{"id":152225,"date":"2023-04-17T20:46:19","date_gmt":"2023-04-17T19:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=152225"},"modified":"2023-04-26T15:12:50","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T14:12:50","slug":"apple-music-deezer-tidal-pull-down-viral-ai-drake-and-the-weeknd-track","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/apple-music-deezer-tidal-pull-down-viral-ai-drake-and-the-weeknd-track\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Music, Deezer, TIDAL pull down viral AI ‘fake Drake and The Weeknd’ track (update)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In yet another sign that Drake\u2019s megastardom is nowhere near its end after more than a decade of topping the charts, the Canadian-born hip-hop artist has seen two new tracks go viral in just the past few days.<\/p>\n

But hang on \u2013 those aren\u2019t Drake tracks at all. They\u2019re AI-generated spoofs<\/a>, and they\u2019re the clearest sign yet of the headaches that AI audio tools are starting to cause the music industry.<\/p>\n

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As MBW reported earlier today<\/a> (April 17), one of these ‘fake Drake’ tracks is an\u00a0apparent original composition called heart on my sleeve<\/i>, created by an ‘artist’ called ghostwriter.<\/p>\n

It features AI vocals replicating the voices of both Drake and The Weeknd. And it has, via the help of an unknown distributor, made its way to numerous streaming platforms<\/a> including Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, Deezer, SoundCloud, and YouTube\/YouTube Music.<\/p>\n

Yet over the course of today, MBW has noticed that three of these streaming platforms \u2013 Apple Music<\/a>, Deezer<\/a>, and TIDAL<\/a> \u2013 appear to have pulled the track down.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: As of 18.40 ET, around 3 hours after this story was first published, the track is no longer available on Spotify.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the time of publication, heart on my sleeve<\/i>\u00a0remains available on YouTube\/YouTube Music<\/a> (where it has over 231k plays).<\/p>\n

It’s also still up on SoundCloud<\/a> (127k plays), and Spotify<\/a> \u2013 where it’s now surpassed 625k plays, while doubling its monthly active user count within 24 hours (see below).<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s not entirely clear right now is why<\/i> the track has been pulled down by Apple Music, Deezer, and TIDAL.<\/p>\n

An obvious answer might be due to a copyright complaint from a music rightsholder. But the copyright ownership of an original composition using AI-generated vocals that ‘borrow heavily’ from the voices of established superstars is… complicated.<\/p>\n

Especially if, as on Spotify, the uploaded metadata of the track doesn’t mention the names of said established superstars.<\/p>\n

Ghostwriter’s track does<\/em> mention Drake and\/or The Weeknd, however, on YouTube, SoundCloud and TikTok.<\/p>\n

Indeed, ghostwriter’s self-uploaded video clips on TikTok, all featuring the song, have now cumulatively racked up more than 15 million plays<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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One of ghostwriter (Ghostwriter977)’s uploads on TikTok has 9.9 million plays<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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If a copyright complaint is<\/em> responsible for triggering the takedown of heart on my sleeve <\/i>on Apple Music etc. it could potentially have something\u00a0 do with the famous recorded ‘tag’ of producer Metro Boomin\u2019: \u201cIf young Metro don\u2019t trust you, I\u2019m gon\u2019 shoot you.\u201d<\/p>\n

That tag, voiced by Future<\/a>, has appeared on multiple popular modern tracks<\/a>\u00a0including Kanye West’s Father Stretch My Hands Pt.1<\/em>, Drake & Future’s Jumpman<\/em>, Migos’ Bad and Boujee<\/em>, Big Sean’s Bounce Back<\/em>, and 21 Savage’s asmr<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It can also be heard at the start of ghostwriter’s heart on my sleeve<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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Besides heart on my sleeve<\/i>, another AI-driven piece of music going viral over the past few days is an unlicensed version of Ice Spice\u2019s Munch<\/em>, featuring \u201cDrake\u201d on vocals.<\/p>\n

Both Drake and The Weeknd are, of course, affiliated with Universal Music Group (UMG), with both artists releasing their recorded music via UMG’s Republic Records.<\/p>\n

In another social media snippet making the rounds this week, an AI ‘version’ of Rihanna \u2013 yet another UMG-affiliated superstar \u2013 can be heard singing Beyonce\u2019s hit Cuff It<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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According to a report in the Financial Times last week<\/a>, Universal Music Group (UMG) has asked streaming platforms including Spotify and Apple Music to block access to their content to any AI platform looking to ‘scrape’ their copyrights.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will not hesitate to take steps to protect our rights and those of our artists,\u201d UMG wrote to DSPs in March, as quoted by the FT.<\/p>\n

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A Universal Music Group complaint to YouTube recently saw a ‘cat-rap’ video taken down that contained vocals that replicated, via AI, the sound of Eminem’s voice.<\/p>\n

The UMG complaint in that case, MBW understands<\/a>, was for infringement of the music behind the vocals, rather than the vocals themselves.<\/p>\n

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UMG entered into<\/a> new agreements with both TIDAL and Deezer earlier this year, under which all parties intend to explore new artist royalty payout models for streaming music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ghostwriter’s heart on my sleeve has now surpassed 625,000 plays on Spotify<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":152239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}