The Happy Mondays want to sell you a giant pill; World Cup songs: reviewed; Lionel Richie's phrases trademarked; YouTube's AI clause; Tupac is back (again); plus much more...

0:03Hello there, welcome to The Price of Music brought to you by Music Ally. If you want a guide to what's going on in the music industry and how it all works, then here we are. We'll be looking at the finances of the music industry whilst also bringing you some of the most eye-catching stories and comments from the pop biz in the past week. He's Stuart Dredge. I'm Joe Sparrow. Stu, let's start with a big fact.

0:24Stu:Okay, I got a small number today compared to the ones. 270. 70. No. Go on. That is a small number. It is. So that is how many unofficial anthems called World Cup 2026 have been uploaded to Deezer, which is not that interesting. But the fact that 70 % of them are AI slop is the interesting thing. Right. So now, the World Cup has started. We are all football crazy, of course, right now. And I'm sure... Cape Verde fans right now. A huge Cape Verde fan. Big shout to all the Cape Verdeans who are listening to the podcast. or I know there's a pool of about 500 ,000 of you or 350 ,000 of you to choose from.

1:03But I'm sure, Stu, like me, you stayed up last night to watch Iran-New Zealand, which was actually a great game. So we have got football fever here, folks. But of course, one of the big things about football is that there are people like releasing country-specific songs and now that's easier than ever. Are these AI-generated ones any good? Well, that's the thing.

1:23Stu:Because in the old days, what would happen was the squad would be filled up with booze, herded into a studio to shout, and then go on top of the pops to sway out of time with each other. Yes. But nowadays, yeah, this idea of unofficial work, and obviously the thing about these AI services is anyone can go on there, put their own lyrics in, or get the AI to do it for them, and release their own official song. And most of them aren't very good. And Deezer were just released. I think Deezer's basically looking for some headlines here, you know, full credit to their PR department for knowing what a good topic is.

1:52Stu:Because there's the World Cup, There's also FIFA World Cup 2026 songs, more than 150 of those, which I think is quite funny. If you're making an unofficial rip-off World Cup song, still make sure you get the branding in there. So I was about to say, of course, famously this year, and we'll talk about this perhaps in the lock-in later for those of you who are Patreon super fans, but there is a full FIFA official album that is out for the world as well, isn't there? Of songs featuring... I've just got the notes here. So Rolling Stones, Shangi, Major Lazer, Lisa, Anita, David Guetta. It's really a who's who of big name global stars, right?

2:33Stu:But what you want is some person sitting in their bedroom saying to Suno, write me a football song. Yeah. And then probably Deezer. But the thing, so Deezer's point of an answer was saying, but we're not recommending these to anyone and we're not putting them in playlists. They're just there. But this is the new, it's like the World Cup of AI slot. music. In a sense. And then people are going, yeah, I know. And it's happening apparently in Brazil, in France, all these different versions of, like I think in France it was Coupe de Monde. That's the title. So everyone is not only pumping out AI Slop songs, they're giving them all the same titles.

3:07Stu:They're not even giving it an interesting title. Talking about AI for the 10 billionth time, it sort of feels exhausting. But at the same time, this is actually a really interesting situation, isn't it? Because people kind of like football-related songs at this time of year. You know, I've been listening to World Emotion by New Order for the last month, hyping myself up. But this also sort of points to one of the use cases of AI music, which is sort of localization. I'm not saying this is good or a good example of it, but there can now be hundreds of different songs about football for every single team in the world.

3:45Not that anyone wants that, but that's kind of the premise of AI music, isn't it?

3:50Stu:But also, you could do, for example, if you were Cape Verdean, you could do an AI song about last night's match. Right. You know, you could issue your review of the match as a song. So this whole rapid response is quite interesting. So if something interesting happens in the World Cup, say, I'm trying to get past, like, do you remember that year when Zin Zin Zin headbutted the guy and got sent off? Yes. Like, there could be 60 AI songs about that online within the next hour after it happens this year. So that might be quite interesting, that idea of that kind of stuff. That is a unique use case, isn't it, for AI?

4:27In that you can create songs. We would talk about this a lot, the pace of being able to create stuff so quickly. But doing things in response to things, that's something that human beings would struggle to do. It would be a struggle for the Cape Verdean artists to create, record, and distribute a song within hours of the event happening. And yet, again, I'm not saying this is a good thing, but as we think to the future about how music is consumed and what music is, you know, it's expanding beyond this thing of pop music, of artists recording songs and us enjoying those songs because they're good songs.

5:06It's now music as a sort of, like, a unit of something to consume to hold your attention for a little bit because it's related to something that's just happened. It's a different nugget of, it pains me to say this, but of media to communicate something, isn't it? Well, it's all just dogging everything up.

