Will RIAA’s lawsuit against Udio and Suno really be the win we’re hoping for?AI and music had their first David and Goliath moment this week when RIAA issued a dramatic and scathing lawsuit against generative AI music platforms Suno and Udio.
In the lawsuit, the RIAA claims Suno and Udio are perpetuating copyright infringement “at an almost unimaginable scale”, alleging that both platforms are trained unlawfully on the catalogues of Universal, Warner and Sony. So blatant was this infringement, according to the RIAA, that the lawsuit outlines multiple cases when the notes, melodies and structure are almost identical to existing works, including music from the likes of Green Day, ABBA and Mariah Carey.
READ MORE: Splice CEO’s message for AI sceptics? “Trust the artists”
The 34-page lawsuit has been widely celebrated within the music industry and the broader field of creative arts. Why? Because wholesale ‘scraping’ of data by AI companies without permission or remuneration is a genuine threat — not just to the majors but to working independent artists, all of whom could be undermined if their catalogues are used to fuel models that churn out derivatives at speed and scale.
Uncontrolled and unregulated generative AI poses an existential threat to the music industry as we know it; that might sound hyperbolic but it’s not. These lawsuits could set the tone for how music and AI co-exist going forward and Suno and Udio — whose investors curiously include artists such as 3LAU, Common and will.i.am — will either be sued into oblivion or forced to clean up their act.
A familiar situation
But will the strong-arming become a grudging handshake? It’s not a stretch to assume that licensing deals — and a bit of equity thrown in — are a possible outcome of this lawsuit. Elsewhere in AI, The New York Times’s case against Sam Altman’s OpenAI is likely to conclude the same way – in fact, OpenAI has already signed similar deals with the FT and with News Corp. Few want to air their dirty laundry in court, including the plaintiff, and the stern language used in RIAA’s lawsuit feels more about obtaining leverage in negotiations than expecting Suno and Udio to fork up the roughly $1.5 trillion and $1.36 trillion it would cost them, respectively, to pay the damages due.
So how might they work? A blanket license for carte blanche access to train models on the back catalogues of some of the greatest artists of all time? Another micro-penny payment system if your artist’s name is mentioned in a prompt? A huge annual fee pocketed by the label and thrown on the pile, never to trickle down to the artists whose work makes up their vaults? These aren’t just whimsical hypotheticals — decisions made now could radically alter the upcoming decades of music industry economics.
Streaming has gutted the middle class of artists, shifting rewards to those who own catalogues at scale — micro-pennies mean little to those with three albums, but can mean a lot to labels with 30,000. AI, too, relies on scale: the more quality data you hoard, the more valuable your asset for licensees. Once again, this leaves independent artists sidelined with little voice or influence over the emerging tech that can define their future. And if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.
The long-term effect of decisions made at the dawn of streaming isn’t just affecting independent musicians, though; it’s coming back round to the majors themselves. As Billboard’s Elias Leight pointed out last year: “It’s common to hear grumbles about young acts who have hundreds of millions of plays of a single but can’t fill a small room for a live performance.” By opening the floodgates, streaming removed the bridge between artist and listener, and music’s value (as a commodity, at least) has plummeted to next to zero. Those decisions were made against the backdrop of piracy’s genuine threat — and here we are again.
Getting money upfront and a slice of the pie will likely be appealing, but the mistakes of the streaming era must be at the forefront if and when these licensing negotiations begin.
Move fast, break things, get paid
The tech industry has a long and tedious reputation as a disruptor, a badge it wears with honour. In an interview with MusicTech, Grammy-nominated producer, composer and developer BT said: “Our large label music partners told us a story about a CEO that came to see them [and] they [were] clearly in violation of training on IP-protected works just to speed-run a product to market. They asked how they trained and he said, ‘We would rather ask for forgiveness than permission’… This kind of thinking and irresponsibility could destroy music.”
The ‘move fast and break things’ narrative might feel irresponsible, yet it’s exactly the approach that led Suno to raise $125m to date. In fact, one investor audaciously claims that if deals with the labels were in place, they “probably wouldn’t have invested in it. I think that they needed to make this product without the constraints.” Viewing fundamental IP rights as constraints gives you a sneak peek into a worryingly common mindset in tech, but the music industry keeps falling for the Shiny New Thing.
If companies who steal, blitzscale and ask for forgiveness later are constantly rewarded, where’s the incentive to do things the right way from the start? ‘Ethical AI’ has become its own buzzword, with innovative companies rightly pushing for transparency in training data, traditional rights attribution and new technical solutions to allow AI and music to scale together fairly. But as Tatiana Cirisano wrote in MIDIA last month, if “one music-tech startup seeks permission, it risks losing the race to another startup that asks for forgiveness.”
UMG, Sony and Warner have all issued their AI guidelines and creeds, from the Human Artistry Campaign, to government lobbying, opt-out letters and AI for Music initiatives. If labels enter negotiations with AI companies who infringe on an “almost unimaginable scale”, they could risk undermining their own necessary, crucial guidelines as AI finds its feet, and trust, among creatives and artists.
Maybe it won’t happen. Maybe the major labels will seek to make an example of Suno and Udio, the case will make it to court and a novelty-sized cheque will be handed over to the RIAA. If not, and a settlement is reached with licensing terms attached, getting it wrong risks causing significant damage to an already faltering industry. The mistakes of the streaming era are still in the rearview mirror — let’s hope the majors look back before they look forward.
Read more about AI in music technology. 
The post Will RIAA’s lawsuit against Udio and Suno really be the win we’re hoping for? appeared first on MusicTech.

