Say No to SUNO | Matt Connarton Unleashed

I do want to We've got a little bit of music news. This particularly caught my eye, so we have we do have a few minutes before we uh before we hit the top of the hour, So I wanted to talk about this because this well, in a sense it reflects or effects. I should say something that I've used.

This is from Music Businessworldwide dot com artist representatives launch say No to Suno campaign Now Suno if you're not familiar, it's an app. It's that uses AI. You can actually create songs using AI. You just put in some simple prompts, tell it what you want, and it will create a song for you. Jenny and I it was over a year ago now, maybe a year and a half ago, the first time we ever used Suno. We did an experiment with it, kind of live on the air, just to see what would happen. It's very easy to use, and it creates some very convincing you know, like you wouldn't know just from listening to what it creates that it's AI generated necessarily.

I've used it quite a bit. We've done some really fun things with it. But of course we talk about AI a lot on the show, and it's an effect on the music industry and how artists feel about it, And so now there is this say No to Suno campaign. Now, I have no intentions of involving myself in any way in the campaign because I actually like Suno and it would be hypocritical of me to do so, even though my position ultimately is and I think everyone knows this because of what I do, what I'm involved in, the people I know, et cetera, and the various you know, in terms of careers, the various things I've done, I will always at the end of the day, I will always always advocate on behalf of artists.

That's what I care about the most. But that doesn't mean I won't use an AI app like Suno to create a fun, silly song, because I do use it for that quite a bit. So. Artists representatives, though, have launched the say No to Suno campaign, saying AI slop dilutes the royalty pools of legitimate artists from whose music this slop is derived. So let's take a look at this because again, and who knows, who knows? Maybe looking at this article, maybe there's information in here that will change my mind and make me decide to join the say No to Suno campaign.

I doubt it, but let's see so it says here again. This is from Music Businessworldwide dot com. A coalition of artist representatives has published an open letter calling on the music community to reject AI music generator Suno. In an open letter titled say No to Suno, the artist reps described the company as a brazen smash and grab platform, accusing it of using unauthorized AI platform machinery trained on human artists. Work published Monday, the twenty third, So this just happened this past week on the Music Technology Policy Blog.

The letter was signed by figures including Ray Gubitz, executive director of the Music Artists Coalition, Helene Lindvall, songwriter and president of the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance, and Chris Castle of the Artist Rights Institute. Other signatories included artist David C. Lowry, artist and Artist Rights Alliance board member Tift Merritt, Blake Morgan, artist producer and president of VCR Music Group, and Abbey North, president of North Music Group. The letter arrives as Suno continues to face copyright infringement lawsuits from major music companies and rights organizations and by the way.

By the way I tell everybody, I say, if you're enjoying these apps like Suno or Udio is another one, a very popular AI music generator. If you enjoy these apps and use these apps, enjoy them while we have them. Because the sharks are circling. Okay, there's all kinds of litigation and all kinds of stuff happening to try to get rid of these apps permanently or well, probably no getting rid of anything permanently, and there's probably no getting rid of these apps period. But I'm just saying, don't be shocked if one day, all of a sudden, you can't use these anymore because they've been shut down.

Okay, they've been bankrupted by lawsuits, whatever whatever may happen. But right now, this is what's going on. Okay, so so uh. The RIAA filed suit against both Suno and rival Udo in mid twenty twenty four, acting on behalf of all three majors, alleging mass infringement of copyright. Udio has since reached settlements with both Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, signing licensing agreements with each for a new AI music platform expected to launch this year. Interesting WMG Music Group also settled separately with Suno in November, but the AI company remains locked in legal battles with UMG and Sony Music Entertainment, as well as European music rights holders, including Denmark's CODA and Germany's Gema Gema.

I've not used either of those. In fact, I've never used Udio either. The only one I've used as Souno Okay, it says here. The open letter took aim at the broader concept of AI in the music business, arguing that unauthorized generative AI platforms are fundamentally different from previous technological disruptions in the music industry. And by the way, as we've discussed many times on the show, Jenny and I've talked about this, the music industry has had many technological disruptions over the years, you know, transitioning from vinyl and cassettes to CDs, napster.

