Sharooz Raoofi

Took a System 100 modular, a battered old Pearl drum kit, some odd vocal grunts and an entire rack of Space Echoes and made my first record in almost a year. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed making it x principleasure.bandcamp.com/track/system-1…

@RIAA @udiomusic 👌🏼

@RIAA response to @udiomusic ⬇️

@udiomusic If you’re not licensing legally you’re thieves.

Today, we'd like to share some thoughts on AI and the future of music. In the past two years, AI has become a powerful tool for creative expression across many media—from text to images to film, and now music. At Udio, our mission is to empower artists of all kinds to create extraordinary music. In our young life as a company, we have sat in the studios of some of the world’s greatest musicians, workshopped lyrics with up-and-coming songwriters, and watched as millions of users created extraordinary new music, ranging from the funny to the profound. We have heard from a talented musician who, after losing the ability to use his hands, is now making music again. Producers have sampled AI-generated tracks to create hit songs, like ‘BBL Drizzy’, and everyday music-lovers have used the technology to express the gamut of human emotions from love to sorrow to joy. Groundbreaking technologies entail change and uncertainty. Let us offer some insight into how our technology works. Generative AI models, including our music model, learn from examples. Just as students listen to music and study scores, our model has ‘listened’ to and learned from a large collection of recorded music. The goal of model training is to develop an understanding of musical ideas—the basic building blocks of musical expression that are owned by no one. Our system is explicitly designed to create music reflecting new musical ideas. We are completely uninterested in reproducing content in our training set, and in fact, have implemented and continue to refine state-of-the-art filters to ensure our model does not reproduce copyrighted works or artists’ voices. We stand behind our technology and believe that generative AI will become a mainstay of modern society. Virtually every new technological development in music has initially been greeted with apprehension, but has ultimately proven to be a boon for artists, record companies, music publishers, technologists, and the public at large. Synthesizers, drum machines, digital recording technology, and the sound recording itself are all examples of once-controversial music creation tools that were feared in their early days. Yet each of these innovations ultimately expanded music as an art and as a business, leading to entirely new genres of music and billions of dollars in the pockets of artists, songwriters and the record labels and music publishers who profit from their creations. We know that many musicians—especially the next generation—are eager to use AI in their creative workflows. In the near future, artists will compose music alongside their fans, amateur musicians will create entirely new musical genres, and talented creators—regardless of means—will be able to scale the heights of the music industry. The future of music will see more creative expression than ever before. Let us use this watershed moment in technology to expand the circle of creators, empower artists, and celebrate human creativity.

@NicoleMoudaber With everything going on in the world right now you’d think there’d be a bit of courtesy and common sense amongst DJs. But nah, this is DJs we’re talking about

The strangest thing happened to me last night at Movement Detroit. After the rain stopped they called me up to come play at 10pm, I rushed over there, my table was ready to be plugged in but the dj that was supposed to play after me didn’t want to move his set up to accommodate me. As a result, I didn’t play, there was complete silence for a whole hour while people were waiting for the music to start again. I have dismantled set ups in the past because of rude behaviour I did not do it this time because I love Movement and the people behind it Absolutely shocking to say the least. I know a lot of people came to see me and I’m sorry this has happened. We continue tonight with the after party at Magic Stick 🤟🏽

@ednewtonrex Wrote about this yesterday and some of the responses were mind blowing. “Who needs copyright anyway, copyright is done” type posts. There’s a weird insinuation that stealing or giving little regard to training data legitimacy makes you some kind of maverick visionary.

What may be most depressing about this huge fundraise from Suno is the example it sets to other AI music startups. The message it sends them is clear. If your output resembles copyrighted music; if you won’t reveal your training data or engage publicly on this in any way; if one of your investors says you didn’t have licenses in place when you got going and that you might get sued; if recent reporting suggests you didn’t have licenses with the major labels in place as late as two months ago (with no further news since then); then you can raise $125M, the biggest investment round in AI music ever, from some of the biggest VCs and names in AI - making your founders paper multimillionaires in the process. Honestly feel like this is a very bad day for both tech and music.

