Grimes offers AI creators a 50% royalty split for using her voice

Grimes is embracing AI music at a time when most other major artists and their labels are pushing the panic button with an offer to split royalties with any AI creator using her voice.

While clearly a work in progress, Grimes’ vision for AI music goes well beyond an “if you can’t beat them, join them” mentality.

“I’ll split 50% royalties on any successful AI-generated song that uses my voice,” Grimes tweeted on Sunday. “Same deal as I would with any artist i collab with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings.”

“We expect a certain amount of chaos. grimes is an art project, not a music project,” she continued in a later post.. “The ultimate goal has always been to push boundaries rather than have a nice song. The point is to poke holes in the simulation and see what happens even if it’s a bad outcome for us.”

Some Restrictions

There are some limits: “Ok hate this part but we may do copyright takedowns ONLY for rly rly toxic lyrics w grimes voice: imo you’d rly have to push it for me to wanna take smthn down but I guess plz don’t be *the worst*. as in, try not to exit the current Overton window of lyrical content w regards to sex/violence. Like no baby murder songs plz.”

How will it work?

“We’re making a program that should simulate my voice well but we could also upload stems and samples for ppl to train their own,” wrote Grimes.

Then later, she added, “Talking with my team: if u register music with us we can collect & pay out royalties direct to anyone who uses A.I. Grimes vocals using smart contracts!? The future rly is now! this is so cool. Working on a way to register and easily access vocals thru elf.tech.

Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank, a Senior Advisor at Bandsintown, President of the Skyline Artists Agency, and a professor for the Berklee College Of Music.