Meta’s AudioCraft AI music tool could cut multiple revenue streams for musicians

Meta has launched AdudioCraft, a free generative AI text-to-audio and music tool, and announced that it is open-sourcing it for research purposes “to help advance the field of AI-generated audio.”

AudioCraft consists of three models: MusicGen, AudioGen, and EnCodec.

• MusicGen was trained with Meta-owned and licensed music to generate music from text prompts.
• AudioGen trained on public sound effects to generate audio from text prompts, including models that generate environmental sounds and sound effects like a dog barking, cars honking, or footsteps on a wooden floor.
• EnCodec has been updated to generate higher-quality music generation with fewer artifacts.

Meta’s Pitch and the Real World Consequences

Meta’s Pitch: “Imagine a professional musician being able to explore new compositions without having to play a single note on an instrument. Or a small business owner adding a soundtrack to their latest video ad on Instagram with ease. That’s the promise of AudioCraft –  our latest AI tool that generates high-quality, realistic audio and music from text.”

Two examples:

Text Prompt: Earthy tones, environmentally conscious, ukulele-infused, harmonic, breezy, easygoing, organic instrumentation, gentle grooves

Meta is not the only company with music AI tools, and while listening to the samples above, I was struck that this will inevitably lead to a steep drop in soundtrack work, tracks sold to stock music libraries, and sync placements in general.

Each of these has become an increasingly important source of revenue for musicians struggling to survive in the age of streaming that AI music is set to upend.

Meta has more about AudioCraft here.

ALSO: The life cycle of a Sync placement

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