AI-focused music production, distribution and education platform LANDR has devised a new way for musicians to take advantage of the coming AI age with consent and compensation in mind. With its new Fair Trade AI program, any musician who wants to join can be part of this growing pool of songs that will be used to train LANDR’s various AI models, tools or systems. The team at LANDR, which has been called “the music industry’s first mature opt-in attribution model,” believes this is a viable way to provide artists with a new recurring revenue stream and help it develop next-generation AI music technology at the same time.
LANDR has been in the AI music space since launching an early AI mastering solution in 2013. Now the company has grown to provide a much larger suite of tools offering everything from distribution services, educational courses, plug-ins, mastering and more more. Participating artists will receive 20% of revenue generated by LANDR’s tools—whether an AI plugin, mobile app, or cloud service—that make use of this dataset in their training. Musicians can also add new music to the dataset over time, increasing the share of the 20% revenue pie they will receive from being part of the dataset.
Although LANDR plans to license its AI tools to third parties, the company has no plans to sell or license this dataset out to other AI music companies. “It’s the best of both worlds,” says Daniel Rowlandhead of strategy and partnerships at LANDR. “Our users benefit without their data being directly in the hands of multiple companies – it stays with us.”
While any musician is able to submit their music, LANDR reserves the right to curate the tracks added to the dataset, and each track submitted must be performed by a musician who owns their full publishing rights. Musicians using LANDR’s distribution services can sign up for the Fair Trade AI program particularly quickly by simply checking a box as they go through the steps to publish their music. Users can also opt out of the program at any time, but their works will remain part of the dataset until the next training cycle, which occurs approximately every 2-3 weeks. month.
Pascal Pilonfounder of LANDR, says of the new program: “Our mission at LANDR is to empower musicians to create, be heard and monetize their work. As we’ve seen the emergence of new generative AI tools over the last year and the legal challenges ahead for the industry, we now see an opportunity to use our reach to bring the market to a place that is healthy and exciting for DIY musicians worldwide as they develop tools to help them enhance – not replace – their creativity and workflow.”