AI Unicorn ElevenLabs Rolls Out with AI Music Generator

Photo Credit: ElevenLabs

AI audio-generation platform ElevenLabs has announced a new model allowing users to generate music it claims is already cleared for commercial use.

ElevenLabs is having a big week, revealing new partnerships and models for public use. On Tuesday, the company revealed its latest tool, an AI music generator that it claims is already cleared for commercial use. The move marks ElevenLabs’ major expansion beyond just building AI audio tools since its launch three years ago.

But it’s been a difficult slope to climb for AI companies like ElevenLabs, given widescale concerns about the material AI generation tools are trained on. Last year, AI companies Suno and Udio were both sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) with allegations they trained their music-generation models on copyrighted material without prior clearance. Now, both companies have been discussing licensing deals with the major labels.

ElevenLabs already has deals with Merlin Network and Kobalt Music Group—two digital publishing platforms for independent musicians—to use their materials for AI training. Merlin represents major artists like Adele, Mitski, and Phoebe Bridgers, while Kobalt represents artists like Beck, Bon Iver, and Childish Gambino.

Notably, artists and songwriters represented by Merlin and Kobalt must opt-in to have their works used for training ElevenLabs’ AI models. In exchange, they receive royalties as determined by a pro-rate payout system based on how much their music is used. The opt-in option is currently limited to those whose master recordings are publishing copyrights are 100% controlled by various Merlin and Kobalt owners or artists—no partial ownership is yet permitted.

Kobalt has reportedly negotiated a “most favored nations” clause, which ensures they always get the best pro-rate payout deal for their artists. However, the company also said that ElevenLabs outputs can’t directly copy an artist’s lyrics, song elements, or other aspects; it can only be used for training AI models.

“Our clients benefit directly from this agreement in several key ways: it opens a new revenue stream in a growing market, includes revenue sharing so they participate in the upside, provides strong safeguards against infringement and misuse, and offers favorable terms comparable to other publishing and recording rightsholders,” a representative from Kobalt told TechCrunch, stressing that artists must voluntarily opt-in for their music to be licensed for AI use.

In an expansion of its ethical AI music initiatives, ElevenLabs also selected SourceAudio as its preferred music licensing partner. SourceAudio, a leading sync platform with more than 4,000 music catalogs and 14 million pre-cleared tracks, will provide ElevenLabs with seamless, large-scale access to high-quality songs for responsible AI training.

“Our AI dataset licensing solution connects forward-thinking AI companies with a vast network of rights-cleared music hosted on our platform,” said Andrew Harding, CEO and Co-Founder of SourceAudio. “To meet the needs of ElevenLabs, we strategically aligned and activated many of our diverse and premium-quality catalogs. This partnership showcases how we’re solving complex music licensing challenges at scale, and doing it in ways that empower the commercial use cases AI companies like ElevenLabs are building.”