Antony Demekhin’s Post

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Founder, Music Entrepreneur

Last week at the Music Business Association's Nashville conference, I talked to industry leaders about AI's potential impact on the music business: TL;DR - the "AI" genie is out of the bottle. Platforms will emerge challenging existing copyright laws, majors will be forced to react. Big tech creating extra pressure on top of a well funded startup ecosystem. Tools are getting more powerful, and regulation needs to catch up. 1. Big tech is offering everyone $$$ for training rights ...But rightsholders worry it might be a one way door. Let someone train on your catalog, and that might be the last paycheck you see as trained models could dilute and devalue catalog revenues. 2. Ethics vs. Profit Music executives are feeling uneasy about the second "digitization" of music (the first being mp3s), using human created works as training material to generate AI-created ones with no artist involvement. But the money is real, and some are afraid of getting left behind. 3. Artist-Friendly Companies Double Down Founder of BandLab Technologies Meng Ru Kuok drew a clear line in the sand that BandLab values artist rights and respects music copyright. BandLab, like Tuney, believes traceability of source material is essential to ethical music AI. It isn't a surprise that companies who already have an engaged user base of musicians are assuring those customers they are in their corner. 4. An Axe Is Being Sharpened (maybe?) The industry is waiting to see if the major music companies and trade organizations will litigate against companies allegedly training on public data they did not acquire or license legally. But some are also aware that if unethical AI platforms get enough user or revenue traction, they could be in a position to fight or settle lawsuits, or even strike agreements with the majors. 5. Copyright Office Guidelines due This Fall You won't see much legal activity from the trade orgs and incumbents until after US Copyright Office issues its guidelines on AI and copyright. If training isn't deemed "fair use" (and I'm sure it won't), you will likely see a string of court cases against models trained on copyright protected music without licenses. 6. Not All Doom and Gloom There's tons of exciting innovation happening around creation, marketing, fraud prevention, music discovery and scalable tech infrastructure for the music business. Companies like SoundCloud Deezer and Tuned Global are using AI and ML in ethical ways to improve the consumer experience for streaming and social media. Also companies like Beatdapp AudioShake Chartmetric innovating in fraud detection, stem separation and analytics. Shout out to all the friends I saw last week, old and new. Paul Sampson Gareth Deakin Jessica Powell Baylor Baugh Victoria Sheckler Jon Bahr Dae Bogan David Tauber Rob Abelow Nicolas Sincaglia Jordan Pettinato Chuka Chase Christopher Nolte Nicholas Salomone Jonathan Parks (ALIBI Music) Richard Slatter Patrick Ross

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Gareth Deakin

Head Honcho @ Sonorous Global Consulting | Music Tech + Strategy

1mo

Great seeing you and getting some time for a good chat - looking forward to the next one

Jesse Josefsson

Owner of Sync My Music, TV/Film Music Producer

1mo

Ever available for interviews Antony? Curious to get some insights from you. I made a little noise about Udio a few weeks back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTiVr986yuk&t=469s&ab_channel=SyncMyMusic

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Christopher Wieduwilt (The AI Musicpreneur)

Helping music creators grow with AI (aimusicpreneur.com)

1mo

Great insights here Antony Demekhin. I like that you ended with a "not all doom and gloom". Hope we can connect at the next one.

Devlin Miles

Composer & Songwriter of Sweet Little Bloodhound, Host of SLB Indie Trailer podcast

1mo

Thank you for the recap Anthony it was very insightful.

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