The music industry is faced with a dilemma: how to monetize (and legalize) music composed with AI?
With a new contract, Spotify and Universal Music Group have found their first solution: «Launch a tool that allows fans to create covers and remixes of their favorite songs by the group's artists and songwriters present on the platform».
As he explains Rolling Stonethis new Spotify feature will be “paid for those who already have the Premium version” and the revenue obtained will be divided between artists and authors according to these three pillars: “Consent, credit, compensation”. Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal, spoke of a first initiative “focused on artists and founded on responsible AI”. It is not yet clear how, and in what terms and possibilities, this Spotify add-on will work, but the idea seems to be that of being able to work with the individual tracks that make up the songs (the so-called stems) as you wish. However, a release date has not yet been shared.
Michael Nash, head of digital at Universal, had declared in 2025 at Rolling Stone that the company's objectives regarding artificial intelligence were to «put artists at the center of the debate, defend their rights and interests and, starting from this basis, develop creative and commercial opportunities». He cited research that found a large percentage of music uploaded to social media was “speeded up, slowed down, mixed, remixed” as evidence of demand for the services the company is developing.
Artists who sign up to these plans “will have the opportunity to connect with fans on a platform where they will have enormous control over the parameters of that interaction, and therefore will have significant economic participation,” he said, “as opposed to the current world where there is no control and economic participation is very limited.”
The reference is to the various AI present online that allow you to create or remix songs. In this regard, Universal and Warner Music recently reached an agreement with one of these apps, Udio, while the copyright infringement lawsuits filed by Universal and Sony Music against the most popular AI music service, Suno, are still ongoing. Warner Bros. instead reached an agreement with Suno in November.
