Major label Universal to make AI-music service with Udio; How did Billie Eilish annoy Billionaires?; Spotify under fire over controversial ICE ads; Why are there no rap tracks in the US Top 40?

0:03Steve:Hello and welcome to The Price of Music brought to you by Music Ally, the show that enjoys nothing more than pondering the finances and politics of the music industry while we're trying to make sense of this weird music landscape we live in. I'm Steve Lemaque, he's Stuart Dredge. If you want an easy guide to what's going on in the music biz and how it all works and how the figures stack up, then here we are. This week there are no rap records in the American Top 40 for the first time in 35 years. Also, why the massive success of the computer game Battlefield 6 is good news for the music industry.

0:37Steve:Spotify put their prices up. Who's the highest paid dead celebrity of the past year? And top of the pile, Universal Records have done a deal with an AI company that until last week, they were taking to court. And that's much more interesting than it possibly sounds with various possible repercussions. But to start, as always, Stuart has his big stat of the week which this week is

1:03Stu:This week it is 11.5 million dollars which is not my fee for doing this podcast sadly This is how much money Billie Eilish is donating to climate and food equity charities from her latest world tour So she's been on this tour Hit Me Hard and Soft I think it's going to do about 100 and something concerts around the world, it's a massive, massive tour And I think so far it's grossed around 82.3 million dollars according to pollster a live industry so a bit a decent chunk of that about an eighth is going to go to climate charities which is like something she's been keen on for a long time um but the best thing about this story is it was announced at this kind of wall street journal conference in new york where she was getting an award um so she's in this room and it's a kind of wall street journal audience it's full of like business moguls and there were several billionaires there like mark zuckerberg was there from meta um george lucas the film director who's a billionaire was there and she got on stage to get this award and she addressed him directly and was like actually got something else to say i'd say if you have money it'd be great to use it for good things and maybe give it to some people who need it love you all there's a few people in here have a lot more money than me if you're a billionaire why are you a billionaire no hate but yeah give your money away um which i think like they people think like if you got put face to face with billionaires you might tell them do something good with your money and she got the chance she did it yeah i mean it seems like it's becoming more common do you think

2:26Steve:for artists to donate money from their live touring profits i mean coldplay obviously uh another prime example because they've all always given a percentage of their tour profits to a selection of different causes i mean and also i mean no one's saying this isn't a laudable thing to do but as an aside here's the other thing what this is doing is it's throwing a lot of light on how much money some of these big tours of the past few years have made because i can remember a time when you know you get the occasional headline about what a rolling stones or u2 tour might have made but this this also i think it's showing how now live music at stadium level it's never been more popular or profitable really so that's what's giving the you know giving the artist the opportunity to donate to the causes of their choice but uh yeah that's a massive figure billy eilish uh right our top three stories this week selected from the headlines across the music world i thought it was a relatively quiet week to start but actually it turns out there's quite a lot quite a lot of uh news stories for us to talk with talk you through but here's here's our favorite three uh starting with this can you talk us through this stewart and then we can examine and what it might mean for us as music fans, but also musicians in the rest of the music industry.

3:42Steve:But one of the first big lawsuits against an AI music company has been settled. And out of this, though, interestingly, has also come plans for a new streaming service with AI creation at its heart. This is universal music settling with the AI company Udio.

4:03Stu:It is. So this is one of, like you say, that there are two of the most prominent AI music companies are Udio and Suna. We've talked about them both, haven't we, quite regularly. And they were both being sued by all three major labels. But then last week, Universal Music said, yep, we've done a deal. We settled our lawsuit against Udio and we're working together. And yeah, they're going to launch. And you tell it, the quote is, a music creation, consumption and streaming service next year. It's going to be trained only on properly licensed music. and labels and artists will be paid not only for the rights to train on their music, but they'll also get paid for the AI tracks that are created using their work.

4:42Stu:So in theory, every song created in this new service will generate royalties for the music that was used to train it. And yeah, it was interesting. I mean, so Universal announced this and said, we've settled, it's great, we're all partners now, lovely people, great bunch of lads, to paraphrase. Udo did a blog post saying what they're working on a bit. so they sort of said you're going to make songs in the style of certain artists you could make a song in the style of Kendrick Lamar or Blur whoever you're going to reimagine songs in new genres and mash up different songs and artists but crucially only if they're part of this if they've agreed to have the music be allowed to use in this.

