Universal Music Group is targeting AI-generated music on streaming platforms

It is one of the most moving moments in film. Rachmaninoff's Concerto for Piano 2 played as the couple in the 1945 movie, Brief Encounter, realise their love is doomed while gazing into each others eyes at a railway station. The station was Carnforth and the actors, Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson.

EXCLUSIVE: Argo actor Scoot McNairy is the latest to join the cast of Speak No Evil, the Blumhouse and Universal psychological horror thriller from writer/director James Watkins.

Snoop Dogg has revealed his feelings about AI technology creating music and mimicking the voices of pop stars.Currently, there is an AI-generated song going viral of Michael Jackson covering ’90s No Limit rapper C-Murder’s hit song, ‘Down 4 My N’s’.On Monday (May 1), the Long Beach rapper made his feelings on AI covers known, taking to Instagram to say that it has gotten “outta hand.” He posted a video of the audio to his Instagram feed, captioning the post with “Wow.”A post shared by snoopdogg (@snoopdogg)Fans were similarly shocked. The most popular comment read: “I’ve done a lot of things in my life I’m not proud of.

Free school meals will be brought in for all pupils in Scotland’s primary schools, the Deputy First Minister has insisted after Humza Yousaf signalled a u-turn.

Naman Ramachandran Revenues at Bertelsmann’s Luxembourg-based RTL Group, a media giant which owns Fremantle, slid 9% to €1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) for the first quarter of 2023, financial results released on Thursday have revealed. The group attributes this to “significantly lower TV advertising revenue,” particularly in Germany, and the disposals of RTL Belgium and RTL Croatia. Fremantle’s revenues were down 5.6% to €435 million (Q1/2022: €461 million), mainly due to timing effects of production deliveries, the group said. The group’s total advertising revenue fell to €700 million (Q1/2022: €829 million), of which €545 million represented TV advertising revenue (Q1/2022: €653 million), €76 million digital advertising revenue (Q1/2022: €83 million) and €39 million radio advertising revenue (Q1/2022: €46 million). Distribution revenue was down by 1.8% to €107 million (Q1/2022: €109 million).

“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” star Simu Liu is known for his star-studded acting career, his extensive stock photo modeling, his amazing humour, but a lesser-known talent of the star is his musical prowess.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Digital media and entertainment company NGLmitú, the result of a merger last year between NGL Collective and mitú, have launched the new Latino-focused streaming platform mitúTV. Targeting bilingual and English dominant U.S. Latinos, the service also announced three new shows: “Three Gs in a Pod,” hosted by Erik Rivera, Sasha Merci and Jesus Sepulveda; “Girl, Let Me Tell You,” hosted by Jessica Flores, Ivana Rojas and Glorelys Mora; and the game show “Spill the Chisme.” “We were more of a business-to-business type of organization,” said NGL Collective founder and CEO David Chitel, “which is why it made so much sense for us to merge with mitú, because they were the leading business-to-consumer entity connecting with we call ‘new generation Latinos.’ So the marriage of our two companies is sort of a big deal in our space.”

Two-thirds of Peacock’s 22 million subscribers have watched a recent Universal theatrical film, the NBCUniversal streaming service announced at its NewFronts presentation Tuesday.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Triller reached an agreement with Sony Music Entertainment to pay $4.57 million to settle the music label’s breach of agreement lawsuit against the TikTok-style video sharing app, according to a court fling. Triller has admitted liability in the dispute, according to the filing, submitted by Sony Music’s lawyers April 26 to the federal district court judge in the case. Reps for Triller did not respond to a request for comment Friday. A Sony Music spokesman declined to comment. “Prompt entry of judgment is needed to protect against any further dissipation of Triller’s assets or, worse still, a bankruptcy filing,” Sony Music said in the request for the court to rule on the consent agreement. “Triller is more than a year late on some of those contract payments and Sony Music should not have to wait longer to enforce a judgment to collect.”

There’s that one note. That incredibly high note at the end of the song “Defying Gravity” from the musical “Wicked.” A note, until the success of “Let It Go,” which defined Idina Menzel’s career.

Brave Girls have announced their reunion, just two months after their disbandment.Today (April 27), Warner Music Korea announced that all four members of Brave Girls have signed exclusive contracts with the label. This comes just two months after their previous label Brave Entertainment announced that the group would disband, following the quartet’s decision to not to renew their contracts with the agency.“We have come to an agreement with the members while prioritising full-group activities,” Warner Music Korea said in a statement to SPOTV News, as translated by Soompi.

