Difficult location for musicians: mass instead of class? What AI means for the music industry

Song text, instruments, vocals: music that is completely generated by the computer at the push of a button already make specialized providers possible today. The problem: The works of human artists serve as a template for the AI ​​models – without having ever given their consent.

At the streaming service Deezer, 20,000 fully ki-generated songs a day are already submitted, as the French provider announced in April. In terms of quality, these could not keep up with people, says the German singer Levina of the dpa. According to the German ESC participant in 2007, the problem is the whole mass of music from which you have to stand out on streaming services. “And when so much of it is flooded with AI, it makes it more difficult,” says the musician, who is committed to her rights in her adopted home as chairwoman of a council of musicians.

No payment for AI training – “that’s just not fair”

Few musicians would basically “demonize” the effort, says Christopher Annen from the Musikerverband Pro Music. AI can give creative approaches that can be replied later. However, it is uncomfortable that their songs were “taken by the providers, where a lot of passion was put in, where personal stories have flowed in,” says the AnnenMayKantereit guitarist. “And with that, a company then developed an app with which the millions and billions of sales do – that’s just not justice.”

The fact that the income is unevenly distributed is not a new problem for the musicians. AI is only a “fire accelerator for a long -blazing fire,” says Matthias Hornschuh from the “Initiative Copyright”. The vast majority have long missed the majority on the streaming services dominating today. A study funded by the Federal Government also summarizes this in figures: 75 percent of all sales of streaming services therefore accounted for only 0.1 percent of artists in 2023.

The recycling company GEMA fears that AI could further tighten the problem. According to her own statements, it represents the copyrights of around 95,000 members in the German music industry. According to a study by Gema and her French counterpart Sacem in January 2024, 27 percent of the income of authors will endanger – by 2028 in Germany and France there will be a loss of more than 2.7 billion euros.

Ki plagiates by Helene Fischer and “Mambo No. 5”?

The GEMA now wants to dispute these income in court. The company has been performing against the Chatgpt provider Openaai since last year. In January, she also submitted a lawsuit against the US company Suno, with whose AI program Man had recreated real songs almost faithfully. This was achieved with well -known songs such as “Breathless through the Night” by Helene Fischer or “Mambo No. 5” by Lou Bega – from the company’s point of view, a clear proof that the provider had trained his AI with the songs and thus violated the rights of the author.

Song texts and composers in particular are heavily dependent on the funds that the GEMA will pay them, says Hornschuh. The AI ​​providers would therefore have to comply with their duty and pay for them – which is also in the interest of the companies. After all, these constantly needed new music produced by humans with which they could feed their AI models, “because they have long trained everything that was there”.

AI identification required

The musicians also agree that more transparency is needed. Levina demands that streaming services have to be shown, for example, which music comes from a AI. In general, the artists would need more openness to the payment. “Nobody knows exactly what is happening in the background and how much money goes to whom,” she says. Therefore, it is also important that musicians continue to work for their rights – because if you only lean back, “then the music industry can go further into the basement,” says Levina.

In any case, AI cannot keep up with one thing, Annen finds: feelings. Listening to music can lead, for example, “that I may feel less alone because this emotion has also gone through another person”. A song that comes completely out of the machine cannot arouse these feelings, says Annen. “The AI ​​had no lovesickness.”