

 

If you don’t know, Suno is a controversial generative AI that produces music by stealing songs produced by humans. (Remember, the term ‘artificial intelligence’ is a misnomer; none of the programs we have currently are capable of thinking for themselves or creating anything independently, it’s all just other people’s stuff being rehashed, usually without the original artist being properly compensated). 

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If you ALSO don’t know what WMG is, it’s one of three massive record labels that own pretty much all the mainstream music you listen to. They’re also unsurprisingly famous for being the absolute fucking worst.

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So these two made a deal. We don’t know everything about it because not all of it is public knowledge, but essentially, Suno was stealing music that WMG owned to train its AI, and the label wanted to stop that. SO now the situation is that Suno and WMG have partnered up, and Suno is allowed to use the music that WMG owns (but didn’t fucking create). (keeping in mind Suno already used/stole WMG’s music because at the time AI was basically completely unregulated due to the old fucks who make laws don’t understand how FUCKING important this is) 

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But okay, so Suno is now allowed to use WMG-owned music. But there’s a catch there. SUPPOSEDLY according to the deal that’s been put in place and no actual evidence because nothing has really happened yet, artists whose music is owned (but wasn’t created) by WMG will be able to opt in or out to allow Suno to use their music which once again they already did and no one was ever held accountable for that but whatever, let’s just move the fuck along. 

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So, supposedly, artists will be able to say yes or no to this now, which seems like something that should have been a no-brainer from day one, but here we are. That is actually a good thing, potentially a very good thing, because it means that if no artists give the OK, then the service is suddenly useless. That’s not going to happen, though. Why? Because obviously this deal wouldn’t have happened if WMG wasn’t already 100% sure that at least a hefty chunk of the massively popular artists whose work they own (but didn’t create) were going to give them the go-ahead to use them to train their AI. 

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But why would these artists agree to that? Money, and probably a cubic fuck ton, especially for the big ones. A whole new revenue stream that they have never had access to before.

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So a bunch of rich people are going to get even richer, and in exchange, AI is going to keep doing exactly what it was already doing. What’s the problem?

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First, this is the start of credibility being handed to AI in music. This is a major record label recognizing and helping AI to create more music based on stuff it already owns, which it can then make more money off.That’s not good. Next up, we have concerns about artists. Not the big ones, Dua Lipa and Ed Sheeran are grown-ups, they can look after themselves. We’re worried about new musicians, the up-and-comers who might have to work with these assholes. The smaller artists who are FAMOUSLY exploited by record labels at every turn. Those folks are now going to have one more thing that the Record labels want from them and I wouldn’t be surprised if there's a lot of pressure placed on new artists being signed by WMG going forward to opt into allowing their work to be used by AI services even though I HIGHLY DOUBT that they would see a reasonable compensation for that and remember, once you opt in, it’s done, your voice, style, and identity are out there forever to be copied and pasted by a machine.

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Finally, and somewhat less importantly, there is the future of Suno. If it’s not already clear, I’m not a fan of AI, and frankly, I think it would be for the best if this whole company was hurled into the sea, but there is a reality here which isthat Suno has a role in the music world now. It is, at its core, a tool, something artists can experiment with to help them hear different styles and concepts without putting hundreds of hours into it first. It might not be ideal, and it IS stealing people’s work, but it does have its applications, especially for smaller artists who don’t have massive amounts of time and resources at their disposal to help them experiment. Going forward, Suno is going to become a paid subscription service, which is predictable, but considering they’ve been stealing other people’s work for years, it does seem a bit rich. 

 

More importantly, though, there’s the fact that the application is now (supposedly) only going to use WMG-owned music that the artists have agreed to allow them to use. And THAT means that the only things Suno will be able to generate will sound like your standard mainstream music. Users of Suno will happily tell you that part of the reason they like the service is that it can be so experimental. They stole everyone’s music, and that’s unbelievably shitty of them, BUT it did mean that the music it could generate was, if nothing else, unusual. It had the option to pull from indie records, metal bands, imperfect studio tracks, and most of that is now gone. SO, essentially, in addition to now being a paid service, it’s also now going to be a worse service. AWESOME.