Universal Music and Warner near AI licensing deals with both tech giants and startups

Universal Music and Warner Music, two of the world’s largest record labels, are nearing landmark AI licensing deals with multiple companies, including start-ups like ElevenLabs, Stability AI, Suno, and Udio, as well as tech giants Google and Spotify, according to a Financial Times report. These agreements could be finalized within weeks and represent a significant shift toward formal partnerships between major record labels and AI companies amid ongoing copyright disputes in the creative industry.

Why this matters: The music industry has been embroiled in legal battles over AI companies using copyrighted material without permission to train their models, making these potential licensing deals a crucial step toward establishing legitimate frameworks for AI-generated music.

Key details: The negotiations focus on two primary areas of AI music licensing.

• Record labels are seeking to license their songs for creating AI-generated tracks and for training large language models used in music creation.
• The companies are pursuing a payment structure similar to music streaming services, where each AI-generated song would trigger a micropayment to rights holders.

Who’s involved: The talks include a mix of AI start-ups and established technology companies.

• Start-ups in discussions include ElevenLabs (an AI voice platform), Stability AI (creator of image generation tools), Suno, Udio, and Klay Vision.
• Major tech companies Alphabet’s Google and Spotify, the music streaming giant, are also participating in the licensing negotiations.

The bigger picture: These licensing deals could establish a precedent for how the creative industries handle AI-generated content while ensuring artists and rights holders receive compensation for their work used in AI training and generation processes.