Universal Music Group and music creation platform Splice have established a partnership to create AI music tools together, the companies announced on Thursday, the latest in a flurry of AI developments to hit the business in the past several months.
The partnership brings together the world’s largest music company and one of the industry’s biggest music software platforms, though UMG and Splice were vague on the sorts of tools they’d actually be creating beyond saying they’d be “advanced commercial AI tools that can deliver high fidelity and precise expression of artistic intent.”
Prior to the UMG partnership, Splice had already been developing generative AI music tools that allow users to transform and create variations of samples and sounds.
“We’re excited to form this alliance with Splice to promote the alignment of innovation and ethicality in addressing the interests of the creative community to leverage cutting-edge AI-enabled tools to further their artistic expression,” UMG EVP and chief digital officer Michael Nash said in a statement. “We look forward to partnering with Kakul Srivastava and her team on this critically important strategic technology front.”
As Srivastava, Splice’s CEO, adds: “We’ve spent time building AI tools designed to fairly compensate creators and keep them in control. “We’re thankful for Universal’s continued support, and excited to work together to put these commercial tools in the hands of artists everywhere, knowing they can trust the end result.”
Whatever UMG and Splice develop, prompt-based music generation features seem unlikely, as Srivastava called those sorts of creations “insulting” in an interview with The Verge back in March.
“It’s insulting, it’s dismissive, it’s reductive,” she said at the time. “And, I think the creative process and creative people deserve better. They deserve better technology that enables them, as opposed to reducing this profound activity to a button.”
The Splice/UMG announcement is just one of many to hit the press this year. UMG announced it settled a lawsuit and established a new partnership with AI music platform Udio back in October, and Warner Music Group inked a similar agreement soon after before announcing a settlement with Suno last month.
In October, all the major music companies announced a partnership with Spotify to help the world’s largest music streaming service develop AI products as well.
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