Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music company, and Stability AI have announced a strategic alliance to develop professional music creation tools powered by generative AI and built to support the creative process of artists, producers and songwriters globally.
Through this alliance, Stability AI’s research and product teams will work closely with UMG and its artists to research artist needs and technical approaches for the next generation of music creation tools.
Together, they will explore new recording and composition concepts, gather insights into artists’ needs, and better understand how artists adopt and engage with these technologies.
By centering artists in the development process, the collaboration will prioritize feedback from the creative community to guide the creation of fully licensed, commercially safe AI music tools, advancing responsible innovation that supports both artists and rightsholders while preserving the integrity of the art form.
Michael Nash, chief digital officer and EVP, Universal Music Group, says: “This agreement is an extension of our fundamental orientation that our artists and songwriters are the cornerstone of our business.
“With AI, as with everything else we do, we start with what best supports our work to help them achieve creative and commercial success and build from that foundation to forge new and better commercial and creative opportunities.
“And as we’ve made abundantly clear, we will only consider advancing AI tools and products based on models that are trained responsibly. We’re looking forward to working with Stability AI to deeply integrate AI tools development with the vision and creative ambitions of our artists and to the results and rewards this initiative offers to all.”
In recent years, UMG has been at the forefront of AI innovation within the music industry, embracing the transformative potential that responsibly trained AI technology has to better connect artists with fans, fuel human artistry, enhance discovery and help redefine the listening experience.
UMG has led with industry-first AI-related agreements with a wide-range of global partners including YouTube, TikTok and Meta, while actively fighting to protect artists, songwriters and rightsholders from unlicensed training and copyright infringement.
UMG is committed to helping develop responsibly trained AI products that will provide accurate attribution and tools designed to empower, protect and compensate artists.
Stability AI is the industry leader in commercially safe generative audio. Its Stable Audio family of models was built specifically for professionals and trained exclusively on licensed data to support responsible, high-quality music and sound generation.
Prem Akkaraju, CEO of Stability AI, says: “UMG has long been a leader in technological innovation in music. This partnership marks the next chapter of music creation. At Stability AI, we put the artist at the center and build AI around their unique needs because real transformation has always come from a combination of art and science.”
Last week, Stability AI announced a strategic partnership with Electronic Arts (EA) to co-develop transformative generative AI models, tools, and workflows that empower EA’s artists, designers, and developers to reimagine how games are made.
They’ve also recently partnered with WPP, a global marketing and communications services company, to deliver AI solutions that drive innovation in marketing and advertising.
Today’s announcement with UMG extends this vision to the music industry, reinforcing Stability AI’s commitment to working across creative industries to build professional-grade tools and workflows that accelerate the creative process without compromising quality, integrity, or artistic control.
Main image courtesy of The Jingle Writer
