Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter
Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter
„Any application of AI at SoundCloud will be designed to support human artists, enhancing the tools, capabilities, reach and opportunities available to them on our platform,“ SoundCloud said.
By Ethan Millman
Music Editor
SoundCloud has issued a statement clarifying that it isn’t using artists’ content for generative AI music, following considerable backlash over a change some users noticed in the platform’s terms of service.
In a statement issued to The Hollywood Reporter on Friday, a spokesperson for SoundCloud said the platform “has never used artist content to train AI models, nor do we develop AI tools or allow third parties to scrape or use SoundCloud content from our platform for AI training purposes.”
“In fact, we implemented technical safeguards, including a ‘no AI’ tag on our site to explicitly prohibit unauthorized use,” the spokesperson said. The company said that “SoundCloud has always been and will remain artist-first,” adding that it believes AI can be a helpful creative tool for artists “especially when guided by principles of consent, attribution and fair compensation.”
Related Stories
SoundCloud’s statement comes following vocal criticism from some musicians and music industry advocates online after the platform’s updated terms of service had begun to make the rounds. The update said that users “explicitly agree that your content may be used to inform, train, develop or serve as input to artificial intelligence or machine intelligence technologies or services as part of and for providing the services.”
SoundCloud confirmed the terms of service had been updated in February 2024. SoundCloud said it updated the TOS “to clarify how content may interact with AI technologies within SoundCloud’s own platform.” Those uses, SoundCloud said “include personalized recommendations, content organization, fraud detection and improvements to content identification with the help of AI Technologies.”
AI music generation is among the hottest button issues in the industry; the major record labels sued prominent AI music generation platforms Suno and Udio last year on allegations of massive copyright infringement. That suit is ongoing.
SoundCloud said on Friday that “any application of AI at SoundCloud will be designed to support human artists, enhancing the tools, capabilities, reach and opportunities available to them on our platform.”
“Examples include improving music recommendations, generating playlists, organizing content and detecting fraudulent activity,” SoundCloud said. “These efforts are aligned with existing licensing agreements and ethical standards.”
Those services would align with some of the uses the company lists on the website for Musiio, an AI platform SoundCloud purchased in 2022. In SoundCloud’s statement, the company said that “tools like Musiio are strictly used to power artist discovery and content organization, not to train generative AI models.”
The uses SoundCloud lists are less controversial than music generation, though several musicians began sharing posts Friday encouraging other artists to consider taking their music off the platform.
If you’re a musician/composer/artist/band etc and have a @SoundCloud account, I’d urge you to consider whether it’s worth keeping your music on there. I’ve just deleted mine as they seem to be using the data to train AI systems without our permission. 🤬 #music #production pic.twitter.com/PHNTSDW7cj
Among the advocates voicing their concern Friday was Ed Newton-Rex, the founder of Fairly Trained, a non-profit that calls for AI companies to train their models ethically and with permission from the original content creators. Newton-Rex told THR Friday that he was still concerned in light of SoundCloud’s clarification, noting that the statement “doesn’t actually rule out SoundCloud training generative AI models on their users’ music in future.”
“This is particularly worrying because the terms of service clearly allow it,” Newton-Rex said. “I think it’s important they rule this out and update their terms accordingly. Otherwise I for one will be removing my music.”
A rep for SoundCloud said the terms of service “explicitly prohibits the use of licensed content, such as music from major labels, for training any AI models, including generative AI.”
For other types of content uploaded to SoundCloud, the TOS allows for the possibility of AI-related use,” The rep said. “Importantly, no such use has taken place to date, and SoundCloud will introduce robust internal permissioning controls to govern any potential future use. Should we ever consider using user content to train generative AI models, we would introduce clear opt-out mechanisms in advance — at a minimum — and remain committed to transparency with our creator community.”
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day
Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter
Send us a tip using our anonymous form.
