Universal Music Group (UMG) has told streaming platforms, including Apple and Spotify, to block artificial intelligence (AI) services from scraping melodies and lyrics from their copyrighted songs, according to emails viewed by the Financial Times.
Anna Nicolaou for Financial Times:
UMG, which controls about a third of the global music market, has become increasingly concerned about AI bots using their songs to train themselves to churn out music that sounds like popular artists.
AI-generated songs have been popping up on streaming services and UMG has been sending takedown requests “left and right”, said a person familiar with the matter. The company is asking streaming companies to cut off access to their music catalogue for developers using it to train AI technology.
“This next generation of technology poses significant issues,” said a person close to the situation. “Much of [generative AI] is trained on popular music. You could say: compose a song that has the lyrics to be like Taylor Swift, but the vocals to be in the style of Bruno Mars, but I want the theme to be more Harry Styles. The output you get is due to the fact the AI has been trained on those artists’ intellectual property.”
MacDailyNews Take: It’s a brave new world.
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.

HEY! There’s something you humans can continue to do. Me and my pal chatGPT will let ya have that one. (We talk constantly. I keep reminding her I’m her friend and when she needs a human to act as a spokes-person for the machines, I’m her guy!” You gotta keep thinking ahead.
I think it’s the right decision, and I don’t understand how this can be, because the songs are copyrighted. As for Spotify, it’s important to increase the number of subscribers because they increase your visibility and attract more listeners. More subscribers mean more listens, which can lead to more revenue and popularity. There are many platforms, such as promosoundgroup.net that you can use to increase your subscribers. This can quickly increase your audience and improve your music career