@VancityReynolds Fantastic. Love everything about this story ❤️

A few years ago, if you told me I would be crying tears of joy over a football match taking place in North Wales, you would be Rob McElhenney. Congrats to Wrexham and to my co-chairman in crime. Double up the town! This is the ride of our lives. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

"Platforms don't need to be complex, or for someone to be hoovering up that much of the income": Wavetick on their new artist and producer-focused sample marketplace trib.al/nmr8GNy

Step up your music game with revenue wisdom from Sharooz Raoofi. magneticmag.com/2024/02/earnin…

Wavetick (@wavetickmusic) launches, offering a marketplace for royalty-free music with 600k+ downloads. Promises creators 87.5% of fees and rights retention. musically.com/2024/02/28/wav… #Wavetick #MusicLicensing #RoyaltyFreeMusic #musically #musicnews #readmore

Licensable Music Marketplace Wavetick launches with industry-leading sales shares for creators and instant payouts musicconnection.com/licensable-mus…

Wavetick founder Sharooz Raoofi discusses how to get started generating income as an upcoming producer, with Magentic Magazine magneticmag.com/2024/02/earnin…

@ramthelinefeed @WeAreTheMU How are their views not aligned with diversity and inclusion?

@WeAreTheMU Be intrigued to read the MU's analysis of how Kneecap's 'political views' are aligned with the union's equality, diversity & inclusion policies.😄

The MU is deeply troubled by reports that rap group Kneecap had their MEGS grant blocked by the UK Government It shouldn’t be for the government to decide what art is worthy of funding, what artists should think, or what the subject of their art should be

Grateful for the incredibly kind words and news pieces in the past few weeks on Wavetick. Huge thanks to Sound on Sound, Music Tech, Future Music, Bedroom Producers Blog and the many others. We’re just getting started

SOS NEWS! @wavetickmusic is a new music marketplace established by former Splice executive and Sample Magic founder Sharooz Raoofi. The service provides a quick and easy way to purchase or sell copyright-free beats, whilst providing clear flexible terms sosm.ag/Wavetick

We’ve had 600,000 individual sound downloads on Wavetick in 6 weeks. While I’m incredibly proud of our team, it’s just the start.. there’s so much more to our platform. Limited edition works, one price for ALL use tracks, instant selling, i can go on.. wavetick.com

A friendly reminder you can sell beats and sound packs on @wavetickmusic, receive over 85% of sales income, get paid instantly,l and cancel any time. It’s free to use and you can set your own pricing. 50/50 is a bullshit concept. Don’t stand for it. wavetick.com/sell

I hear many people say it's unrealistic to expect all creators behind training data to receive micropayments whenever a generative AI model trained on their work is used. This strikes me as being a very weak argument. First, it's a straw man: there are many different business models for training data licensing. To name a few: upfront payment, payment upon training, equal revenue share, weighted revenue share based on impact on output, equity-for-data. Making out there's just one proposed solution is intentional misdirection. Second, it suggests it's not already happening. This is false. There are already a number of gen AI companies who take exactly this approach. Third, it suggests that payments to a large number of creative contributors is an impossible problem to solve. It's not: there are existing mechanisms in place that do precisely this outside of generative AI. And fourth, it often comes as part of a suggestion that the responsibility should be on the creative industries to work out how to license their content to gen AI companies. But this has it backwards. It is not incumbent on creators to create business models that work for the gen AI industry. If gen AI companies need training data, it is their job to propose licensing structures that make it worth creators' while.

@Blessed_Madonna This is beautiful, good on you guys!

@Louth @wavetickmusic Thanks!

Excited to launch @wavetickmusic today. A marketplace for buying / selling licensable tracks and sounds. Users keep 90% income with instant payouts and can sell 1 of 1, limited and unlimited beats. Our commission is just 12.5%. Let’s put creators first! wavetick.com