Berlin, Germany (May 23, 2023)—Universal Music Group and Endel, a sound wellness firm, have entered a strategic relationship the place Endel will apply AI to artist-provided stems to “reimagine” them, in accordance with an announcement, and create background audio soundscapes for sleeping, focusing and extra.
Under the settlement, the businesses will use Endel’s proprietary AI know-how to allow UMG artists to create soundscapes meant to reinforce listeners’ wellness. The settlement extends to each new music and new variations of catalog music. In the assertion, it was famous, “The partnership will all the time respect creators’ rights and put artists on the middle of the artistic course of.”
Endel beforehand labored with Republic Records’ artist James Blake, whose ambient “Wind Down” soundscape was launched as an album in May 2022. Past collaborations additionally embody Miguel and Grimes, amongst others. Under the settlement, artists and their groups have the ultimate sign-off on the wellness outcomes they like. The soundscapes are seen as probably offering artists and rights holders new alternatives to generate extra income for his or her catalogs whereas increasing and enhancing their work into new areas.
Along with different forms of audio, practical music represents one of many largest sub-categories of music listening worldwide, with some estimates putting it at 15 billion streams a month throughout all music platforms.
Oleg Stavitsky, Endel’s CEO, famous within the assertion, “It’s extraordinarily thrilling to see UMG embracing artist-driven AI. Endel permits music corporations like UMG to attract on the astounding capabilities of AI and practical music whereas respecting their artists’ rights. In that approach, Endel acts extra as a collaborator than a device, giving artists management and freedom whereas satisfying an actual market want for extra music that may help their wellbeing.”
Last September, I wrote an Open Channel about AI. Is it too quickly to revisit the subject? Well, AI is reshaping the world at an exponential fee. Soon, AI-related articles will must be time-stamped in date:hours:minutes.
When social media was only a glimmer within the Internet’s eye, nobody knew it was going to tear aside the material of society. No one with a cordless cellphone noticed the straight line between that and Kodak going bankrupt. AI is already elevating authorized questions for which nobody has a solution.
Intellectual property disputes over AI-generated content material are heating up. For instance, based on Reuters, Getty Images has initiated authorized proceedings towards Stability AI. Getty alleges the copying of thousands and thousands of its photos. In an announcement, Getty Images stated that “[Stability AI] selected to disregard viable licensing choices and long-standing authorized protections in pursuit of their stand-alone industrial pursuits.” Stability AI fired again that “anybody that believes that this isn’t honest use doesn’t perceive the expertise and misunderstands the legislation.”
Bits and items of present recordings could be recognizable, however content material from engines that analyzed chord progressions and melody strains could be extra more likely to obscure infringement, even when completed consciously.
Suppose Disney begins utilizing AI to generate film soundtracks. Then, suppose that AI generates the title track for a film with a distinguished melody line that’s equivalent to “Yesterday.” Disney might argue that it was unintentional, however there’s the precedent of George Harrison’s infringement case involving “My Sweet Lord.” He was discovered responsible of “unconscious plagiarism.” No intent was implied, but he needed to pay damages.
So, within the fictional Disney case, who will get sued? Probably Disney, for not noticing the melody was equivalent. But might Disney then flip round and sue the corporate that created the AI engine by claiming negligence and a disregard of copyright legislation that put Disney in jeopardy? Or sue the “composer” who entered the search phrases that got here up with the track, then handed it alongside to Disney?
Or suppose an AI engine writes a success track. Who will get the royalties? The track wouldn’t have existed with out the AI engine. But it additionally wouldn’t have existed with out somebody specifying the parameters below which the AI engine created the track. And what concerning the music the AI engine “borrowed” to create the track? Are the unique rights holders owed something?
If the Internet alone didn’t imply the top of copyright as we all know it, “AI + Internet” will create limitless controversies and authorized maneuvering round copyright legislation. Will “honest use” simply throw up its arms and say something that any artist releases right into a digital house is honest sport for anybody to make use of in any method they need? Will any mechanism present monetary compensation to the musicians and artists from whom AI engines draw their materials for industrial functions? I’ve no solutions. Neither does anybody else. Stay tuned.
The world is popping the other way up. Job safety used to imply doing inventive work that would by no means be displaced by automation. Oops. In the long run, possibly job safety and the large bucks shall be in plumbing and street providers, as a result of AI can’t repair a damaged pipe or change a flat at 3 a.m. What’s outdated is new once more, and maybe that pertains to one thing of curiosity to us all—product evaluations and tech articles.
I’m already seeing net content material about music expertise that appears suspiciously like ChatGPT needs to be credited as a co-author. But as everyone knows, AI can provide incorrect solutions, whether or not as textual content or in a picture of a guitarist with eight fingers. What’s worse, incorrect solutions then get folded indiscriminately into an present physique of information and inch nearer to being accepted as right. I do know for certain this can occur—as a result of Nostradamus was my grandfather, and I’m a Nobel Laureate. Welcome to the George Santos-ization of data.