5:29Stu:The other good football star I've got this morning, Ronaldinho, the Brazilian legend, he's got his own label now, Portimausica. It released two albums before the World Cup, and he was like he's like playing A &R guy okay and do you know how well he's taken to being an A &R guy I'm fast I'm gone yeah go on guess how many of the 59 tracks on these two albums he is also a credited artist on I'm gonna guess 59 absolutely right 59 so he's he's already learned how the music industry works in terms of A &R hats off to Ronaldinho congratulations okay well true football fever here on the podcast today folks if you are a Patreon super fan stay tuned for the lock-in where not only will we be going through some of the best slash most questionable official songs of the year, but Stu has also created his own fantastic football song for us to listen to.

6:25Stu:Yeah, one of the words in that sentence is going to be debated, I think. Okay, let's move on to the next big story. YouTube, talking of AI, reckons that its own terms of service that already exist allow it to use independent musicians uploads to train AI models. One, is that true? Two, how do people feel about that? Yes, well, not good. So this broke last week. It's an ongoing lawsuit against Google that was filed last year from a group of independent musicians. And they basically said it has its Lyria 3 AI music model, which is its big AI model. And they claimed that it had been trained on their songs without permission.

7:05Stu:And so Billboard had this report the other day, and it's a filing from Google. So this is not speculation. This is actually Google's attorneys saying that. And it said, okay, they can't prove that. No one's proven that. That's their first point. But even if they could prove it, which I think is always an interesting legal formulation, it said basically, yeah, YouTube's terms and conditions give it, and I'll quote, a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub-licensable and transferable license to use that content brackets, including to reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works, display and perform it, close brackets, in connection with a service and YouTube's brackets and its assessors and affiliates, business.

7:45Stu:So essentially, if you upload something to YouTube, be that a music video, be it a vlog, whatever, it's determined to say, yes, we can use it for anything we want to in our business, which then the assumption would be perhaps they're also using it to train their own AI music models. This is interesting because there have been a few filings made in this case. And it feels like YouTube, they're revealing a little bit more each time. I think the previous one was them saying, oh, well, I mean, of course, this music is being used on our platform for training. And now they're being a bit more specific.

8:25And it feels like we're getting closer to some point where we're maybe answering the question that a lot of people have had, which is, can you AI platforms just be clear and tell us which songs you have used to train your models, right? And there was a bit of reporting today, you reported on actually just before the podcast recording started. I think the Atlantic, was it, magazine in the US? Has sort of, it's been able to find the list of songs that it's strongly suspected that AI models have been trained on. We don't know for sure what they picked from that list of 12 million songs, but it's probably all of them.

9:05Stu:And I think, so in this case, whenever, so Google has made a few announcements about Lyria 3, which is its version of Suno. And it had this phrase, it said, where it said it only trained it on music. It had the rights to use, quotes, under their terms of service, partner agreements and applicable law. So this new filing sheds, well, under their terms of service, that may mean every track uploaded to YouTube by independent musicians. And that's the key point here. This is about independent musicians doing it themselves. It doesn't mean that all the songs put on there by Universal Music and Sony and Warner and big indie labels.

9:40Stu:This is only about independent music and independent people uploading their stuff. So, yeah. So, I guess there's two questions here. One is, did Google have the rights to do this? It argues that it does. And that's what's being hammered out in this legal case at the moment. But then beyond that, beyond the legal question, there's the kind of the moral optics ethical question, which is that if you want to be seen as a friend to the music industry, is this really how you want to go about things? Is slurping up all independent musicians' work and turning that into AI music the way to go about it?

10:19Stu:And it's interesting because there is a box you can tick in YouTube and uploading stuff, and you can say, you can opt out of having... So there's been a few stories about people, other companies, scraping YouTube to train their AIs. And YouTube now has a box you can tick saying, I don't want that to happen. I don't allow that. You know, you can opt out of having your YouTube videos used to train other companies' AIs, but you can't opt out of YouTube and Google and its family doing that. So there's an interesting thing, though, it's saying, we do believe you have the right to opt out of some AI training, just not ours.

10:51Stu:That's the risk for them, the perception is like, hang on a minute, is it one rule for you and one rule for other companies because I want to opt out of all of it? As ever, I guess, well, we're going to find out what's going to happen with this. But as ever, I guess if you're not paying for something and you're using that service, you and your data are the payment for that service. So if you want to get your music on a platform that is essentially the world's biggest streaming platform and all the benefits that entails, at the moment, the way it stands is, and you're independent, you have to agree to your music being used to train an AI model, which I think a lot of people would feel very conflicted about because on one hand, they want their music to be seen everywhere and heard everywhere, but a lot of them probably don't want that.

