Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/21/universal-music-group-partners-with-ai-voice-cloning-company.html
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They’re going to use this to release “new” music from artists who’ve been dead for 30 years, aren’t they?
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You betcha. Not to mention the new advertising jingles they’ll be singing.
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Come on, baby, light my
I’m waiting for AI to start recommending “good” music to me. Actual music that isn’t in the top 40 playlist over the last 20 years. Something, something, capitalism and profit?
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Hey, the artists retain their rights!
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You mean the rights they signed over when they were 19 year olds that were already heavily weighted in favor of the record companies, and offered no time limit or option to renegotiate?
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See, it’s fine!
Just as there’s nothing for us to worry about that Queen sold their catalogue. Its just business.
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Put yourself in Brian Mays’ shoes: your initial record deal wasn’t that good to begin with, so you may as well take a bunch more money right now while enriching a bunch of executives who are already richer than you could possibly imagine.
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“Might as well.”
Sure, if money is all he cares about.
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All the most well-known artists are doin’ it! The Boss, the Queen Bey, Dylan… it’s the COOL thing to do!!!
Maybe, but also we should think through the implications of a bunch of giant corporations owning some of the most well-known music from the sound recording era…
Although Queen (like lots of other bands) probably got a shit deal from their early contracts, I can’t imagine that they aren’t doing fine, none the less. They were one of the biggest, most well-known bands from the 70s and 80s, after all… 
The weirdo post-punk in me just has a deeply knee-jerk reaction to this kind of thing, and the historian in me is cringing about the implications for this ongoing corporate take over of our cultural heritage. Like, it’s very triggering for my inner Frankfurt school scholar and it makes me want to go full on situationists…
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I’m guessing some of the motivation for some of these artists is they aren’t getting any younger and they would rather get a big payout now than have to deal with some sort of royalties distribution clusterfuck after they are gone.
On the other hand, I just know intuitively that what this really means is we’re going to be hearing a lot more of this stuff in commercials and other kinds of non-creative corporate endeavors that just make me cringe to consider. I also have no doubt that all this consolidation and centralization will do little to benefit fans but it will further line those corporations’ pockets.
I’m already seeing this with The Beach Boys after their 2021 intellectual property sale (the price was never disclosed to my knowledge, but it was estimated to be likely in the $200m range). It started with the huge hype behind the recent Disney+ documentary/Mike Love propoganda piece that was clearly trying to channel boomer nostalgia by providing a low-information rose-tinted view of the band versus offering anything insightful or of great value for the serious fans.
I shudder to think of what the big conglomorates will do to Queen’s storied legacy.
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Sure. Doesn’t make it any less problematic, though. And of course the vast majority of people making these deals are already incredibly wealthy. I don’t think Brian May or Beyonce or Springsteen are hurting for cash.
I would love it if people could think past the bottom line when it comes to culture, because culture is more often than not, one of the major things we hand down to later generations.
Well we know that… just look at all the other uses of IP by large corporations… and people wonder why Prince was so fucking weird and fanatical about his IP… He really understood its value outside of a cash grab…
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… reminding us, should copyright really last for generations in the first place 
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To be clear: I’m agreeing it’s all terrible! I can both understand the impulses of these aging rockers to make a little extra money in their old age, but I desperately wish they’d think through the implications. Maybe they just think they’ll be dead so won’t have to deal with it…
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… but if copyright expired after, like, 40 years or whatever, then these IP bundles wouldn’t be worth anything, and anyone could use AI to remix them with dead people’s voices 
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I guess, but they are already very wealthy… Maybe they see this as handing over their legacy to someone who will protect and care for it (while providing for their families, who are probably already well provided for), but I don’t know how anyone can see it that way. They’ve IN the system, and they know how rotten it is from the top down, and it’s only been getting more rotten by the day.
I don’t think anyone has said WHY they’re doing this… so, it’s a mystery on that front… we’re just supposed to uncritically accept for-profit corporations know better than the rest of us how to handle our shared cultural legacies…
Sure, and corporations would do that if they got an infinity Copyright on mass culture. But others can and should be allowed to engage with various kinds of culture, because more than anything else, that’s what we humans do that probably makes us unique… Like Winnie the Pooh and Steamboat Willie are in the public domain, and people have been churning out boring, pointless “horror” movies based on those… which, yeah, not a fan… but then again, the always awesome Randy Milholland has been (well, was for a while) doing a comic based on Steamboat Willie (I’m linking to the first one there) too… Culture is best when it’s interacted with and shared, not when it’s locked up and used only by the wealth and elite…
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Prince may have been an eccentric, but it didn’t make him wrong and he was pretty far ahead of the curve when it comes to protecting his IP. Can you really blame him, though? His whole “Love Symbol #2” name change was a deeply subversive form of protest against his record label that was stifling him creatively and wouldn’t let him out of his contract. Nothing in his contract said he couldn’t change his name to an unpronouncable symbol, and that’s exactly what he did.
I think it’s great to see contemporary artists like Taylor Swift and others bringing further attention around things like a musician’s ownership and protection of their creative output. I hope that high profile struggles like these can benefit others in the future. (Along with the increasing democratization around recording and distribution making it more practical than ever to get a wide reach while cutting out the big record labels.)
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