SoundCloud Paves The Way For AI-Created Music With Trio Of Innovative Partnerships

The utilization of AI as a creative tool in music is transcending the periphery of the music industry and rapidly gaining prominence in mainstream applications.

In November, YouTube, under the ownership of Google, initiated an 'experiment' for Shorts named DreamTrack, enabling creators to produce music featuring the AI-generated voice and style of renowned artists like Alec Benjamin, Charlie Puth, Charli XCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Sia, T-Pain, Troye Sivan, and Papoose.

Expanding on this trend, SoundCloud has forged partnerships with three music technology companies – Fadr, Soundful, and Voice–Swap. These collaborations empower artists to directly upload songs created with AI tools to the SoundCloud platform, marking a significant milestone in SoundCloud's commitment to empowering its artists.

Simultaneously, SoundCloud has unveiled new methods to prevent AI abuse and protect its artists. By blocking AI bots from crawling its site and training models on its catalog, SoundCloud aims to address potential challenges related to generative AI's rapid rise and offer protection to rightsholders.

Soundful AI, one of SoundCloud's AI creator partners, targets content creators, artists, producers, brands, and creative agencies, enabling the creation of original music in seconds using artificial intelligence. Powered by AI algorithms human-trained and guided by music theory, Soundful recently secured early investments from notable figures in the music industry, including 3LAU, Axwell, Kaskade, and Steve Angello.

Fadr, another AI creator partner, features various AI music tools, including a vocal remover, song splitter, key/tempo/chords detector, remix maker, and mashup maker. Promising to empower users of all experience levels to create mashups and remixes, Fadr aims to democratize music creation.

Voice-Swap, SoundCloud's third AI creator partner, allows musicians to transform vocal stems using generative AI to match the style of licensed artist voices. With over 115,000 users, Voice-Swap ensures every artist on its roster is officially licensed and receives a fair 50/50 split for the use of their AI-generated voice.

The upcoming integrations will enable artists to share newly created songs to SoundCloud via these platforms, with a built-in "Upload to SoundCloud" option within each individual tool. Songs uploaded through these AI tools will be automatically tagged to indicate the tool used, providing transparency to the creative process. Additionally, artists will have the flexibility to edit their newly uploaded tracks directly from their SoundCloud profile page.

SoundCloud positions these new integrations as a continuation of its commitment to collaborating with third-party music-making tools, following previous partnerships with Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) such as GarageBand and FL Studio.