How Frank Sinatra and Yo Gotti Are Influencing the Future of Music on YouTube
Universal Music artists, songwriters to explore royalties and content-creation tools in age of generative AI
YouTube has recruited Frank Sinatra’s estate and other Universal Music Group UMG 0.09%increase; green up pointing triangle acts to influence how artists are paid when their work is used by artificial-intelligence tools.
Universal artists including country singer Rosanne Cash, composer Max Richter and rapper Yo Gotti will work with Google’s YouTube on an effort to explore the future of music royalties and creative expression as generative AI tools make it easier than ever for internet users to manipulate art.
The partnership is an attempt by Universal to ensure its artists are compensated appropriately as the technology develops, after the music industry found itself at a disadvantage during the rise of streaming and other new services.
Creative professionals in fields ranging from film and music to book publishing have begun advocating for compensation from AI-generated content providers such as Alphabet’s GOOG 0.59%increase; green up pointing triangle Google, setting up often-tense discussions between their representatives and tech companies.
Universal and YouTube plan to collaborate on product development, principles guiding the use of music in AI programs and new ways to pay artists whose work is used in AI-generated content. Artists in the YouTube program will get early access to AI products under development and provide feedback to the video service.
“This is about having the option to design how their music is actually used,” said Universal CEO Lucian Grainge. “Artists have never had that before, to this extent, leaning into a new technology.”
The Financial Times reported earlier that Universal and YouTube were discussing ways to collaborate on generative AI products.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot became wildly popular when it was made available to the public last year, giving consumers access to systems that can produce passages of text in response to human prompting. Companies such as Google and Facebook owner Meta Platforms have developed other generative AI tools that help users create sounds and images from brief written descriptions.
In February, the day YouTube promoted Neal Mohan to CEO, Grainge called him, asking to talk about his approach to generative AI. They spent the following months developing guidelines for how the video service would work with artists on content and products using generative AI.
As part of principles released Monday, YouTube said it would embrace AI responsibly together with music partners, include appropriate protections when designing products, and invest in systems to fight misuse of the technology.
Any agreement between Universal and YouTube, the largest online video-hosting provider, has the potential to create standards for the rest of the music industry and other creative fields dealing with the spread of generative AI products.
YouTube has a mixed history working with music labels, which for years accused the video service of unfairly profiting from artists when their music was included in user-generated content. The Google unit said last year it paid the industry more than $6 billion from advertising and subscription fees during a recent 12-month period.
Universal in April lodged a copyright-infringement complaint with YouTube and other streaming platforms for hosting a song that replicated Drake and The Weeknd’s vocals.
The incident highlighted how AI-powered tools have made it easier for consumers to create credible songs and videos drawn from artists’ work. A YouTube spokesman said the company removed the video in question after receiving a valid takedown notice.
Universal said the training of generative AI using its artists’ music on streaming platforms was a breach of its agreements with the services and a violation of copyright law. Tech companies have a “legal and ethical responsibility to prevent the use of their services in ways that harm artists,” it said at the time.