Believe and its TuneCore subsidiary have surveyed nearly 1600 self-releasing artists about generative AI. Half of those surveyed said that they had a positive perception of artificial intelligence and would be willing to offer their music for the training of AI models.
Around a third said they were interested in using AI as part of their music-making process, with a similar amount reckoning AI technologies could help them with their marketing and promotion.
Commenting on the study, TuneCore CEO Andreea Gleeson says: “As AI continues to be a conversation topic across creative industries, we sought to engage directly with independent artists to determine their awareness of AI and how they’re most interested in engaging with it”.
“TuneCore’s main priorities lie in the interests of our artists”, she adds, “so the responses to this survey will help us enable them to utilise AI on our platform with consent, control, transparency, and fair monetary compensation”.
Of those surveyed, 35% said that they are interested in using AI in their creative process, while 31% said it could help with marketing and promotion around releases.
Meanwhile, 18% said they might use AI technologies to create promotional content – including videos to post to TikTok and Instagram – while 16% said they were interested in how AI could help them more generally engage and develop their fanbases.
In terms of allowing tech companies to use their creative output in order to train generative AI models, 50% showed a willingness to allow that to happen. Although, the report notes, the majority of those artists say that consent, compensation and credit are all key if AI companies want to use existing music in that way.
Not everyone surveyed was fully on board with the AI revolution, however. The report notes that 39% of those surveyed were “unaware and apathetic toward AI” and/or “have fears and concerns with the technology”.
Believe CEO Denis Ladegaillerie has also commented on the survey, stating: “Generative AI and AI will open a new age of creativity and discovery, and transform in a positive manner every aspect of our partnerships with artists and the way we partner with digital music services”.
“This is why”, he goes on, “it is essential that our strategy as a company is aligned with that of our artists: that of a responsible approach to AI and to the exciting opportunities and future use cases that we will develop as a core part of our mission to serve all artists, at each stage of their career, with respect, fairness, expertise and transparency”.
“These fundamental values”, he concludes, “have defined the four responsibility principles that we will use to assess each AI and generative AI opportunity: consent, control, compensation and transparency”.
TuneCore rival Ditto also recently undertook a survey of independent artists about AI. It spoke to nearly 1300 music-makers and said that of them 59.6% were already using AI as part of their creative process in some way: 11% to support their songwriting, 20.3% for music production, 30.6% for mastering, and 38% to help create artwork.