RELEASE DETAILS
Release title:
ULTRAAVX
Main artist name:
Plexine
Release date:
5th Jul, 2024
https://publme.lnk.to/ULTRAAVX
#newmusic #Release #Music #indepedent #artist #experimental #Psychedelic

Gradient Synth App from Soulyft Audio Gradient Synth takes a novel approach to sound creation and allows users to create soundscapes by interacting with a colour palette rather than more traditional sets of controls. 

Live Review of Draag in SeattleThe Neptune Theatre  Seattle, WA 

Contact: draag1985@gmail.com 

Web: draagband.com

Players: Adrian Acosta, guitar, vocals, synth, drum machine, samples; Jessica Huang, synth, vocals, samples; Ray Montes, guitar; Nick Kelley, bass, noise, modular analog percussion synthesizer; Eric Fabbro, drums

Material: Based in the shadows of Los Angeles’ San Gabriel Mountains, Draag is a doomwave band that injects bits of industrial rock and black metalized beats into luxuriant glo-fi soundscapes. Their melodies channel the subversive musings of My Bloody Valentine’s “When You Sleep” and Slowdive’s “Star Roving.” At the same time, their spacey instrumentals gravitate toward the soaring atmospherics found in Sigur Ros’ “Rembihnutur” and Boards of Canada’s “Dayvan Cowboy.” Throbbing Gristle-like snippets—including recordings of obscure voices, hums, buzzes, and other sonic abnormalities—appear throughout the band’s waved-out harmonies, while eerie lyrics recollect surviving childhood religious trauma, the darker sides of spirituality, and feelings of isolation. 

Musicianship: Draag steadies their swells of sound with solid musicianship. The intertwined voices of co-leads Acosta (a trained mariachi singer) and Huang effortlessly slip under swathes of echo-flanged guitars and stunning synths in songs like “the day has come,” but also soar above as separate entities in “Mitsuwa.” 

Performance: Opening for the indie country-gaze band Wednesday, Draag started their sweetly aggressive set with two songs that aptly showcased their dissonant musical stylings: the swirling sonics of “Midnight Paradise,” followed by the fast-paced avant-garde distortion of “Demonbird.” The L.A. Valley quintuplet soon transitioned into songs that emphasized their capacity to embrace more industrialized tones exemplified in “Recharge,” complete with blips and samples reminiscent of NIN’s remix intro to “Where is Everybody?”  

