Jermaine Dupri questions why the music industry has repeatedly bowed to the wishes of the tech world. The Songwriters Hall of Fame member was excited to learn about Udio, an artificial intelligence music generator that claims to be able to create a song in 40 seconds.
“Why do we continue to have or allow people from different backgrounds, people from different walks of life, people from different walks of life and all these people to come into our business – the music business – and disrupt our business?” JD asked. “And then told us this is what we should do. We started playing by their rules. I didn’t understand this for a long time… now it’s starting to become more obvious. It’s the same reason [Universal Music Group CEO] Lucian [Grainge] Unplugged f###### TikTok, but you should. That’s what I’m talking about. I don’t understand why we keep allowing this to happen.
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is one of the investors behind Udio. Dupree criticized his friend Chris Lyons, a So So Def alum who works at Andreessen Horowitz, for the company’s support of artificial intelligence music generators. JD thinks Udio is an insult to musicians.
“To me, it’s very disrespectful to people who have been playing music their whole lives, taking piano lessons, keyboard lessons, guitar lessons,” he said. “We allowed a group of people who may not be musicians, who don’t care about musicians, to say, ‘We made an app so that everyone and anyone can make music and become music masters.'” Those were the words they used. I don’t agree with this view.
He added, “You can’t do this to the NBA. They won’t do it to football. They won’t do it to any business because business won’t allow that to happen. Why do we continue to do this?
Udio was developed by former Google DeepMind researchers. The application is supported by Common, Tay Keith, will.i.am and Steve Stoute’s UnitedMasters.
