 Do you recognize these voices? That's right, it's Drake and The Weeknd. Except it's not. Neither of the two artists took part in creating this song. Our robot made it. This song is called Heart on My Sleeve and is an example of AI-generated content. It went viral back in April and gathered millions of views on YouTube, TikTok and Spotify. AI is taking the music industry by storm. It is opening new opportunities for music creators, but these opportunities come with serious challenges. Will AI-generated content take over human creation? How can artists compete with robots? And how does blockchain technology come into play? We'll find out in this Cointelegraph report. Before we get started, if you enjoy our content and believe in the future of blockchain, make sure to like and subscribe. So, how exactly does generative AI work? AI technology gathers large amounts of data across the internet. It elaborates on it, learns from it and uses it to generate new songs. Artists can use AI-generated music to enhance their creative process. AI can also dramatically reduce the time and cost of production. It makes creating music more affordable than ever before. Harrison First, an American soul writer and producer, has been experimenting with AI in his creative process. So, if I'm already creative already, just me using AI tools will make me more creative. I'm not really the best vocalist and I can't have my artists come to meet me because I'm in Tokyo right now. So, then I use one of these AI-generated sites where I can take my reference vocals, put it in and make it sound like somebody who is credible or better than I am. The problem is that AI-generated music is entirely based on pre-existing content created by human artists. Most of the time, the AI uses it without the artist's knowledge or consent, which has serious legal and ethical implications. Who owns the rights to these AI-generated songs? How should they be licensed or monetized? And how can we ensure that the creators whose work is being sourced or replicated by the AI are adequately compensated? To get a better understanding of these challenges, we talk to Hanla Callert, a music industry analyst at Media Research. Hanla Callert, a music industry analyst at Media Research Because of how the generative AI works, you can't really tell what has gone into it and how that results in what comes out. So, you have a bit of an input-output problem where you can't really attribute original creators. The problems that this poses is misinformation, deep fakes, just a lack of trust in what you can see on the internet. The Pandora's Box has been opened and AI-generated music is impossible to stop. The only way forward is to learn how to use this technology ethically so that it becomes an additional tool in the hands of creators. Some artists are already embracing generative AI. American composer Holly Herndon has created a website where anyone can generate songs using her voice. Electronic artist Grimes has even offered to split royalties with anyone using her voice to create a new song with AI. But these are just individual cases that don't address the broader problem. We need tools to track AI-generated content to their human source so that artists can get compensated for their work. We need a system to distinguish AI-generated music from human-generated content. This is where blockchain technology comes into play. The blockchain is an immutable ledger that can keep track of the provenance of digital content including AI-generated music. Digital intellectual property rights are represented by tokens minted on the blockchain. Let's imagine that an artist creates a song and the AI uses that song as a model to create new content. Blockchain can track the original source of the AI-generated song and ensure its human author gets their fair compensation. There are already some blockchain platforms that offer these sorts of solutions. For example, Pixelynx is a music company that allows users to create new music content together with their favorite artists by using AI tools. Blockchain tech keeps track of the original content ensuring that the author is fairly compensated. An artist being able to be paid in real time, transparently, and understanding where that revenue came from is such a simple but meaningful value proposition. So as we start to not only let artists create new content with their fans using AI on our platform, the obviously the key goal is to let them distribute this content and then actually monetize it transparently in real time. Finally, blockchain-based solution can help bypass intermediaries such as labels and music distributors which take large cuts from the artist's revenue. That creates a more direct relationship between artists and fans. By buying tokens and NFTs, fans can directly support the artist and at the same time acquiring a part of ownership in their favorite songs. I can mint a project and you know generate $20,000 you know in revenue. Whereas if I'm only relying on streaming the same Spotify, Apple Music, whatever it could take me, I probably won't even generate $20,000 in streams or my music even if it's 1 million streams that I've received that's probably only like around 4,000 USD. Now most blockchain-based music platforms are still far from becoming mainstream. Blockchain is still a niche technology and taking over the dominant industry players won't be an easy task. And when everyone's listening to Spotify and some new player comes on the scene and they say we've created this really cool platform where artists can have everything attributed and they're going to make way more money and it's going to be great. The audience member goes well that's awesome but I have all the music I want on this platform that doesn't do that and there are only like 10 artists that I like on that other platform and so I'm going to stay on Spotify. A solution to this adoption problem may appear when already established streaming platforms will start implementing blockchain to track and verify content. The fast spread of AI-generated music could be the spark that brings that scenario closer. I believe traditional DSPs will have to evolve because this is just the way the world is moving and competition will mean artists and customers expect new ways of you know experiencing and connecting with their favorite artists and fans. It's going to be a bit of an existential like how do we embrace this or do we resist and at the end of the day if you embrace it you usually benefit and if you resist usually don't. To sum things up the convergence of blockchain technology and the AI can revolutionize the music industry. Blockchain ensures transparency, fair royalty distribution and ethical standards while AI allows new ways of creating and experiencing music. This synergy could mark pivotal moments in the evolution of the music landscape. That's all for today's report, I'm Giovanni, your host, see you next time.