On Monday (June 22) a worldwide coalition of artists, songwriters and managers’ groups gathered together to release a letter aimed at record labels and publishers forming AI music licensing deals: “Stop the misuse of [our] rights in AI deals,” a press release announcing the letter said, adding “this is hypocrisy and an injustice which needs to stop now. Labels and publishers rightly argue that AI companies need permission to train on their music catalogue, but will not grant artists and songwriters the same rights.”
Related
The letter follows a number of noteworthy licensing deals inked between publishers, labels and AI music companies — like Suno, Udio, ElevenLabs and others — in the past year. This includes Warner Music Group’s licensing deals with Suno, Klay, Udio and others; Universal Music Group’s deals with Udio, Spotify, Klay and others; Sony Music’s deal with Klay; Merlin and Kobalt’s deals with Udio and ElevenLabs and more.
In April, reporting from Billboard revealed that multiple top talent attorneys have been made aware that labels and publishers could feasibly use common contract language in U.S. record deals, related to blanket licensing and exploitation, to opt in artists’ works to train their AI partners’ models without seeking individual artist approval. “Some of the labels have already taken the position that they technically don’t need special approvals to train,” said Jason Boyarski, founding partner at Boyarski Fritz, at the time.
