How is AI shaping the future of music ownership?
Technology and AI moves fast, which has caused concerns amid many artists. Over the past years there has been an anti-AI mood. However, we are currently experiencing a paradigm shift where not only AI, but also music itself is changing. Instead of being producers, we are becoming directors who are telling the machines what to do and the artists’ initial fear for AI is transforming. Gisle Martens Meyer, a Norwegian artist, demonstrates in this article how AI is being used nowadays to create music, and what the challenges and opportunities that comes with these new technologies are.
AI in music creation
Gisle Martens Meyer is a Norwegian Artist and producer with his own label, Uncanny Planet. When creating his latest concept album, Gisle used a lot of different AI tools as building blocks to generate the assets and the material, which are then refined through traditional tools and music editing software to create a production.
Full production tools such as MusicGen (2022), Suno (2023) and Udio (2024) can generate entire music tracks from prompts in only 5 seconds. These models are improving year by year, both in terms of the arrangement and the production values.
The most interesting AI tool for artists right now is the creative assistance tool that creates building blocks for producers and artists. Generative AI tools like LALAL.AI, which splits tracks into stems for further work, and kits.ai, which can train and generate vocals from existing recordings, allow users to create songs with iconic voices. Nowadays, AI-generated music resembles to human-made music and although this results in fun and creative opportunities, such as Lemmy Kilmister from Motörhead singing Barbie Girl, it also raises a ton of questions about intellectual property rights and ownership with it: who owns the right to what? You can find more about the IP rights and ownership issues in this article about navigating the AI revolution in media while protecting & scaling intellectual property.
What’s next?
Currently, publishing rights organizations have determined that we can use AI as an assistant in our compositions. However, fully AI-generated music cannot yet be monetized. Gisle believes this mood might be shifting. As both the tools and the industry continue to evolve, there is more curiosity, inspiration and exploration for exciting new music forms. While AI opens new possibilities for artists, it also creates concerns about ownership, creativity, and the future of music. Yet, as we navigate these challenges, the potential for artists to collaborate with AI will only grow and redefine creativity in art and music.
Article written by Juliette Spapens with input from Gisle Martens Meyers
