Universal Music Partners With Soundlabs For Artist-Owned AI Vocal Models

Universal Music, the world's largest music company, has partnered with AI start-up Soundlabs to develop "official ultra-high fidelity vocal models" using artists' voice data. The deal will ensure artists retain ownership and full artistic control over the output.

The press release read, “Together, UMG and SoundLabs are collaborating to allow UMG artists to create custom vocal models that will be available for their exclusive creative use cases, and not available to the general public."

The strategic agreement will allow UMG's global artists and producers to utilize SoundLabs' MicDrop, an AI vocal plug-in, to create official ultra-high fidelity vocal models using their own voice data.

Talking about the agreement, Soundlabs founder BT said, "We are designing tools not to replace human artists, but to amplify human creativity."

In February, UMG had pulled its songs from TikTok because it was "allowing the platform to be flooded with AI-generated recordings" while demanding contractual rights that could "massively dilute the royalty pool for human artists".