Summary: Draag is a captivatingly dark and dreamy band. The quintet crafts haunting lyrics that complement their fusion of dark-meets-coldwave soundscapes. The band shines best when they readily push their creativity by pursuing adjacent genres such as industrial goth and electrocore, and if streamlined, could forge a distinctive sound for all to admire. Make sure to check out Draag opening for Wednesday and their recent releases, 2023’s Dark Fire Heresy and 2024’s Actually, the quiet is nice.The post Live Review of Draag in Seattle first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

MIT’s soft robotic system is designed to pack groceriesRoboGrocery combines computer vision with a soft robotic gripper to bag a wide range of different items.
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Did Bitcoin Runes already peak?Tokens on the Runes Protocol are down from their peak, but don't count them out yet. The protocol is less than three months old — and it's just getting started.

An Open XBOX Modchip Enters The SceneIf you’ve ever bought a modchip that adds features to your game console, you might have noticed sanded-off IC markings, epoxy blobs, or just obscure chips with unknown source code. It’s ironic – these modchips are a shining example of hacking, and yet they don’t represent hacking culture one bit. Usually, they are more of a black box than the console they’re tapping into. This problem has plagued the original XBOX hacking community, having them rely on inconsistent suppliers of obscure boards that would regularly fall off the radar as each crucial part went to end of life. Now, a group of hackers have come up with a solution, and [Macho Nacho Productions] on YouTube tells us its story – it’s an open-source modchip with an open firmware, ModXO.
Like many modern modchips and adapters, ModXO is based on an RP2040, and it’s got a lot of potential – it already works for feeding a BIOS to your console, it’s quite easy to install, and it’s only going to get better. [Macho Nacho Productions] shows us the modchip install process in the video, tells us about the hackers involved, and gives us a sneak peek at the upcoming features, including, possibly, support for the Prometheos project that equips your Xbox with an entire service menu. Plus, with open-source firmware and hardware, you can add tons more flashy and useful stuff, like small LCD/OLED screens for status display and LED strips of all sorts!
If you’re looking to add a modchip to your OG XBOX, it looks like the proprietary options aren’t much worth considering anymore. XBOX hacking has a strong community behind it for historical reasons and has spawned entire projects like XBMC that outgrew the community. There’s even an amazing book about how its security got hacked. If you would like to read it, it’s free and worth your time. As for open-source modchips, they rule, and it’s not the first one we see [Macho Nacho Productions] tell us about – here’s an open GameCube modchip that shook the scene, also with a RP2040!

A Vintage AC Bridge TeardownIf you ever encounter a British engineer of a certain age, the chances are that even if they use a modern DMM they’ll have a big boxy multimeter in their possession. This is the famous Avo 8, in its day the analogue multimeter to have. Of course it wasn’t the only AVO product, and [Thomas Scherrer OZ2CPU] is here with another black box sporting an AVO logo. This one’s an AC bridge, one of a series of models manufactured from the 1930s through to the late 1940s, and he treats us to a teardown and restoration of it.
Most readers will probably be familiar with the operation of a DC Wheatstone Bridge in which two resistances can be compared, and an AC bridge is the same idea but using an AC source. A component under test is attached to one set of terminals while one with a known value is put on the other, and the device can then be adjusted for a minimum reading on its meter to achieve a state of balance. The amount by which it is adjusted can then be used as a measure of the difference between the two parts, and thus the value of an unknown part can be deduced.
In the case of this AVO the AC is the 50Hz (remembering that this is a British instrument) mains frequency, and the reading from the bridge is taken via a single tube amplifier to a rectifier circuit and the meter. Inside it’s a treasure trove of vintage parts with an electrolytic capacitor that looks as though it might not be original, with a selenium rectifier and a copper oxide signal diode in particular catching our eye. This last part is responsible for some reading anomalies, but after cleaning and lubricating all the switches and bringing up the voltage gently, he’s rewarded with a working bridge. You can see the whole story in the video below the break.
Test equipment from this era is huge, so perhaps not all of you have the space for something like this. Some of us have been known to own other AVO products though.