5:20Steve:I mean it's going to be a mess of nightmare though isn't it we've talked about this before but how are you going to keep track of if you're paying out on music which has been trained on um uh which is you know the the ai has been trained on a particular artist and then that influence has then been used in another track alongside the influence of another artist how are you going to pay how are you going to find ways of paying paying artists and keeping track of all the different bits of ai that's been used well

5:56Stu:that's it and i think so this has been historically in argument where music industry said yes we want to be paid for the stuff that's being created based on our work and ai companies have sometimes said well that's not possible it's really hard and difficult and when i've talked to some ai experts who are not on either side what they say is actually you could do it you have to just build that in from the beginning so when you build your ai music service you have to build that in and say we want to it's called attribution is the word it's used about it right so if you so this is what I think they're building a brand new service and it seems like that will be part of this and they seem to think it's possible but there's so many questions around this like so what we don't know awkwardly given that we're interested in money we don't know how much Udio paid UMG to settle this lawsuit if it paid any money up front and we don't know how that money may be shared with musicians if there has been a payment um we don't know how the royalties will work for this new service it's come they wouldn't have been calculated and we don't know whether Udio is in talks with other labels to kind of then be part of it too i don't think it would be a universal music only thing i would assume they want to do deals with other labels and this this this kind of this announcement does kind of pave the way for whether video could settle with universal presumably it would like to settle with warden music group sony music group and then also kind of bring independence in yeah um and the other thing i saw and there was a wall street journal report on this where they talked to them and that said that it was a little sentence like like artists who opt in to be part of this.

7:22Stu:And my ears pricked up at that because that suggests that artists will be able to say, no, I don't want to be part of this if they don't want to. And that's quite a big point, I think, that if you're assigned to Universal Music, even though they've signed a deal, even though they're not being sued anymore, I still don't want to be involved. It suggests that they will have the option to do that.

7:39Steve:And what do current UDO users think of this deal, the fact that Universal are now involved and obviously the goalposts will move at this point.

7:53Stu:Yeah, well, this is the other story, part of this, which we've been following this week. So when Udio made this announcement, it said, oh, we're also making some changes while in the meantime, in the transition period before we launch this new thing next year, we're making some changes. And one change was if you're using Udio to make tracks, you couldn't download them. Immediately, you could not download them anymore. All you could do is create things and have them within Udio and this and there, but you couldn't download them, for example, to upload them to a streaming service or to work on them.

8:22Stu:And this has caused a huge protest for users. And some of those users are musicians who say, look, I was creating stuff on Udio to then download and use myself and do more with. Other people just seem quite entitled. So you can sort of see this protest because if you go to Udio now, it's Udio.com, and their homepage, it looks quite a lot like Spotify in that you can go and create tracks, but it also shows you what's trending, what are the top tracks other people have created and are being listened to. And right now, I'd say about 60 or 70 % of the stuff on the homepage that is the most popular are protests with names like Fuck Udio and cancelling my account.

9:01Stu:One's called Udio, exclamation mark, UMG, exclamation mark, traitors. And I mean, the other thing there was, was there's this thread on the Reddit website. So what happened was Udio then quickly did a U-turn and said, okay, we're going to let you have two days to download all your stuff you've made. And they announced this on Reddit website. And there's a thread of people still complaining and being cross. And there was one comment that said, this is someone who's made tracks on Udio is now cross about them not being, you robbed me. I don't break into your home, rob you, and then ask you to feel sorry for me.

9:35Stu:And I did think that is someone who's not been following this whole debate about musicians saying, you've been training on our music without permission. You didn't ask us. And so there's a little bit, like I do get that some people who use Udio are musicians and are just using it to create bits, using their work. And they're now like, if I can't download it, it's all this work is gone. And I get that. But there are quite a few entitled people saying, whoa, this is horrible crap. I hate UMG. I hate Udio. And I think they're going to get a little sympathy from the music industry. And I suspect that Udio is aware that it may lose those people, but it's bet is next year it could do something bigger.

