The track, heart on my sleeve, credited to the ‘artist’ ghostwriter, has racked up more than 230,000 plays on YouTube, and more than 625,000 plays on Spotify.
In addition to AI-replicated vocals of Drake, the track – a seemingly original composition – also features AI-replicated vocals of The Weeknd’s voice.
Both Drake and The Weeknd release their (real life) records via UMG and its Republic Records.
Said UMG in a statement to MBW in the wake of today’s news: “UMG’s success has been, in part, due to embracing new technology and putting it to work for our artists–as we have been doing with our own innovation around AI for some time already.
“With that said, however, the training of generative AI using our artists’ music (which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law) as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on DSPs, begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.
Tag: Tim Ingham
@ebakerwhite: TikTok Parent ByteDance Planned To Use TikTok To Monitor The Physical Location Of Specific American Citizens
[Well, here it is. Two years ago we warned everyone who would listen that TikTok were apparatchiks for the Chinese Communist Party–by law in China because of the CCP’s civil-military fusion–“If Google is the Joe Camel of data, then TikTok is the Joe Camel of intelligence.” We did panels warning about TikTok including the CEO’s struggle session and the CCP constitution–facts, you know. Tim Ingham warned that on top of everything else, the deals suck. And then there’s Twinkletoes, who is in our view a walking, talking Foreign Agent Registration Act violation.
[According to Emily Baker White writing in Forbes:]
China-based team at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, planned to use the TikTok app to monitor the personal location of some specific American citizens, according to materials reviewed by Forbes.
The team behind the monitoring project — ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control department — is led by Beijing-based executive Song Ye, who reports to ByteDance cofounder and CEO Rubo Liang.
The team primarily conducts investigations into potential misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees. But in at least two cases, the Internal Audit team also planned to collect TikTok data about the location of a U.S. citizen who had never had an employment relationship with the company, the materials show. It is unclear from the materials whether data about these Americans was actually collected; however, the plan was for a Beijing-based ByteDance team to obtain location data from U.S. users’ devices.
@musicbizworld: BMG RESPONDS TO ARTIST STREAMING REVOLT IN GERMANY: ‘IT IS TIME FOR RECORD COMPANIES TO CHANGE.’
[Editor Charlie sez: Rather than rearranging the deck chairs, we think there are two separate issues with streaming rates. First and most important services need to exercise pricing power to increase the revenue pie or stop asking artists and songwriters to fund and invest in their growth strategy without getting stock or upside. Second, the method of allocating streaming royalties could change so that you don’t hear fans saying “Sick of my money funding crap.” Chris Castle’s “Ethical Pool” approach in the influential post “Arithmetic on the Internet” is an interesting interim step that allows both artists and fans to opt in to an allocation based on usage not market share. If that’s not fixed, it’s just rearranging the deck chairs and artist need to be careful they’re not being used by services.]
As MBW reported Friday (January 24), a group of managers and lawyers representing some of Germany’s biggest artists have written a joint letter to the leaders of the four largest music rights companies in the market – Universal, Sony, Warner and BMG.
The agenda of the letter, undersigned by representatives of 14 artists, “becomes clear very quickly”, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper (F.A.Z), which published a more detailed story on the matter today (January 26) on the front page of its business section. Translated, F.A.Z says that the artist reps are demanding “more money from the booming business [created by] music streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music”.
What’s also clear from the letter, according to F.A.Z: unlike prior artist protests against streaming, the letter does not direct its ire towards digital platforms, but instead “attacks record companies” and is “of the opinion that [the majors] are taking too much of the streaming millions”.
Artist Rights Watch--News for the Artist Rights Advocacy Community 