Will this imply that publications with editors and a workers that vets articles will regain their former positions of authority? Maybe shoppers will begin to have a look at any random “content material” on the Web as suspect, and yearn for one thing like—nicely, Mixonline.com—the place they know the fabric was vetted by humanoid bipeds who’ve a monitor file of correct reporting.
I’m severely considering of including the next disclaimer to all my articles: “This article was written, researched and proofed for accuracy by a number of human beings.”
Welcome to 2023. Cue sound impact of genie exiting bottle.
Producer Elliot Mazer in October, 1973. Getty Images
New York, NY (February 10, 2021)—Legendary producer/engineer Elliot Mazer died of a heart attack in his San Francisco home on Sunday, February 7, 2021, after suffering from dementia in recent years, according to Rolling Stone. Mazer was a lifelong audio pro and inventor/entrepreneur whose interests—and their influential results—ranged well beyond the recording studio, though he remained best-known for his career-defining work with Neil Young, The Band and others. He was 79.
A producer/engineer for more than 50 years, Mazer worked with a broad cross-section of artists across a variety of genres, including Linda Ronstadt, Chubby Checker, The Dream Syndicate, Dead Kennedys, William Ackerman, Michael Hedges, Janis Joplin, Gordon Lightfoot, The Byrds, The Tubes, Y&T, David Soul, Bob Dylan, Juice Newton, Rufus Thomas, Maynard Ferguson and many more.
Born in New York City on September 5, 1941, Mazer was raised in nearby Teaneck, NJ, and got his first taste of the music business working in retail for the then-burgeoning Sam Goody record store chain. In 1962, he became acquainted with Bob Weinstock, a customer who also happened to be the founder of Prestige Records, and soon Weinstock offered the 21-year-old Mazer a runner position, tracking tapes and delivering music to radio stations. In the course of his work in Prestige’s tape library, Mazer discovered forgotten, unreleased John Coltrane tracks from a 1958 session at the famed Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack, NJ. In the intervening years, Coltrane had left the Prestige label and gone on to growing acclaim, so Mazer compiled the four tracks, which were released without the artist’s input, as the album Standard Coltrane. Soon after, the first producer credit of Elliot Mazer appeared on Dave Pike’s Bossa Nova Carnival.
Throughout the early Sixties, Mazer worked with a variety of artists at Cameo-Parkway, from co-writing hits for Chubby Checker (“Hooka Tooka”) to recording the likes of Rufus Thomas and Maynard Ferguson, before moving on to work independently later in the decade. During that time, he hit the studio with the likes of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Gordon Lightfoot, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ian & Sylvia and others. His knack for recording live shows emerged during that era as well; throughout his career, Mazer would go on to capture seminal concerts by Bob Dylan, Michael Bloomfield, Lightfoot, Janis Joplin and Big Brother, It’s A Beautiful Day, Leonard Bernstein, Young and most notably, The Band’s iconic The Last Waltz.
Mazer moved to Nashville around the turn of the Seventies, where he quickly made a name for himself applying engineering techniques he had picked up recording different genres in New York City, thus offering something different from the region’s pros who had come up solely through country music. He established Quadrafonic Studios (a joke name, as it didn’t have quad capabilities), which in turn was put on the map when it became the musical birthplace of Neil Young’s landmark Harvest album.
Neil Young’s Harvest, engineered and co-produced by Elliot Mazer.
The two met at a dinner party while Young was in town to appear on The Johnny Cash Show, and by the end of the evening, they’d arranged to track some songs the next day. Mazer called up some top session players—many of whom would go on to play with Young regularly through his career—and they went on to record the majority of the album at Quadrafonic. The resulting record, packed with classic rock radio staples like “Heart of Gold,” “Old Man” and “The Needle and the Damage Done,” became the biggest hit of Young’s career, going quadruple-platinum in the U.S. and becoming the top-selling album of 1972. Mazer and Young would collaborate on 10 more albums over the next 40 years.
Mazer produced and engineered throughout his career, going on to found another recording facility, His Master’s Wheels, in San Francisco, but his audio pursuits took him outside the confines of the studio as well. In the mid-Seventies, he co-developed the D-Zap, a simple device used by live sound pros to detect gear that wasn’t properly grounded, thus preventing artists and crew members from receiving dangerous, potentially fatal electric shocks.
In the late Seventies and early Eighties, Mazer was a consultant to Stanford University’s Computer Center for Research in Music and Acoustics—the team that built the first all-digital recording studio. While there, he also developed an interest in early AI technology, leading to his co-founding Artificial Intelligence Resources Inc. in the late ’80s to create AirCheck, an automated system for tracking songs’ radio airplay. Selling the company to Radio Computing Services in the Nineties, he continued AirCheck’s development through 2005. In 2011, Mazer joined the faculty of Elon University as a Visiting Distinguished Scholar in Music Technology, where he offered a series of master classes to students.
Mazer’s family has requested that all donations in his memory be given to the Recording Academy’s charity, MusiCares.