11:33Stu:And I think as well, it raises questions. So, I mean, in YouTube's credit, it's been doing stuff with major labels, it's signed deals, it was praised by one of the music groups, Bosphorus, for the way it's approaching. So obviously he used to work at YouTube, so he knows it quite well. So the man that used to work at YouTube is praising YouTube? Well, but now he's on the other side and he wouldn't praise him. but the thing is if you're say your Universal Music Group which has an incubator with YouTube you could say to them hang on a minute is YouTube a good actor even if they're doing it to all the independent musicians who you don't have signed and I think it's a question for those labels about what do you want in a partner don't you want them to also respect the rights of the unsigned musicians alright next story Tupac Shakur has been dead for 30 years or has he, Stu, to be concluded.

12:25But if you think that that will stop him returning to his acting career for a new video game, you'd be completely wrong. What on earth is happening here, Stu?

12:35Stu:You would indeed, yeah. He was a good actor, wasn't he, as well? He was, yeah. Yeah, so this is a game called Stranger in Heaven, which I hadn't heard of before, but it's an action-adventure epic set in Japan coming late to date. But they had this big character reveal this month. because basically the characters in the game are being played by real people, one of whom is Snoop Dogg, obviously, because if there's anything new happening with tech and music, Snoop Dogg is there. Yes. But another is, yeah, Tupac. Tupac is, he's not appearing in this game as himself. He is playing a character in the game.

13:12Stu:And so this trailer for the game has this real, and then right at the end, just out of the shadows, steps Tupac, and it's like a big one. And this is all above board and kosher. So the developer said it's with the permission and the supervision of Tupac's estate. So they're involved. And it said it's treating this integration with the utmost respect for his legacy. And it's not an AI thing. They're using like old footage and photos to kind of create the character. So it's not that they've recreated him using AI. I don't understand that. And he's going to be one of the actors in this game playing a character that's not Tupac.

13:47Stu:We've seen Tupac before. We have. Post-death. We saw him on stage. Was it a Coachella about 12 years ago? It was 10 years ago. Dr. Dre did a headline set and Tupac with a hologram in 2012. 2012. And when we say, by the way, hologram, I don't want to be all pernickety about this, but it was a projection of a 3D model of him onto a piece of very polished glass, wasn't it, on stage? Is that not a hologram? I need to... I picture holograms as being, you know... R2-D2. Having actual 3D volume in space, but made of light or something like that. So I don't want to be too picky. But I mean, okay, so we've seen Tupac a few times since his death.

14:30We've also had more music released by Tupac since his death than when he was alive. Do you think this is how it's going to be now? We've got ABBA performing for years and years in London. we've got you know signs that artists are going to be hanging around forever is this what the future is going to be like?

14:53Stu:I mean maybe I've got a whole bunch of thoughts about this because part of me thinks is this not going to in this game which is set in Japan over the course of 50 years I think is it not going to whoever the character is and what they're doing is it not going to distract you from that by the fact that that's Tupac you know Does that take away your suspension of disbelief in who the actual character he's playing is and what the story is? Because you're so pretty going, hey, is that dead? So that's one thing. Two, obviously there might be some very good actors out there who could have done a job in this game who aren't dead and who are trying to make it a career.

15:31Stu:So there is a sense of like, if you're a young actor nowadays, are you competing against the history of acting and music now? Like you're not just competing against actors of your age, you're competing against the recreation of two practical. But from a music point of view, from a rights point of view, this is why people are talking about likeness rights, for example. As an artist, if you have your likeness rights, as an artist's estate, if you have their rights, there's all this stuff you can do. You can do ABBA style gigs. You can appear in games. You can create stuff for social media promotions.

16:08Stu:So this is a reminder that there's all kinds of stuff that can happen with your likeness as a musician. Even if you're not around anymore, as long as someone is overseeing that for you and someone is managing that for you, there are going to be these opportunities. I mean, I'm sure that this game is going to be very good and his legacy is going to be treated very thoughtfully and it's going to be blah, blah, blah. But this idea, my final thought here, is that this idea of sort of taking artists and extending their careers and their reach in these ways, you know, we've seen this happen already with music in terms of, you know, we can't escape Fleetwood Mac now.

16:50There was a period where you couldn't, you didn't need to listen to Fleetwood Mac because there were new artists filling the Fleetwood Mac space, right? And now Fleetwood Mac are back and it feels like they're back for good and they're going to be just using the infrastructure, if you want to listen to sort of Fleetwood Mac style music, you're going to be fed Fleetwood Mac. And it feels like there's a possibility, again with this thing here you said about, an emerging actor could have filled this role or an emerging hip-hop artist or whatever. And it's sort of edging out new entrants because of recognizable IP.

