LANDR’s ‘Fair Trade AI’ Program Lets Musicians Earn Money by Contributing to AI Training

AI-focused music production, distribution and education platform LANDR has devised a new way for musicians to capitalize on the incoming AI age with consent and compensation in mind. With its new Fair Trade AI program, any musician who wishes to join can be part of this growing pool of songs that will be used to train LANDR’s various AI models, tools or systems. Dubbed the “music industry’s first mature opt-in attribution model,” the team at LANDR feels this is a viable route to get artists a new recurring revenue stream and to help it develop next generation AI music technology at the same time.

LANDR has been in the AI music space since it launched an early AI mastering solution in 2013. Now the company has grown to provide a much larger suite of tools, offering everything from distribution services, educational courses, plug-ins, mastering and more. Participating artists will receive 20% of the revenue generated by LANDR’s tools — whether it is an AI plugin, mobile app or cloud service — that make use of this dataset in its training. Musicians can also add in new music to the dataset over time, growing the share in that 20% of the revenue pie that they will receive from being part of the dataset.

Though LANDR plans to license their AI tools to third parties, the firm has no plans to sell or license this dataset out to other AI music companies. “It’s the best of both worlds,” says Daniel Rowland, head of strategy and partnerships of LANDR. “Our users benefit, without their data being directly in the hands of numerous companies — it stays with us.”

While any musician is able to submit their music, LANDR reserves the right to curate the tracks added to the dataset, and every track submitted must be done by a musician who owns their full publishing rights. Musicians that use LANDR’s distribution services can opt-in to the Fair Trade AI program especially quickly by simply checking a box as they go through the steps of releasing their music. Users can also opt-out at any time from the program, however, their works will remain part of the dataset until the next training cycle, which occurs every 2-3 months.

Pascal Pilon, founder of LANDR, says of the new program: “Our mission at LANDR is to empower musicians to create, get heard and monetize their work. As we’ve watched the emergence of new generative AI tools over the last year and the legal challenges ahead for the indsutry, we now see an opportunity to use our reach to bring the market to a place that is sound and exciting for DIY musicians worldwide, while developing assistive tools to enhance — not replace — their creativity and workflow.”