Udio has selected content-security firm BuyDRM to protect the streaming of its AI-generated music. The Austin-based company will provide multi-DRM support across Google Widevine, Apple FairPlay, and Microsoft PlayReady through its KeyOS MultiKey Service. The deal, announced on July 14, forms part of the technical infrastructure behind Udio‘s move from copyright defendant to licensed music platform.
Source: Udio taps content-security BuyDRM to secure its AI music ‘walled garden’
Streaming’s real innovation wasn’t just access, it was the playlist as the primary unit of consumption, which has a cost in context collapse. A song’s meaning shrinks to whatever sits before and after it in an algorithmically assembled sequence. Compare that to the relationship between an artist and a radio programmer. Getting a song onto a show implied editorial investment.
Source: Why dedicated fans are trading infinite choice for trusted curation
Nolan’s brand power and commercial track record got Comcast’s Universal Pictures to say yes to a roughly $250 million, R-rated adaptation of an ancient Greek poem shot across Europe with largely practical visual effects, including a 35-foot tall Trojan Horse. According to data from Rentrak provided by Universal, 53% of “The Odyssey” attendees said the director was their No. 1 reason for attending.
Source: Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Proves Hollywood’s Top Directors Are Franchises Now
The AI music generation tool Suno scraped millions of songs and lyrics from YouTube Music, Deezer, and Genius, as well as from the stock music libraries Pond5, Jamendo, Freesound, the International Music Score Library Project, and podcasts via RSS feeds, according to a hacker who breached the company and shared data about Suno’s training libraries with 404 Media. The hacker was also able to access user information for hundreds of thousands of Suno’s customers.
Source: Hack Reveals Suno AI Music Generator Scraped YouTube, Deezer, and Genius
When recording technology emerged in the late 19th century, it transformed how people experienced music. Before Thomas Edison’s phonograph appeared in 1877, music was largely encountered through live performance or written notation. Recordings changed that. Performances could be captured, copied and distributed by machines. Today, recordings feel like an obvious form of creative property. But that was not how they were initially viewed.
Source: Who owns an AI generated song? What we can learn from the phonograph
ABBA member and CISAC president Björn Ulvaeus took the stage at the United Nations’ AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva on Monday (July 13) to ask a simple question: “Good for whom?” “Tracing the output was always the wrong question,” he said. “The right question is much simpler. It is about the training. Our works went in. We should be paid for what went in, not for every output that comes out the other end, but for the raw material that made the machine what it is.”
Source: ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus Talks AI Training at UNSummit: Artists ‘Deserve a Place at the Table’
Media research expert Nic Newman has warned the ability of AI models to provide “liquid content” in different formats is a “really serious challenge” to news media. He gave the example of asking Claude questions relating to the UK heatwaves, including where the UK stands in terms of air conditioning compared to other countries and previous temperature records. Claude was able to produce information in a Q&A format, generate graphs which were filterable by different parts of the world, and show Met Office warnings.
Source: Claude’s ability to remix ‘liquid content’ is ‘serious challenge for news media’
A new Edison Research at SSRS study commissioned by Spoken, an AI audiobook company, revealed that the company’s multi-voice productions achieved a higher favorability rating than human-narrated productions. “There’s opinions good and bad for AI among the American consumer, right, so we wanted to just purely get the reaction,” Edison Research vice president Megan Lazovick said. “That was what was really fascinating, was the response that people were open to AI and thought it enhanced their experience.”
Source: Surprise: Many People Prefer AI Audiobooks, New Study Finds
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has promised “the strongest possible protection” for Australian creatives against misuse of their work by artificial intelligence models, warning it would be “theft” if writers, artists and musicians didn’t have control of their work or receive payment for its use. “Let me make this crystal clear: not everything produced in Australia is up for grabs,” Albanese said on Wednesday. “Australian writers, musicians, artists and journalists must retain ownership and control of their work. Our laws will spell that out, plain as day.”
Source: Australia establishes AI office and vows to protect creatives from copyright ‘theft’
Musician Owen Lyman-Schmidt found out that his work had been stolen when a longtime fan of his band, Makeshift Hammer, messaged him to let him know an album on Spotify sounded as if someone had taken his music and “distorted it a bit.” They sent a link to an album called Blue Road by an artist named Carey Dupont. “I had never heard of Carey Dupont,” Lyman-Schmidt wrote. “Dupont had no other releases that I could find and was seemingly otherwise unknown to the internet.”
Source: Band Wakes Up to Find AI Has Stolen 94% of Their Spotify Royalties