License for AI services

Stim has a positive view on the opportunities of AI and supports development through a license tailored to AI company needs. We closely follow market developments and consider our license as a potential competitive advantage.

AI technology has the potential to enable new and exciting business models based on copyright, a kind of creative explosion where hundreds of millions of people around the world can create music using these new tools.

Stim represents songwriters and music publishers in matters relating to the copyright of musical works. If your AI service uses music to train an AI model you need a license both for the musical works and for the recordings. 

Stim typically only licenses the musical works (compositions) and assumes that you, as the licensee, has separately obtained the necessary rights to the sound recordings (master rights) from the appropriate rightsholders, such as a record label or a rights management organization. However, this initial license version also includes master rights for a selected catalogue, meaning that both composition and master rights are bundled into a single agreement. This bundle may not apply to all future licensing agreements. 

The license grants you, as the licensee, permission to analyze musical structures, patterns, and metadata, as well as extract a generalized understanding of the works for the purpose of training an AI model. If the model is to be retrained in a new version or requires further training, a new license must be obtained. 

The license also enables users of your AI service to generate music, for instance through a subscription model. It may also allow users to distribute the generated music to third parties, such as streaming services. 

The license does not, in its basic form, include sublicensing to third parties for the use of generated music in large-scale advertising campaigns, or in television, radio, or film productions, or other similar types of exploitation. Such uses require a separate agreement between the parties in each individual case. 

As an AI company, you under the license commit to: 

• Secure ownership of the generated music in your terms of use, 
• Clearly define allowed uses of generated music in your terms of use, and prohibit all other use, 
• Use an attribution provider approved by the licensor that can analyze the generated music and determine which music recordings and associated works have influenced it, to what extent, and provide Stim with these analyses, including requested data keys such as ISWC, 
• Ensure that payment from third parties for the use of the generated music is collected and that compensation is paid accordingly, 
• Ensure that the output is classified as AI-generated in accordance with industry practice, and that it doesn’t erode the royalty pool from which conventional music is remunerated. 

If you are an AI company and would like to know more, you are welcome to contact Simon Gozzi, Head of Business Development & Industry Insight at STIM: [email protected]  

If you are a songwriter, composer or music publisher, find more information here.