Spotify’s New AI Remix Feature: Good or Bad for Artists?

3:0330% a thirdish of all the money that comes in as a subscription goes to the platform and whatever's left goes to the rights holders. So what that means is roughly 2/3 of this money that's generated this $4 to5 a month should go to the music that's being generated. So, you know, we don't have a hard confirmation here, but um based on everything they've said, the goal of this is to be a separate new revenue stream. And that's why all of these major labels has been have been agreeing to this because like, hey, this is a new way for for songs to make money, right? If you are like, "Wow, I really love that song. I would love to hear it." Like, what what does that death metal song sound like as a folk track? What does that country song sound like as an EDM pop song? Right. That's

3:51kind of cool in my opinion and I think a lot of people will want to play with that. In terms of how long do people pay four to five additional dollars a month for that? That's that needs to be seen in real life, right? But I I can't imag I I can totally imagine that there's going to be a lot of people who are going to find it kind of fun to play with music in that way. The same way that people pay for suno, right? There was plenty of people who pay for suno to try and like make money with AI music, right? It's a whole thing that the industry has been trying to kind of suppress. But there's also people who pay for Suno because they like just generating fun songs, right? It's kind of a different thing. It's almost like a video game. So, I'm thinking this is going to be just a way for people to play with music and therefore it's going to be a new revenue stream and therefore also a new royalty pool and then it

4:37won't dilute the existing royalty pool. And on a very similar note, the second piece of misinformation that I've seen is, you know, why is Spotify going to make all this extra money on remixes? And as I as I said before, like what I'm assuming is going to happen because of the way that the music industry's worked like thus far and all these platforms is about twothirds of the money that comes in is going to go to the rights holders. And also, I've seen a lot of people say things like, um, why should remixers get paid on the music? Shouldn't the artist get paid? and and it's planned from everything that we've seen so far and all these rumors and leaks and everything that the it is actually going to be the rights holders that get paid. And what that means is the people doing the remixes are not going to get any of the money that's generated from the streams. It's going to be the people who actually own the music that's getting covered and

5:23remixed. And you might say as a counterargument like well that isn't necessarily the artists, right? And you're right. Um, anytime you hear me say like rights holders, um, I'm talking about whoever owns the music, and that's what like Spotify and all these other platforms mean when they say rights holders, because you can have a situation where, and I was trying to see if they had if they had a specific like listing on here for it. Oh, yeah. This is what I was looking for. Under Spotify's proposed plan, royalties generated by fan-made remixes would be paid to the artist behind the original song. So, they actually do say artists here, but I I believe what they actually mean is rights holders. and and rights holders means whoever owns the music, right? So that if the artist is signed to the label, it's going to be the label and they have a deal where they do some revenue share with the artist. And that deal might be very good and it might be

6:09very bad. And this is a big problem that a lot of people don't understand with how artists are paid is uh those deals are made between the artist and a label and they they agree to them and they have lawyers review the contract. So like the artist has already agreed to whatever arrangement they have between the team that they're working with. Sometimes those deals go bad for sure, but that has nothing to do with the the platforms, right? That has to do with the individual deals artists make with their labels. So, let's say, for example, an artist isn't getting any of this because the they haven't recouped their advances they got from the label. Well, in that case, the artist still wants this, not necessarily this, but they still want the label to get paid because the only way they're ever going to recoup is if the song makes the label money, right? So eventually when a song makes money from their label and the artist starts getting whatever split they're they're agreed upon with the label has to recoup their money and all

6:55contracts work differently. But I just wanted to point that out the whole rights holder artist thing. But as you can see here um it seems like they've already been pretty strong on the fact that you know royalties generated by family remixes would be paid to the artist buying the original songs not to the remixers and not just to Spotify. Spotify is definitely going to make money of this. I would assume they're going to make about 30% to a third because that's what they've done for for thus far, right? And that's what Apple does, that's what YouTube music does, etc. Now, the next piece of misinformation, misinformation number three, is that artists don't want this. And overall, um, this is kind of a tricky one because obviously there are plenty of artists who don't want this, but it is optin, right? um Spotify has been going around to all these major labels making deals with

7:42them to have ways for them to opt their catalog in to it. So that means it seems like so far that all the music that's going to be available to be remixed and covered is it has to be like agreed upon to be remixed and covered. Where this gets hairy and where I feel like the language is probably not clear enough is if Universal agrees to do this, does that mean their whole cataloges opted in? Or are they actually going to the individual artist saying, "Hey, do you want to do this?" Cuz I have a feeling that the big labels are just opting their whole cataloges in and not actually giving their artists a say cuz they're going to say, "Well, the contract you signed however many years ago said that we could exploit your music in whatever financial way that we wanted to. This is a new way to make money off the catalog. Therefore, we're entitled to do it. we don't even need to ask your permission, which may be legally true. That doesn't mean it's

8:28right, though, you know? So, that's one big thing that um I I wish there was a way for platforms like Spotify to say, "No, we need artists to like somehow go in and opt in." But you can imagine that there's really nothing they can do. All they can do is go to all the people that own the music and say like, "Do you want to do this or not?" And then that plat it's kind of up to each individual platform. So if UMG wants to be jerks and just not ask anyone, they can do that. And then if Sony wants to do the right thing and then ask all their artists, then that's great. So [gasps] there's going to be kind of a gray area here. Um, and all the artists that don't want to do it, like all the indie artists, we're probably all not going to be able to use this feature at all first anyway. So even if you're seeing this like, oh, this sounds cool. I want to optimize catalog. I would imagine at first you're not going to be able to.

