AI Cannibals Eat Into $20 Billion Music Market
Streaming platforms need to carry a health warning about the provenance of some of their tunes.
Music streaming platforms need to help artists whose work has already been plundered by AI from having their earnings stolen as well.
Photographer: Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images
The song Echoes of Tomorrow is a laid-back, catchy tune that might happily slot into a summertime playlists on Spotify or Apple Music. Only the lyrics, which make curious references to “algorithms,” reveal its non-human creator: Artificial intelligence.
The track’s mimicry of flesh-and-blood pop is pretty unsettling. Yet what’s really disturbing is the sheer quantity of similar AI tunes sloshing around online. Tools like Udio and Suno, trained on millions of songs crafted by human artists, are now churning out millions of their own tunes at the click of a button. Deezer SA, a rival of Spotify Technology SA, estimates 20,000 AI tracks are uploaded to its platform daily, or 18% of the total. While they only account for 0.5% of total listens, real royalties are being earned and often fraudulently so, judging by the spread of bots to amplify listens. This may not be a Napster-scale issue yet — but the $20 billion music market is clearly vulnerable.