🎶 AI-Generated Music: Revenue Streams, Building an Audience, Tokenization

In this Trends.vc Report, we talk about how to make music with any artist’s voice, building a personal brand and an audience with AI music, avoiding copyright claims and more.

💎 Why It Matters

AI unlocks creativity enhancing it by offering lower-cost music-making.

🔍 Problem

Making music has many steps which makes it expensive and time-consuming.

💡 Solution

AI can produce endless music faster and at a lower cost.

🏁 Players

AI Music Tools

• Soundful • Make and monetize music.
• MusicLM • Make music from text.
• Soundraw • Make royalty-free music.
• Infinite Album • Make AI music for gamers.
• Boomy • Make songs in seconds.
• Ecrett Music • AI-powered music library.

AI-Generated Songs

• Yona - Oblivious • Written and performed by Yona, an AI.
• Taryn Southern - Break Free • Made for the first AI album.
• Daddy's Car • Made by Sony’s AI, Flow Machines.
• Drake - Heart on my sleeve • AI song featuring Drake and The Weeknd.

Musicians using AI

• Arca • Released an album of 100 tracks made by AI.
• Holly Herndon • Made a song using Spawn, an AI made by her.
• Actress • Made a six-track album with an AI.

🔮 Predictions

• Musicians and companies will “tokenize” AI music. AI opens new revenue streams for artists and creators of AI-generated music.

• Holly+ lets people submit AI music using Holly Herndon's voice.
• Itoka is “tokenizing” AI music giving creators a chance to get paid.
• Creators of works chosen to become NFTs earn 50% of auction proceeds.

• AI-generated music will lead to copyright claims. Training AI with songs makes it complicated to decide who owns the AI music.

• Universal Music Group accused a TikTok creator of piracy after he made an AI song of Drake.
• RIAA flagged Songmastr as a copyright threat as it promises to “master” songs in the style of any artist.

• Artists will make new albums with AI. Artists will use AI to write songs and make new tracks.

• Taryn Southern released an album made by AI.
• Holly Herndon released Proto, featuring an AI version of herself.
• Francois Pachet released the first pop album made with AI called Hello, World.

☁️ Opportunities

• Make AI music. Gain popularity by making new music that features well-known artists.

• The Best of AI Music has ~3000 fans listening to AI songs by Freddie Mercury.
• Lifeples (AI Music) has over 5,000 fans and over 20 AI-generated songs.
• Hot AI Music has over 4,000 fans. They add "AI" to the name of the artist to attempt to avoid takedown.

• Build AI-powered music tutoring apps. Offer a teaching experience that adapts to the learning patterns of each student.

• Greg Burlet built AI Music Lessons with AI guitar lessons.
• Florian Plenge built Skoove offering interactive AI piano lessons.
• Yair Lavi Evgeni built Tonara which makes music education accessible worldwide.

• Make content on AI music. Build an audience by teaching how to work with AI music tools, models and apps.

• Kream Hook is teaching people how to make AI music.
• Paul G. Oliver wrote about Stefanie Sun and her AI clones.
• Zain Qureshi wrote a guide on how to make AI-generated music.
• Puja Patel shared her insights about AI-generated music in the podcast Have a Nice Future.

🏔️ Risk

• Copyright Risk • AI is trained on copyrighted music. Which can lead to legal disputes.
• Lost Jobs • AI can lead to job loss for mastering engineers and other professionals in the field.

🔑 Key Lessons

• AI can make endless content fast. AI-assisted music production lets artists boost their output.
• AI-generated music is great for personal branding. Tweaking the styles, instruments and voices helps to align AI music with your brand.

🔥 Hot Takes

• AI-generated music will flood streaming platforms. The trend of AI music is growing fast with people sharing their AI songs.
• Artists will split-test AI-generated songs. Streaming apps can give artists a degree of targeting and measurement that radio lacks.
• Music education will teach AI music composition. As AI becomes a standard tool in music creation, music education will adapt to include it.

😠 Haters

“AI-generated music is just mimicry."
Mimicry is not AI-specific, humans mimic too. AI learns from existing music, but it can mix and match what it learns in so many different ways. Apps such as Soundful can make new music. When musicians use ideas from an AI, they make something new.

"AI makes master engineers and songwriters' jobs less relevant."
AI can replace some technical roles in music creation. The music industry is learning how to use AI to enhance human creativity. AI makes it easier for anyone to make music, including people without musical skills or instruments.

🔗 Links

1. How Do You Feel About AI-Generated Music? • The tweet behind this report.
2. Making AI Music Videos • Uncover the secrets of AI music videos.
3. How To Make an AI Cover Song With Any Artist’s Voice • Find out how to make a cover song with any artist’s voice.

📁 Related Reports

• Voice Cloning • Voice replication sparks debate on copyright.
• The Creator Economy • More artists are choosing autonomy.
• AI Image Generators • Learn how to express your visual ideas with AI.
• Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses • AI-made content leads to task division.
• Personal Brands • Your vocal identity shapes your brand.

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