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YouTube is seeking licensing deals with major record labels to legally train AI music tools that can clone music from popular artists, The Financial Times reports.
The Google-owned site needs the content for new music-generation tools it plans to launch later this year. It's proposed paying a one-time licensing fee to major labels—including Sony, Warner, and Universal—instead of paying royalty fees on a per-use basis like music-streaming services. They would, however, apply to select artists versus a label's entire catalog, the FT says.
Last year, YouTube started testing Dream Track, which was released to a limited number of creators who could provide text prompts or hum a tune to generate 30-second audio clips mimicking the style of musical artists like Charli XCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, and others.
YouTube tells the FT, "We’re not looking to expand Dream Track but are in conversations with labels about other experiments."
As the FT notes, "it would be up to the labels to encourage their artists to participate in the new projects," which may be a huge ask. In January, over 200 artists wrote an open letter calling out irresponsible AI music practices as an “assault on human creativity” that “must be stopped.”
Earlier this week, the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents Sony, Warner, and Universal, sued two AI music generation companies, Suno and Udio, for “copyright infringement involving unlicensed copying of sound recordings on a massive scale.” RIAA is seeking $150,000 per infringing song. It's a scenario YouTube is likely looking to avoid.