You know, when Napster first came in and file sharing became a thing, and all of a sudden, music was free. I was working for trans World Entertainment at the time, which owned Fye, Which and Strawberries and everything. When I was working for them as a store manager in a music store, and you know, we saw firsthand what was happening. All of a sudden, people aren't buying CDs because they're getting the music for free. And then there was all these debates about while is file sharing stealing or are you just taking advantage of what's available and so forth.

We won't get into all of that, but anyway, there's been many That's probably the single biggest technological disruption that's happened in the music industry is the Internet and the ability to access music easily and without paying for it. That's probably the biggest one, at least leading up to the advent of AI. Well, not the advent of it, because AI has been with us for a long time, but now with these apps, the advent of these apps like Pseudo and Udio. Okay, so it says here again, this is from Music Business Worldwide dot com.

The open letter took aim Actually, well, I read this already, but this paragraph is worth reading again. The open letter took aim at the broader concept of AI and the music business, arguing that unauthorized generative AI platforms are fundamentally different from previous technological disruptions in the industry. The letter argued that the quote hijacking of the world's entire treasure trove of music, floods platforms with AI slop, and dilutes the royalty pools of legitimate artists from whose music the slop is derived unquote.

Right, because when you create something using these apps, you're creating something that derives its content from all all the content that it has learned. You know, we call them large learning models. You know, it's taking that from from everything else that's available that it's learned, that it's taken in. Now, when we talk about whether or not that's okay, my argument has always been if I am arguing on the side of not having a problem with any of this, which I really don't, because you can't hold back technology.

It never works out. You have to adapt. You can't, but you can't stop it. So you have to adapt. When I let's say I write a song, and I've written songs, I'm a musician. If I write a song, anything that I write is somehow informed and influenced and therefore is a product of all the music that I've ever heard over the course of my life. Right, anything that I create is somehow derived from everything that I've heard. So how is that different from when a large learning model learns music and then creates something from that.

Now it is different in fundamental ways. But I'm just offering as a counter argument to you know, everyone who says, oh AI it's got to be stopped, we can't have AI generated music and so forth. Well, is it really different from when a human creates music? Now it is different. Again, I'm just playing Devil's advocate here, but that would be my counter argument to that. Well, if I write a song as a human being, my song that doesn't come out of thin air. My song is based on knowledge and information and experience and all of it from my own life and all the music that I've ever consumed over the course of my life.

That's all I'm saying. Okay, getting back to the article, The letter arrives amid a growing volume of AI generated music hitting streaming platforms. Now, this is a problem that we've talked about on the show before too. Is all this AI generated music that ends up on Spotify, for example, Well Spotify already, I mean, I don't remember the numbers. We've talked about it before on the show. The amount of music that is up that is uploaded to Spotify globally on a daily basis is staggering. So then Spotify has to figure out, well what to get rid of because now that you factor in the ease with which you can create music using an app and then just upload it.

Now it's it's that problem of you know, you only have so much storage and you have to keep creating more storage. And you know now that because people tend to think of it as well, it's just data. It doesn't take up any space physically, it's just data. But that's not true. Think about your own computer, your own devices, right, you only have so much memory. You know, I only have so much memory on my cell phone. Now I keep my cell phone very clean because I don't want to getting clogged up with stuff I don't need.

But I only have so much memory on it. So it's not like it's no different for Spotify, for example, they only have so much memory. Now they can create more, but there is an expense to and also the larger the catalog of music that is available on the platform, doesn't it kind of dilute everything that's already there. So this is a problem for Spotify. Not that I have any great sympathy for Spotify because they don't pay very much, but you know, in terms of royalties and so forth. But you know, but now they've got a whole new problem.