Rigid Audio announce free Shimmer Strings instrument Rigid Audio's latest free instrument offers a selection of bowed violin samples with an additional pitch-shifted layer. 

Album Review of "Son" By Icarus Phoenix (7/10)Icarus Phoenix

Producers: Jed Jones, Drew Danburry

Deliberate and in-your-face story-telling with psychedelia-like music in the background. Danburry is a consummate raconteur with flair for finding the most delicate and faint method of breaking your will.

From country-ish-esq ballads to pop induced harmonies, the music transports you to another demension, to a land far, far away, and delivers the goods, even if you don’t want them.The post Album Review of "Son" By Icarus Phoenix (7/10) first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

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Vitalik Buterin says crypto regulations have created ‘anarcho-tyranny’ The Ethereum co-founder says we’d all be better off with either anarchy or tyranny but not both.

Building a Hydraulic System With 3D Printed SLA Resin PartsShowing off the 3D-printed hydraulics system. (Credit: Indeterminate Design, YouTube)
Hydraulics are incredibly versatile, but due to the pressures at which they operate, they are also rather expensive and not very DIY-friendly. This isn’t to say that you cannot take a fair shot at a halfway usable 3D-printed set of hydraulics, as [Indeterminate Design] demonstrates in a recent video. Although not 100% 3D-printed, it does give a good idea of how far you can push plastic-based additive manufacturing in this field.
Most interesting is the integration of the gear pump, 4-way selector valve, and relief valve into a single structure, which was printed with a resin printer (via the JLC3DP 3D print service). After bolting on the (also 3D printed) clear reservoir and assembling the rest of the structure including the MR63 ball bearings, relief spring valve, and pneumatic fittings it was ready to be tested. The (unloaded) gear pump could pump about 0.32 L/minute, demonstrating its basic functionality.
For the hydraulic cylinder, mostly non-3D printed parts were used, with a brass cylinder forming the main body. During these initial tests, plain water was used, followed by CHF11 hydraulic oil, with a pressure of about 1.3 bar (19 PSI) calculated afterward. This fairly low pressure is suspected to be caused by leaky seals (including the busted shaft seal), but as a basic proof of concept, it provides an interesting foundation for improvements.
Want a primer on hydraulics? We got you. MIT likes 3D printing with hydraulics, too (dead link, but the underlying paper link is still good).

Solar Energy Plant Creates FuelNormally, when you think of solar power, you think about photovoltaic cells or using the sun to generate steam. But engineers at Synhelion — a spin off from ETH Zurich — had a crazy idea. Could you reverse combustion and change waste products back into fuel? The answer is yes if you can use the sun to turn things up to 1,500°C.
The input is water, carbon dioxide, and methane into syngas. The pilot plant in Germany is set to begin operations using a thermal storage device to allow the plant to operate around the clock. The new plant is slated to produce several thousand liters of fuel a year. Future plants will produce more, and they are targeting a cost of $1 per liter of fuel. The pilot plant has a 20-meter-tall tower and around 1,500 square meters of mirrors, producing 600 kW of output. The hexagonal mirrors are very thin, and the plant uses drones to aim the mirrors quickly compared to other methods.
Syngas shows up a lot lately. Getting to 1,500 degrees is a big ask, although we’ve seen ETH Zurich get to 1,000 using solar.

Getting It Done: Last week in D.I.Y. & Indie MusicLast week, our tips and advice for the independent, do-it-yourselfers covered how to self-publish music, Billie Eillish’s email marketing tips, and more…
The post Getting It Done: Last week in D.I.Y. & Indie Music appeared first on Hypebot.