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A new music streaming service created with the cooperation of all the major record labels will soon debut, with generative AI functionality as its centerpiece, Bloomberg\u2019s Lucas Shaw reports<\/a>. The labels in question are Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Sony Music.<\/p>\n That report says the service is called \u201cKlay,\u201d a fun misspelling of a word for a mushy, formless substance. Incidentally, another word for a mushy, formless substance is \u201cslop.\u201d<\/p>\n About a year ago, Klay struck a deal with Universal<\/a> to team up on an AI music project touting itself as \u201cethical,\u201d but reports at the time didn\u2019t make it clear what kind of product or service that partnership might produce.\u00a0<\/p>\n Someone named Ary Attie<\/a> is listed on LinkedIn as the founder of Klay. Klay has a website, klay.vision<\/a>, where users can join a waitlist, and see the slogan \u201cMusic set free,\u201d but there\u2019s no other information.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n On the same day as Bloomberg\u2019s report, news also broke that Warner, one of the companies involved in this deal, had settled<\/a> a lawsuit with the AI music generation company Udio, and was preparing to join forces with Udio on a song creation platform\u2014presumably a separate venture from Klay, although that\u2019s not totally clear yet. (Gizmodo reached out to Warner for clarity, and will update if we hear back). Universal<\/a> settled a similar suit against Udio on October 30.<\/p>\n Assuming the Bloomberg report is correct, it\u2019s clear that these record companies have now fully evolved into a new form in which they see themselves as AI companies too. They never seemed especially hostile to the technology. Even with lawsuits against companies like Udio ongoing<\/a>, Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) CEO Mitch Glazier said in a statement in June of last year, \u201cThe music community has embraced AI.\u201d But Glazier and his allies would \u201conly succeed,\u201d he said, \u201cif developers are willing to work together with us. Unlicensed services like Suno and Udio that claim it\u2019s \u2018fair\u2019 to copy an artist\u2019s life\u2019s work and exploit it for their own profit without consent or pay set back the promise of genuinely innovative AI for us all.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This new service apparently resolves all these concerns to the labels\u2019 satisfaction, coming with \u201cassurances that the artists and labels will have some control over how their work is used,\u201d Shaw writes.<\/p>\n Details about how Klay would work are scant. Shaw indicates that it will resemble Spotify, but that AI functions will be available so the user can \u201cremake\u201d songs \u201cin different styles.\u201d By partnering with all the major labels, Klay was able to license \u201cthousands\u201d of hit songs for apparently legal training purposes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reading between the lines, it sounds like there will probably be some sort of text input. Perhaps you\u2019ll be able to fire up Queen\u2019s \u201cBohemian Rhapsody,\u201d and type \u201cmake this a polka.\u201d Presumably after some processing, Klay will spit out something that sounds a little like \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic\u2019s brilliant, faithful uptempo reconstruction of \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d<\/a> with a new arrangement and a virtuosic polka performance, minus all the joy, spontaneity, and palpable love for the original material that such a feat of artistry entails.\u00a0<\/p>\n And since artists typically own their sheet music<\/a> and their voice likenesses<\/a>, if not their actual recordings, it stands to reason that they might have some<\/em> legal say, which explains why there would be controls in place for the artist. For instance, while I\u2019m not a copyright lawyer, it seems like the label probably wouldn\u2019t be legally allowed to let the user create, say, a realistic Alicia Keys voice singing one of her actual melodies, but with words about poop and farts.\u00a0<\/p>\n