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Patents are often the bedrock of new innovation, and a suite of patents defining how AI-generated music can be created, licensed and monetized has hit the market — with multiple AI companies lined up to license them.
Music IP Holdings, a company formed last year out of a strategic partnership with Universal Music Group and the intellectual property management firm Liquidax, has licensed a portfolio of more than 24 patents to the AI music platforms Udio and GRAI. The collection of patents covers a wide swath of elements associated with the rise of AI music, including moderation, watermarking, licensed distribution and monetization.
For Daniel Drolet, the CEO of MIH, the patents are designed to create “new opportunities for responsible innovation while giving artists, songwriters and rightsholders stronger protections and the ability to share in the value their work creates.”
“The portfolio was developed to enable a standard that provides creators of all types the ability to generate, track and ensure new AI revenue streams while simultaneously providing strong options to manage unauthorized AI outputs,” Drolet said in a statement.
“ With MIH, we’re partnering to implement the infrastructure that protects artists and establish the guardrails that ensure AI amplifies human creativity,” Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez said in a statement. “That work — the technology, the licensing, the partnerships — is what makes the next chapter one artists can actually build on.”
“GRAI is building a social streaming service where music moves between people,” Ilya Liasun, GRAI’s CEO and co-founder, added. “And when someone puts something of their own into a song they love, the artist is asked, credited and paid, every time. These patents are what make that possible.”
The patents aren’t limited to just music, MIH’s chief operating officer Paul Ketchel told Variety. “It’s anything that’s an AI derivative,” he said. “What the portfolio covers is basically how AI learns, consumes, and produces derivative content, and that’s video content, voice content, music content.”
The patents reflect UMG’s engagement across different swaths of the changing music industry, such as its licensing partnership with Udioand the remixing app Hook to, with the patent framework, building the architecture that can help determine what an ethical approach to AI music generation could look like.
“These patents are an important way to reinforce the strategy we believe will play a critical role in the next era of music: embracing ethical innovation that puts artists and songwriters at the center, with greater agency, influence and value-chain participation for the creative community,“ said Chris Horton, UMG’s executive vice president, strategic technology, in a statement. “We are thrilled to join MIH, music companies, and responsible technology enterprises in building an AI music ecosystem that works for everyone, especially the creative forces that makes it all possible.”
Udio and GRAI represented the first companies to license the patents because of some of their preexisting relationships with UMG, such as Udio’s licensing deal, Ketchel said.
“They are looking to try to be ethical companies of the world of AI,” he said. “It’s really creating an ecosystem for creators you know the labels, the publishers, the movie studios, all those folks on the creative side, coupled with responsible AI companies, technology companies, streaming companies, publishing companies, all those together, to be able to operate inside this framework of AI and allow creators to be compensated properly, and these companies to be able to operate with freedom to operate ethically. Hopefully, our vision is this will help make a lot of these lawsuits and things that have had to be one-offs go away.”
