And so it begins. The first AI-made song to go viral survived only a matter of days before being taken down from YouTube and Spotify.
Apple Music, Deezer and Tidal were among the platforms that took down the song yesterday, April 17, and YouTube and Spotify have now followed suit.
Drake
The track, ‘Heart On My Sleeve’, was released by an anonymous person known as ‘ghostwriter’. Across all platforms, the song has garnered over 20 million views.
Universal Music Group (UMG) have stepped in now, however, with both the real Drake and the real The Weeknd releasing their music via the UMG-owned Republic Records.
In a statement to Music Business Weekly, UMG said: “UMG’s success has been, in part, due to embracing new technology and putting it to work for our artists–as we have been doing with our own innovation around AI for some time already.
The Weeknd
“With that said, however, the training of generative AI using our artists’ music (which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law) as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on DSPs, begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.
“These instances demonstrate why platforms have a fundamental legal and ethical responsibility to prevent the use of their services in ways that harm artists.
“We’re encouraged by the engagement of our platform partners on these issues–as they recognize they need to be part of the solution.”
‘Heart On My Sleeve’ is the biggest AI-track to make waves recently, but a number of other songs have been released in recent days and weeks. These include a Kanye West and Playboi Carty ‘cover’ of ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’.