9:13And then eventually what'll happen is distributors will start making deals with this. So, like you'll have your Drok Kid, your CD Baby, your touncor going to Spotify and being like, "Hey, we want to opt in our catalog." And then on the back end of your Dro, you'll be able to select it as an option. Just like when you choose to upload your song, you can skip uploading it to like Tik Tok, for example, or YouTube Content ID. Like, you don't have to put it on every platform. It'll be like another choice. Like, do you want to enable your song with Spotify AI remixes? And it'll just be like, do you want to let people do this with your music? and in return you're going to get paid if on whatever streams those remixes generate and then each artist can decide which in my opinion kind of solves this problem entirely. But the big label artist um I they're probably not going to have as much freedom in that choice. Now there's

9:59also some other concerns with regards to how is this music going to be generated. So basically Spotify is going to have their own like AI generated model that's not going to make new music. It's going to be able to make new versions of existing music. But like where is the line there? Can I go and grab a song that I love and change the lyrics of it to be super offensive and then share that online and it sounds just like the artist said those things? I have a feeling no. I have a feeling they're purposefully going to kind of like neuter this feature and that you can't change the words purposefully at least because that just opens it up to a can of worms. Like what if I can just flip the meaning of this song and then share it online? And I'm sure there's going to be ways like Spotify is not just going to let people download it, but I can like screen record the audio on any of my devices pretty easily, right? I can route my interface to record the output

10:47coming from my speakers. I don't even have to record it like a legitimate way. And then I'll have the song that I could then upload to YouTube, right? So the if there's a way for people to modify lyrics, there's going to be people milking it and making bad versions of songs that would that would very much be against the artist's original vision. And I don't think they're going to let that happen. I think they're going to be like, "No, this is for changing the genres, and there's going to be very specific ways you can do it, and you're not going to have any control over the lyrics." But that's definitely a risk here. And then also, like, what happens if someone makes an AI generated version of a song that the artist hates? Is there any recourse for that artist to go and pull it, right? Cuz accidents will happen, right? Someone makes the AI generated version of a song, it accidentally changes a word in the meantime because it's AI. It's not perfect, right? And it it just somehow it makes the artist not happy in

11:32whatever way that means. Maybe they just they hate how it sounds and they don't like how it's getting more streams than the original version of their song or or whatever it is. It changes a word and changes the meaning. Is there any recourse for an artist to kind of claw that back and I would hope that yes, but they haven't talked about this yet. At least not that I've seen. So you might be wondering, Andrew, what's your opinion on this? And I do have some mixed feelings, but overall I feel like when I release my music that it's kind of not no longer just my own, right? It's like you're putting it out and you're sharing with the world. And I find it kind of exciting to be able to to like someone hears it and they love one of my band songs, they can just go and make like a pop punk version of it and they can go and and make a country version of it or whatever just for fun. Like I don't know. To me, this sounds cool. This sounds like a very exciting thing that like to be able to play with

12:19swapping the genre of your songs. I don't know how like exactly how all these things are going to work. So that's why I have a little bit of mixed feelings because I'm a little worried about it. But like it allows fans to kind of have fun with an artist music the same way that a remixer, right? In in the electronic music world, it's pretty common for certain artists to make the stems available for their songs, even if they sell them on their website for like $20 or something. And then all these remixers will have fun playing with the music, like remixing it, um, completely chopping it up, making a brand new song, or just kind of simply playing with the stems and and listening and having fun. And so in the electronic music world, that's that's that's a thing, right? And that's a thing I've done. I' i've found like, oh, that song's really cool. Oh, the artist stems available. Let me download them. Let me have fun with them, you know? And

13:04to be able to bring that to the average person with no musical ability whatsoever is kind of cool. Now, are they going to pay $4 to $5 a month extra for that? I don't know. But I feel like there probably are enough people that are going to do that to to justify this feature existing. And as long as they can get the controls right, as long as they can get the monetization right and the crediting right, I think it's cool. I'd be a little worried about these versions getting recorded and then making their way in social media and uh other streaming platforms. for example, someone like doing it on Spotify, ripping it somehow, and then uploading it to a music distributor and then getting paid for it. That I'm worried about. So, I'm hoping that they can find good solutions for that so that we can all collectively benefit from the positives of this without getting hit

13:51with the potential negatives of this. So, let me know what you think in the comments below. And if you want to see how you can promote your music using meta ads from start to finish, check out this video right here. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss my next video. Anyways, thanks for watching and I'll see you next one. Bye.