17:26It feels like it could have a sort of nullifying effect on interesting things happening. We will find out. Talking of interesting things happening, Stu, say you, say me, but just don't say it in my voice without permission. Why has Lionel Richie been filing trademarks for some of his most famous phrases? Because he is a smart man. Yes, apparently smart.

17:51Stu:So yeah, he's filed four trademarks. So it's four trademarks of him saying, hello, is it me you're looking for? You know we're going to get sued for each one of these you read out. Ideally while sculpting someone's face. Yeah. Say you, say me. Yeah. Easy like Sunday morning and all night long. So probably the four, dancing on the ceiling, possibly aside, the four most recognizable lines from Lionel Richie songs, would you say? I think so. As a huge Lionel Richie connoisseur, yes. And so this is basically an attempt to use trademark law to protect his voice. It's something that Taylor Swift did earlier in the year.

18:29Stu:She registered in trademarks, filed trademarks. Actor Matthew McConaughey has done it, and TV host Jimmy Kimmel has done it. They are the four horsemen of the oncoming trademark filings of apocalypse. And what this is about, so copyright protects your songs, your lyrics, and your recordings, but this is an attempt to use trademark law to protect your voice from AI cloning, only if these filings are accepted. What we would think of here is, okay, someone clones the voice of an artist, and then they would take Taylor Swift's cloned voice and then create some lyrics and put it on top of another song.

19:06She doesn't like that. She wants to stop that. That feels understandable. But is what... Am I getting this right saying that they kind of can't protect that, but they can protect the phrasing of their voice?

19:19Stu:Well, this is an attempt to try and find a way to protect your voice. Because you're right, your voice isn't protected by copyright. Taylor Swift singing a certain song is protected by copyright. The lyrics in that song are. But her voice being cloned to say something she didn't write. Her recognizable voice is a bit of a gray area. Because you can talk about likeness rights and image rights, which we think of as visual, but I guess your voice could be a part of that. Yeah, and there are moves in America particularly to bring in legislation to protect voice rights. But in the meantime, this is some artists saying, hang on a minute, well, maybe we can use trademark law, because my voice is my choice.

19:55Stu:Now, the thing here is, I read a legal analysis by Gerben Law, they're called, they understand this. They were saying that you don't just get these filings accepted. You have to prove that what you're filing is a trademark. It's not just lyrics. So you may have to find some way of making these phrases said in your voice a commercial product. Because the whole thing about trademark law is you have to show you're protecting it and you have to show you're using it for something. But it is, I think, So it'd be interesting, if you're Lionel Richie, you may have to find some way of launching a product that involves you saying those words.

20:30Stu:But basically, these phrases, it's not the phrases that are being protected because those are lyrics and you can, that's copyright. This is the voice saying them. And I think it is a growing awareness from musicians about the value of their voices and the risks if they're cloned. I mean, just this morning, we were writing about Boy George. He's releasing a new version of Karma Chameleon and he's worked with an AI company to do some stuff on him he's he's sung a new performance of it and then they're working that into the original song so he has a brand new version of the song using his vocals that he has ownership of rather than the label and is that to sort of i guess as he's aged his voice might sound a bit different now so is it to sort of make his new words sound a bit like the boy george 1983 or so it's kind of kind so so that's an example of positive thing but again it's about boy george saying my voice has value yeah right i want to i want to i want to exploit that value not some random who's cloning it which is actually quite fascinating i was going to say because it's fascinating to think that this that one of the things that we enjoy most about music is is the is the identifiable voice of a singer right that is the thing which we that is one of the big things that takes us back again and again and again but that it turns out isn't actually copyrighted and protected it's everything else around it is.

21:48And now that that can be duplicated beyond that one person, we're sort of in a...

21:52Stu:Yeah, and it's a patchwork of things. So for example, if someone cloned Taylor Swift's voice or Lana Richards' voice and then put out an endorsement of the president or a politician, you know, or a product, then there are ways you can go after that and say, this is misrepresentation. I'm not endorsing this product. So there are some... There's a little patchwork of things you could take action on. But this is just another layer to that of saying, right, I'm good. Yeah. Okay. Any other business then? This is a bit of a feel-good story and something quite exciting, I think. UK indie streaming service, Cantilever, I'm going to be honest, I'm still on the fence about the name of this product, Cantilever has raised a quarter of a million pounds from a group of independent record labels.

22:35And it's a sort of bespoke-ish streaming platform. And it's trying to carve a space out by making itself quite different to stuff like Spotify. Tell us about Cantilever.