10:09Steve:I mean, talking, you mentioned traitors. What I found quite interesting is, you know, up until a couple of weeks ago, you had both Udio and Suno both in legal disputes with the music industry, with the major labels. And, you know, basically side by side using the same arguments, you know, sticking together. And then Udio simply just swapped sides. It's like watching celebrity traitors. this yeah we're we're right with you all the way suno oh by the way no we're not um but what happens what what's going to happen next then uh with i mean with i mean obviously suno are still being sued so um will this does this does this i don't know does this pave the way for more deals do you

10:57Stu:think imminently i think so and i think this is the first of of several we're going to see um so So I think Universal was probably quite keen to go first and set the standard and say, we're doing this. So yeah, I would expect UDO to be wanting similar deals. And Suno, I mean, Suno has always been, the executives there have always been the more, I guess, the more aggressive in public. They've hit back against the label's arguments more aggressively. But my assumption would be for someone like a Suno that's raising a lot of money at the moment, there's a report we see it's trying to raise hundreds of millions of dollars.

11:33Stu:it probably does need to have deals and it needs to settle with lawsuits um so yeah i would i would suspect that in the coming weeks and months we're going to see a series of deals for these companies but also for other ones that haven't been sued so i think we're going to see because that's the other thing if you're an ai music company that's been doing things by the book you haven't been using music without permission you might be sitting there now going hang on a minute have

11:54Steve:you just given the bad guys a head start on us can we have that kind of deal so i think i think you will start to see more of these and i think when i see musicians talking about this they're

12:04Stu:in all kinds of two minds about this like some are saying it's good that we're doing deals and this is all going to be legit now and others are saying we're still not sure this is a good idea this could all end badly so there is a lot of i'd say not unrest as such but i think musicians are really a little bit jittery about what this might mean and whether it's going to be under the

12:24Steve:control of the music industry uh story two this week well this is two stories in one really because while we were bringing you our listeners questions episode last week among the stories we didn't cover uh was the spotify uk price rise notice they waited until we were looking the other way to do that um and since then there's been a new boycott of spotify as well so uh these two stories well let's start with the price hike um you don't get you don't get a price rise for years and now it seems that Spotify are more confident in their ability to raise the price.

13:01Stu:Yeah, it's like buses, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, in the UK, the price is going up by a quid. So it was$11.99 a month. Now it's$12.99. And if you're on a family plan, it's gone up from$19.99 to$21.99. And I think it's happening in Switzerland as well. And there's been reports that the US may get similar rises early next year. And yeah, this is kind of what the music industry has been calling for. um like you say like it went a long time when stream music was 9.99 a month and never rose and labels will cross at that and i think what the music industry has been calling for is like actually raise the price quite regularly do what netflix does and put the price up every year um and so far whenever spotify and its rivals have put prices up there hasn't been this huge drain of people cancelling their accounts people have seemed to be swallowing it i mean we are in like a cost of living moment still um so i think they won't take this lightly there'll be watching very carefully to see if this is the quid that you know pushes people over the edge but i mean as a family not not as a as an industry person as a fan 12.99 a month for the entire history

14:02Steve:music is still a pretty good deal i think um and and uh that's that's the good i guess the good news for spotify um there's lots of other spotify related stories around this week uh being sued by people who say they're making money out of fraud. But what about this one? Tell us about Spotify and ICE.

