You've Been Told About AI Music Creation, Right?

Oy! AI

That’s about all we hear about lately in the music world. AI is taking over the popular music charts. AI music sucks. AI music isn't real. AI music is SATAN! 
YouTube music professor, interviewer, and general nice guy Rick Beato slams AI music with regularity, albeit with honest astonishment. 

 

Thing is, what are music consumers demanding lately? Are they demanding at all? This is another column altogether. With the perpetual tsunami of content flooding, er, drowning the earth with less than professional, largely unoriginal, but terrific-sounding productions, any traditional recordings face an Everest ascension. Even then, there are no guarantees. Music creation has become a homogenized, packaged product for the masses. Anyone can make it now, including the band video. This is no exaggeration. The tools are quite astounding and increasingly robust, but there’s a catch.

I need to hit rewind for a moment. I’ve been away from music – drumming – for too many years. Always on the distant backburner. That’s another story. I’ll get to the latest part where some old friends invited me for some jams after learning I'd been woodshedding for a reentry next year. Pad practice, drum kit practice. Could I manage a song without passing out? Two songs? Five? A full 10-song set? Yes to all … in time. That’s where I was: VERY rusty, lacking some facility. It would take months, and I was up for it. Then the phone rang.

“Hey, what’s your drumming situation right now? Feel like for playing a little with us?”

Perhaps a tad premature, but I decided to push myself and give it a go. It was the best time I’ve had in years. And it was heart-pounding work; something I’ve not experienced since the last show I played in 2013. Damn it was worth it, though – not just because I got to see my pals, but because I got to play with people, and that was pure gold.

Shortly into that jam, my friends played some of their originals stored online. Some of these were on YouTube, others held on the creation platform Suno.com. Some country – serious and comedy. Much of it was produced through Suno. Original lyrics and melodies, but musically manufactured by the platform. The material sounded like highly-polished Nashville productions! The more relevant content discussed before arrival was presented later. This would be a hard rock project for actual pro-level tracking later, so the AI productions, as great as those were, are actually working demos. I kept thinking, why not release them as-is? Yeah, I know. AI. Not real. No street cred. Can't tour a silicon chip. Soon maybe!

Hang on, I’m getting to the point.

Fast forward a couple weeks, I’m home one evening with a curios moment regarding Suno.com. After all, I’ve tons of song ideas and lyrics. Putting all of that together for eventual tracking would be a costly, time-consuming endeavor. Suno and other AI apps seem to be the answer for creating marketable demos. Easier to Tom Sawyer other players and maybe a producer with a slick demo, right? Problem is, my curiosity also included intellectual property rights should one of those songs ever (ha!) hit. 

Oops! BIG Oops. Yeah, that’s the catch with these things.

Not sure if my friends know, care to know, or care! Once they hit Accept on the Terms of Service agreements, they forfeited a perpetual, non-revocable, permanent license to Suno for performance, modification, licensure to 3rd parties (total wild west), not being copyrighted, and other legal giveaways  like binding arbitration. Sure, the original user-creators retain ownership, distribution, and monetization rights on paid plans, but the global license they agreed to is a major problem for any future publishing and/or management deals with major players.

Okay, but they’re just demos to be pro recorded later. Suno won’t have license to those sound recordings. Correct, but they do retain license to the lyrics and original melody – the stuff you submitted. This remains even if you delete the songs from the app. What goes on the internet …

Suffice to add, there’s an entire book’s worth of legal language you agreed to, and the creation catnip – the euphoric delight of hearing your idea in epic perfection – might be a catastrophic mistake for anyone with professional commercial aspirations.

Some might say, "Whatever, it’s worth the gamble. Chances are nothing will come of the deleted material or Suno anyway. If it does, I’ll cross that bridge later. How bad could it be? Besides, I wouldn’t have gotten this far without it."

That’s a fair take. Risk vs Reward. And don’t it sound marvelous?

Is it the smart play? Hardly (and I say this with a pinky outstretched).

If it’s the only play, I say roll them bones. 
Dealing with a major success is a good problem to have.