For the past few years, Universal has focused its CinemaCon presentation showing off both the sheer size of its slate and the wide variety of films it has on offer. 2023 was no different.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Driven by big releases from Morgan Wallen, Taylor Swift, Tomorrow X Together, Drake and others, Universal Music Group saw its revenues rise 11.5% year over year to $2.71 billion in the first quarter of 2023. But the company’s earnings call on Wednesday was just as newsworthy for the company doubling down on the strong remarks it has made about the fast-rising presence of — some would say threat from — AI in the music world, which hit UMG in the form of “Heart on My Sleeve,” a song using AI-generated soundalikes of two of the company’s biggest artists, Drake and the Weeknd.  “The recent explosive development in generative AI will, if left unchecked, both increase the flood of unwanted content hosted on platforms, and create rights issues with respect to existing copyright law, in the U.S. and other countries, as well as laws governing trademark, name and likeness, voice impersonation, and right of publicity,” chairman-CEO Lucian Grainge said on the call. 

Grimes might be the one artist who will fully be embracing AI generated music.

CMU’s Andy Malt and Chris Cooke review key events in music and the music business from the last week, including Universal Music latest call for streaming platforms to play their part in ensuring that generative AI tools are not infringing the copyrights of the music industry, plus the news that cassette sales are booming and driving chart success in the UK.SECTION TIMES01: AI (00:05:49)02: Cassettes (00:27:31)(Timings may be slightly different due to adverts)SUBSCRIBE TO SETLISTListen to Setlist and sign up to receive new episodes for free automatically each week through any of these services…Acast | Amazon Music | Apple Podcasts | audioBoom | CastBox | Deezer | Google Podcasts | iHeart | Mixcloud | RSS | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneInSTORIES DISCUSSED THIS WEEK• Universal Music again demands streaming platform support over AI-created music as fake Drake goes viral• Drake says AI generated Ice Spice cover is “the final straw”• Liam Gallagher says AI version of himself sounds “mega”• Idiots rejoice! The cassette revival continuesALSO MENTIONED• The Great Escape conference• Download the TGE appMORE FROM CMU• Upcoming CMU webinars• Buy MMF and CMU Insights’ Dissecting The Digital Dollar book on Amazon• Sign up to receive the CMU Daily news bulletin• Listen to the full Setlist theme tune

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor After steering NBCUniversal through a global pandemic and a roiling stock market, Jeff Shell in January thought he had some good news for investors: Better times were just around the corner. “I’m pretty confident that we have a lot of growth ahead in NBCUniversal,” he told Wall Street analysts during a recent conference call. He called for new activity at the company’s amusement parks after a long fallow period caused by the COVID pandemic, as well as a boost to paying subscribers at the company’s Peacock streaming hub. Now a different executive will be charged with finding out whether Shell’s projections will come to pass.

EXCLUSIVE: At the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival it’s going to get loud.

Universal Music has again called on the streaming platforms to play their part in ensuring that generative AI tools are not infringing the copyrights of the music industry. Though this time it stresses that that also involves removing music created by copyright infringing AI technologies, as well as stopping said technologies from scraping the music stored on their servers.The latest statement has been issued after another AI-created Drake track caught everyone’s attention.

Thania Garcia Universal Music Group Nashville (UMGN) has tapped Lori Christian and Rob Femia to join its executive board. Christian has been upped to executive VP of marketing, while Femia has been named executive VP of business and legal affairs for the label group consisting of Capitol Records Nashville, EMI Records Nashville, Mercury Nashville, and MCA Nashville. Christian was formerly senior VP of marketing, a role she occupied in 2020 after leading the publicity department at UMG Nashville following the 2012 merger of EMI and UMG. In her elevated post, she will oversee UMG Nashville’s artist development, brands and sponsorship, creative services, international marketing, and media marketing departments for the label’s artist roster. She has previously worked to launch projects for Alan Jackson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Stapleton, Darius Rucker, Keith Urban, and Luke Bryan, among others.

Located in the north of Tennessee, Nashville is known as the hometown of country music thanks to its thriving scene. With Taylor Swift moving to the city as a youngster to kick start her career and with Dolly Parton calling the area her home, it’s clear that Music City has the A-list stamp of approval. But despite its roots, Nashville is far more than a music hub for songwriters and fans alike.