14:27Stu:Yeah, this has been bubbling for a while. So this is all about recruitment ads running on Spotify from ICE, which is the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, I think. So this is the people who've been detaining and deporting people in immigration raids. And this has become a real focus of protests this year, hasn't it, against Donald Trump in the U.S. and these raids. and so now ice is running this recruitment that's basically saying join us you know we need to recruit you all um some of these ads are targeting former policemen saying you don't you don't get to kind of you think you know we're not doing enough to get rid of immigrants come and join us and kick them out like it's it's quite um it's the rhetoric isn't nice in these ads and they've been running on spotify but also in other places so running on youtube and across like facebook and linkedin and who so it's not just a spotify thing but spotify seems to be the one that's getting it in the neck um so this this movement called indivisible and it's one of the people who were involved in these recent no kings protests and if you saw that on the news um so it was a protest in the u.s across like a bunch of cities and people came out i think seven million people on the streets basically saying no kings which is essentially saying we don't want a dictator in the u.s we don't want a monarch so it was an anti-trump protest a very big one and this campaign is called don't stream fascism cancel spotify so it's quite on the nose and they're demanding that spotify stop running these ads and calling on people to cancel their subscriptions if it doesn't um and this this movement indivisible they have a million members so it's quite a big thing and it's asking those members not just to cancel spotify but also to tag in artists and labels on social media and try and kind of raise awareness of this so it's a weird moment for Spotify because it's not the only place these ads are running and it's a government advertising campaign you know most countries when the government runs public information campaigns you know everyone runs them because it's not controversial and it gave a statement a few weeks ago when this started to bubble saying basically this is a government campaign it doesn't break our rules doesn't break any rules of our platform for advertising which is correct but that doesn't seem to be getting it off the hook and it's kind of caught in this hard place now where there are protests about having these ads but if it pulls them given the way donald trump is it could have a vengeful president you know on its back so the company's having to figure out what if it has to do anything or my suspicion is this ad campaign will come to a natural end and that will save it the problem of having to decide whether to pull them or not but yeah it's coming so soon after all the talk about arms dealing and the arms investments of spotify ceo it's really facing this challenge now of people saying you are the bad guys first it was arms investments now it's running ads for the immigration agency so yeah it's a real um it's a public relations moment of a challenge for spotify uh story three how long is it since

17:18Steve:we've done a tech startup story must be weeks now uh but a new tech startup in the uk wants to help musicians poison their own recordings uh not in that it's not in the way you might be thinking uh how does how does this work what is what is this about it's uh because it was complicated

17:38Stu:when i read it yeah so this is like we did a thing recently we're running a contest at musical at the moment we're sort of um picking new startups this is a brand new one in the uk and yet poison pill basically it's about musicians who are like we don't want to have our music used to train ais without permission and so i mean i don't know how much i had to learn this term this this poison pill term in the financial world is when i come someone who's trying to buy a company you don't want to be bought you kind of you do a poison pill clause which basically means if they buy you it's going to be really harmful for them it costs them much money so it's kind of a thing of like i've got a thing i don't want to be bought or in this case used to train so i'm going to poison it so i had to look into this this starter is basically going to um insert this technology called adversarial noise algorithms which basically is a sort of a silent thing you insert into the music that basically balks any ai trying to train on it um yeah so it's kind of it doesn't you couldn't tell it you if you're listening to it you don't hear anything different but if you're an ai scraping it it's kind of trying to confuse you trying to make you you know not so it's it's it's a really it's a clever sounding thing i mean i don't i don't have the technology to know if it works but it was fascinating to me that that's an idea okay right we can't we maybe can't stop ai companies getting our music if they want to but they can get they can download it illegally off there but we can insert this stuff into it that makes it

19:02Steve:just kind of confusing yeah yeah um any other business this week uh there's quite a there's quite a lot of any other business i think you you wanted to mention you wanted to mention uh aussie fire al go uh mate uh back to australia uh where i mean this is i mean follows on from a story we did the other week really it's trying to this is another way or another campaign to try and protect australian musicians and boost their local music economy that's it so they've been

19:37Stu:worrying in australia about how local artists have been getting a lower share of streams there's been this talk about well should the government step in and make streaming services playlist them more and make streams recommend them more but this is another another solution to the problem. I really like it. So it's, yeah, audify your algo. It's telling music fans, look, if you go and search for Australian artists on your streaming service, and if you play them and save them and follow them, you'll be giving their algorithms a strong message of like, find me more like this. I want to hear Australian music.

20:06Stu:And that is how this works. Like if you do search for anything, like if you search for a certain genre, it will say, oh, I see you like that. I'll recommend you more of that. And so it's kind of a positive, constructive way of tackling this problem of lower streaming share for Australian artists. And they've got a bunch of independent artists who are backing this as well. And yeah, it's just, I don't know, I think it's a really clever idea. And I think it's something around the world people could do, where people are worried about, well, local artists here aren't getting as much priority as they should be.

20:38Stu:You can say the government should step in, and that becomes a big argument. But actually, you can get artists to go and explain it to fans and say, look, if you search and say this, you'll hear more and you'll discover more great bands. So, yeah, it's a good idea.

