Spotify’s licensed AI remix and covers tool just picked up its second major backer. Merlin — the licensing body representing more than 30,000 independent labels and distributors — was announced to have signed on Aug. 4, joining Universal Music Group, which struck the original deal back in May.
Together, the two agreements now span both major-label and independent catalogs, meaning Spotify’s tool has real inventory across most of the market it needs, even without Sony or Warner yet on board.
The forthcoming product is a paid Spotify Premium add-on that lets fans generate AI covers and remixes using songs from artists who’ve opted in, with credit and revenue share built in. It’s not generative music from scratch — it’s the much-hyped Active Listening application of AI, with fans reshaping music they already love, inside a consent framework, rather than passively streaming it.
Spotify was clear this isn’t a full-industry rollout. Co-CEO Gustav Söderström told investors on the Aug. 4 Q2 2026 earnings call that Spotify doesn’t need every major label signed before it moves. “If you go back to the beginning of Spotify, Spotify started without significant parts of the catalog,” Söderström said, noting that artists like The Beatles and Metallica joined the service years after launch. Despite this being AI-powered, Co-CEO Alex Norström said, “Our products are about real artists, not fake artists. And in the case of remix, real artists with real voices.”
While there’s no launch date yet, the next step is a research preview for a subset of users. The licensing base, meanwhile, is real and growing.
ElevenLabs is looking for a Head of Music
ElevenLabs has posted a Head of Music role, a new position that will own product, licensing, marketing, partnerships, and sales for ElevenLabs’ music tools across three very different audiences — enterprise clients, artists, and everyday consumers. In the job listing, the company says it wants to be “the defining AI music company,” and this hire is meant to get them there. The role is remote but based ideally in San Francisco, New York, or London, and ElevenLabs is looking for someone with real relationships across labels and publishers.
Suno adds watermarks — and vinyl
Suno isn’t slowing down after the landmark GEMA ruling — but it is tightening the guardrails. The company unveiled inaudible watermarking, stricter download limits aimed at mass distribution, and updated Community Guidelines banning voice cloning and copycat prompts. On the product side, Voices is now live on mobile, while Suno also teased something much more analog: custom vinyl pressings of Suno songs for $45 + shipping, with up to 46 minutes of audio and custom sleeve art.
Warner CEO says why Klay hasn't launched
On Warner Music Group’s Aug. 5 earnings call, CEO Robert Kyncl was asked why Klay — the AI-powered Active Listening music platform Warner, Universal, and Sony licensed their catalogs to back in November — still hasn't launched. His answer: it’s not artists refusing to participate. It's “permissioning” — the slow, artist-by-artist work of clearing name, voice, and song rights before any AI platform can actually turn on. Kyncl said WMG is working its highest-ROI deals first and will “get to the rest as capacity allows.” Klay's eventual launch date will be the real test of how fast that backlog clears.
Artists are starting to admit the AI part
Three chart-adjacent projects went public about AI in their music this week, enough that it’s becoming a trend. Tyga confirmed to VIBE that he used AI — although he didn’t name a specific platform — on his $tarface album for ‘80s synths and a guitar solo, insisting the writing and vocals are his own. He compared the AI backlash to early pushback against Auto-Tune. Fenix Flexin, who initially denied using AI on “RUBBERZ” (peaked at No. 58 on the Hot 100), has changed his story two months later, acknowledging AI was involved while saying it wasn't part of the recording process. And producer AG Cook revealed on the Tape Notes podcast that he and Finn Keane built the glitchy back half of Charli XCX’s “No One Lasts Forever” using an AI plugin called Concatenator — not a generative tool, but one that rearranges audio you feed it, reassembling fragments of their own hardware jam by matching tone and pitch.
AI music rules start getting formalized
Two regulatory moves this week show governments, not just industry bodies, drawing lines around AI music. In South Korea, KOMCA — the country’s largest music copyright collective — ended its blanket ban on AI-assisted music and launched a formal registration framework. It will now register works where a human played a substantial role in the writing, composition or arrangement, while purely AI-generated works remain ineligible. That puts an increasingly familiar distinction — AI-assisted versus AI-generated — directly into the rules governing registration and royalties in one of the world’s biggest music markets.
Meanwhile in Europe, new AI Act transparency rules took effect Aug. 2. Providers of generative AI systems must make AI-generated audio, images, video and text detectable in machine-readable form, while certain AI-generated or manipulated content — including deepfakes — must also be visibly disclosed to audiences. Existing systems get until Dec. 2 to meet some of the marking requirements. Violations can carry fines of up to €15 million or 3% of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher.
🎧 Song of the Day: “The Fifth Path” by Jestress
This high-energy, angsty track by Jestress is accompanied by a well-developed music video concept: a rejected daughter of Nyx storms the Celestial Court to defend the exiled master who taught her that outsiders don't need permission to become powerful.
💬 Last Word
“When someone says AI is doing ‘most of the work,’ I think we’re measuring the wrong work.”
— AI Music Creator Ron DesJarlais, via LinkedIn
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Written by Marcus Lawrence, courtesy of composition platform Versey.ai
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