Universal Music Group (UMG) has announced a collaboration with artificial intelligence (AI) leader Nvidia to enhance the music experience of billions of music consumers worldwide.
The deal plans to leverage Nvidia’s music language model Music Flamingo, which was launched last year.
In a media release, the companies said Music Flamingo would be used to transform how listeners discover music.
UMG chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge said the music label looked forward to working with Nvidia to use AI for the service of artists and their fans.
“We’re excited to establish this ground-breaking strategic relationship which unites the world’s leading technology company with the world’s leading music company in a shared mission to harness revolutionary AI technology to dramatically advance the interests of the creative community and the role of music in global culture,” Grainge said.
The collaboration will also introduce new AI-driven music creation tools, which will encourage hands-on artist involvement.
This follows major music labels Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment alongside UMG inking licensing deals with AI-powered music streaming start-ups KLAY, Udio and Suno.
These deals have stirred criticism from the likes of the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance, which expressed concern over the lack of transparency of the deals.
While major labels are now embracing AI in the industry with these deals, the relationship between labels and AI companies started rocky.
UMG was one of the labels to join a lawsuit against Suno and Udio, where the labels alleged that the AI models were trained on their copyrighted recordings without permission.
In the announcement of the Nvidia deal, the companies said collaboration would act as a “direct antidote to generic 'AI slop' outputs”.
UMG (AMS: UMG) stock closed down 0.54% to €22.19 (US$25.94) and Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) fell 0.47% to US$187.24.
In after-market trading Nvidia shares rose 0.50% to US$188.17.