20:51Steve:Here's something which I noticed on, I think Stereo Gun were one of the people to pick up on this. There's no rap records in the American Top 40 this week. And I don't think there were last week either. So no rap songs in the Billboard Top 40. I mean, there's 12 Taylor Swift songs, I noticed, in the US Top 40. but it's yeah I mean it's a really long time since you know Billboard had zero rap songs it's 35 years the date I can tell you the last time there were no hip-hop songs in the Billboard top 40 was February the 2nd 1990 and I mean part of this according to commentators is down to a recent Billboard chart rule change which revolves around moving singles from being current to being recurrence which as i understand it is well when that happens songs are essentially barred from the top 100 and it's quite a complicated sliding scale but for instance if your song is below number 25 in the chart uh and it's been around for more than 26 weeks then that's it it's it's cheery it used to be 52 weeks so a song is current for 52 weeks which means that a lot of hip-hop songs were just hanging the bigger anthems are hanging around all year but now if you're below number 25 in the charts after 26 weeks that's it off your pop um so that's wiped out a host of rap songs but it also i mean it also begs the question aside from drake and kendrick lamar um journalists in the states critics are saying well where are the rap superstars and you know because one of the reasons we mentioned this is in terms of dollar, hip hop has been such a powerful force for three decades, but currently it's got nothing to stand up to Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter or even K-pop Demon Hunters.

22:50Steve:So is this a change? Sorry, is this, I guess, is this a sea change? You know, just as rock music kind of fell out of favour in the American mainstream, is it happening to hip hop now? Or is it just a blip?

23:07Stu:Well, all of the above. I mean, you put your finger on it with K-pop, so Taylor Swift's got 12 songs. K-pop Demon Hunter's got seven songs in top 40. So that is 19 of the top 40 gone to those two things. So it's a moment. If Drake pops out an album tomorrow, he'd probably have 12 songs in the top 40 next week, and we wouldn't be talking about this so much. So to some extent, it is the big tempo releases. I think there was, I think Cardi B had an album recently, and that's not in the top 40 at the moment. But I mean, so yeah, there is a moment, this is a blip at the moment. Pop is having a huge moment.

23:41Stu:I actually looked at Spotify's global chart and Pop is having a huge moment.

23:44Steve:Like you say, it's Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter,

23:46Stu:K-pop Demon Hunters, Olivia Dean. This is what's happening in this month. But I think it was Billboard had some stats. So I think in 2020 was the peak of hip hop in terms of its share of overall listening. And it was nearly 30 % in the US then. And now it's 24%. But it's still nearly a quarter. So it's still a lot of listening. It's just that it's spread out and it's below the top 40 at the moment.

24:15Steve:Yeah, I think that's part of the point, isn't it? Yeah.

24:21Steve:Without the big names, the next wave of artists, if no one is going from being quite big to massive, then you've got lots of quite big artists, but none of those are making it into the top 40. Do you see what I mean? And they're the trailblazers. And this obviously is sort of what happened with rock music to a certain extent as well.

24:42Stu:Yeah. And it's sick, isn't it, I think? Like something has predominance for a while and everyone goes, oh my God, no one likes guitars anymore. And then it eventually comes back. And I think that's what's happening. I think the other thing is that in the pop world, people have learned from what made hip-hop artists so popular in 2020. I think some of the strategies and the approaches to streaming have spread out. So I think, again, it's the case of everyone is learning to do streaming like hip-hop stars did. And so you have a writer there. I mean, the other thing is just weird stuff. I mean, I was looking at this Spotify chart, and it's all Taylor Swift, Kimball, New Orleans, pop, hip-hop are very low.

25:20Stu:And then Radiohead's Creep is the 28th biggest song in the world on Spotify right now. And I was like, why is that? to your point about rock music seeming out of fashion suddenly creep is back in the top 30 so um yeah but i think i think it's uh like you said i think there's a lot of and i was i was i was watching some people talk about this i think there's a lot of really interesting great stuff being done in hip-hop men which isn't at the superstar level in a way i think we're in a moment of some really interesting stuff coming in from the margins of the niche, the kind of edgy stuff. And Drake is not releasing his new album yet.