This is why a few years ago, before before these apps came out, even a few years ago, Spotify was struggling with this. They were having to start to go through I mean, obviously they have bots that do it, but having to go through and delete low quality demo recordings that people were just uploading to Spotify, thus diluting what's on the platform. People uploading things that probably shouldn't have been on there to begin with, because they weren't of high enough quality to even be on the platform to begin with.

So now they've got a whole new problem. Let's see. According to getting back to the article, according to recent data from Deezer, proximately sixty thousand AI generated tracks are being uploaded to the Paris headquartered streaming service every day, with synthetic content now accounting for roughly thirty nine percent of all music delivered to the platform daily.

Let's look at that again these numbers. According to recent data from Deezer, approximately sixty thousand, sixty thousand AI generated tracks every day are being uploaded. These are also revealed that up to eighty five percent of all streams on AI generated music on its platform were fraudulent in twenty twenty five, up from the seventy percent figure it reported in the prior year. Those streams are demonetized and removed from the royalty pool. By comparison, in streaming fraud across Caesers entire catalog accounted for eight percent of all streams in twenty twenty five.

By the way, I'm not sure. I don't know what they mean by fraudulent. That is not clear to me. What do they mean by fraudulent? I'm not sure. Do they just mean anything that's created with an app or what do they mean? While AI generated music currently makes up only a small share of total streams on Deezer up to three percent, the platform maintains that generating fake streams remains the primary purpose for uploading such content. The letter also weighted into the ongoing industry debate over so called wald gardens in AI music, criticizing a recent LinkedIn post by Paul Sinclairs, who Knows chief music officer and EXWMG executive, who argued that closed AI systems limit how people engage with music Sinclair penned a lengthy post Grammy Week LinkedIn memo entitled open Studios, not wald Gardens, which took direct aim at the approach champion by universals A group in its recent AI licensing agreements.

UMG was the first major to settle its litigation with Suno rival Udio in October twenty twenty five, alongside a licensing deal for a new AI platform set to launch this year. The concept of a walled garden was introduced within that announcement, a model where AI generated music cannot be downloaded or distributed outside the platform. Udio disabled downloads, with users given a forty eight hour grace period to retrieve previously created tracks before the walls went up. By the way, this is the first time hearing about this the walled garden concept.

Around two months after that deal was announced, in his annual memo to staff, UMG chairman and CEO, Sir Lucian Grange appeared to warn against firms quote validating business models that failed to respect artists work and creativity and promote the exponential growth of AI slop on streaming platforms. So, in other words, he's saying, don't do this, don't make deals with AI, you're making a deal with the devil. Effectively, you're getting in bed with something you don't want. You don't want to encourage this.

If you start making deals with AI, you're going to encourage this. I guess a quick counter argument might be, well, if you look back to the previous seismic disruption in the music industry, if you go back to Napster, what was happening. Well, you know, the industry finally had to start making some deals and some compromises and working some stuff out. But what he's saying is, don't do that, Do not encourage it. Michael Nash, executive vice president and chief Digital Officer at UMG, explained the company's position in further detail during an appearance on Billboards on the Record podcast last month and outline the waldgarden concept in stark terms.

He said this quote, The concept of a wald garden is to set up, through AI, a component of the service for deep interaction with the artists and the content, but not to create derivatives that you then take off of the platform and post all over your socials and post on Spotify and Amazon Music and Apple unquote. He argued that by doing so you quote effectively use artists content and their brand to create derivative derivatives where you're going to compete with the artists on other platforms unquote.

Beyond Sinclair, who joined Suno in twenty twenty five July twenty twenty five, the company has made other high profile hires from the music industry to support its efforts to build relationships with the sector, including former Merlin CEO Jimmy Sorry Jeremy Sirata as chief commercial Officer and former Spotify executive Sam Berger as Senior Director of Artist Partnerships. In November, Suno closed a two hundred and fifty million dollars Series C funding round. I don't want to get in all that. Okay, never mind, don't care about that part.

But that's the end of the article anyway. But there you go. So again, I will not be joining any such campaign. It would be a critical of me to do so. But this is all about the say No to Suno campaign.

Say No to SUNO | Matt Connarton Unleashed

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