An A.I.-generated song featuring a “collaboration” between Drake and The Weeknd turned up on streaming services and TikTok last month, quickly racking up millions of listens. In response, Universal Music Group, which represents the musicians, issued an agitated statement, and then, as the song turned up on other platforms, embarked on a legal whack-a-mole campaign in a bid to put the A.I. cat back in a bag.
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All of this came even as the legal status of the song remains unclear. Some music business veterans argue the song was functionally no different than a remix, while others decried it as a dangerous new paradigm. Rarely does a video made by a random handle create such uproar.
Then there's Grimes, who may not be as famous as fellow Canadian Drake, but is a critically acclaimed musician in her own right. Grimes, who is not affiliated with any record label, announced she will use that relative freedom to perform a radical experiment called “Elf.Tech.” Using A.I., Elf.Tech allows users to generate a Grimes-style work with their own inputs. In return, all Grimes asks is for tasteful use of their now-open-source talent and a 50% cut on any master recording royalties.
Because the cost of producing high-quality music has dropped precipitously with advancements in A.I., the race to design a new distribution model is afoot. Currently, platforms must obtain permissions from both publishers and labels to play a song—in most instances, the label owns the sound recording while the publisher controls the underlying music and lyrics. In Grimes’s case, she could be the performer and also own the sound recording.
Tellingly, the first prompt on Elf.Tech asks users to connect to an email account or a cryptocurrency wallet. Presumably, the platform anticipates using blockchain and crypto to help enforce the suggested royalty split.
Unfortunately, as veterans of the NFT space know, while smart contracts have the potential to create a more efficient royalties system, the reality is that the process remains messy since NFT marketplaces circumvent the rules. Nonetheless, many maintain hope a cultural or technical innovation—likely tied to crypto—will emerge to help artists enjoy a fairer compensation system.
Though technology doesn’t exist to enforce it yet, my long-term bet is that Grimes’s approach will prevail over Universal’s. The reason is that the challenges of generative A.I. have striking parallels to those of another disruptive technology: open-source software.