In today’s rapidly evolving music AI landscape, much of the spotlight falls on what major rights holders and tech conglomerates will do next. After all, these powerhouses possess the vast amounts of training data (read: music catalog) and the computing resources that are crucial to supporting the next wave of innovation in music AI models and tools. Recent announcements like YouTube’s new music AI incubator with Universal Music Group, Meta’s open-source audio generation suite AudioCraft, and ByteDance’s new AI-powered music creation tool Ripple suggests that momentum around large-scale music AI deals is quickening pace, at an unprecedented commercial scale.

Yet, amidst all this activity, one pioneer that has been silently pushing boundaries for years remains surprisingly under-discussed.

Sony Computer Science Laboratories (SonyCSL), a research organization under Sony Corporation, has been quietly experimenting with creative AI tools for over 35 years. Crucially, they are also one of the only music AI research groups that already has a direct collaborative relationship with a major label, in a landscape where negotiations between rights holders and AI companies seem to be getting more heated.

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