#021 | Scammer sells fake AI Generated Frank Ocean tracks on Discord for $13,000

Muse-Letter 021 - May 22, 2023

Yoooooo! What's up fam!

Welcome back to The Muse-Letter. Thanks for tuning in each week. This time we are looking at a scammer making money off of fake Frank Ocean songs, and Timbalands plans for commercializing AI voice filter technology.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles. I appreciate you having a read and being part of the Muse-Letter community. Without further ado, let's get into it.

This Week in Producer News 📰

Scammer Sells Fake AI-Generated Frank Ocean Songs for $13,000 on Discord

A user online by the name of “Mourningassasin’ has sold fake AI-generated tracks which they stated were by Frank Ocean for a total of $13,000.

The user advertised the fake “leaked” Ocean songs on Discord through a fan forum. The track's price ranges ranged from $3,000 to $4,000 (CAD). The scam was looked into by MOtherboard (Vice), and it was found that the profits totalled $13,000 before the user was stopped by moderators.

The owner of the Discord server, Gemma ended the scam and stated: “We determined just about everything he [Mourningassassin] has is fake,” in a server-wide announcement earlier this month (May).

Morningassasin told Motherboard that they hired a musician to produce around nine fake Frank Ocean tracks using a model made with “very high-quality vocal snippets” of the singer's voice to create tracks that sound like the real deal.

The scammer claims that one of the tracks is genuine, which they originally leaked as a way to create their creditability and trust before they started selling the fake tracks on the Discord community. This has not been confirmed by Ocean himself.

Ocean’s last album ‘Blond’ was released in 2016, but he has just recently headlined at the first weekend of the Coachella Festival last month. It was his first concert in nearly 6 six years but the live stream of the set was called off last minute, and Ocean only came on stage after fans waited an hour and were cut short due to curfew. It’s safe to say that fans were not too happy with the singer.

I think that’s why the “fake” tracks were so popular as fans of the artist were excited to get their hands on some new leaked songs from Ocean, but must’ve been very disappointed to find out they were AI knock-offs.

AI technology is continually growing more popular and threatening the authenticity of musicians and artists in the music industry. People are beginning to debate if AI can be used ethically in music. We know Universal Music Group asked that streaming services block AI companies from using songs from its catalogue to “train” their AIs just last month. Meanwhile, artists such as Grimes and David Guetta are encouraging the use of AI.

I, for one would like to see AI used honestly in the music industry as it holds so many possibilities for creatives to use as tools for music-making.

Article of the Week 📜

Timbaland Creating AI Startup To Bring People Like Biggie Back From the Dead

Having just been the subject of controversy after sharing a preview of himself collaborating on a track with the late rapper Biggie Smalls, Timbaland has come up with a plan to market AI software to transform how music is made.

The Grammy-winning music producer told Forbes that he has a plan to use AI in as a way to make money.

“It’s going to really be a new way of creating and a new way of generating money with fewer costs,” the famous producer told Forbes in an exclusive interview. “I’m already here. This is what I’m doing. I’m going to lead the way.”

Timbaland believes AI voice filters will help bring more opportunities for creativity in the music industry. AI voice filters can allow for an up-and-coming artist that might have a good flow or tempo but not the voice to match to actually generate success by taking on the great voice of another artist. As for already successful artists, they can share AI models of their voices with other artists to test out how they sound and save a lot of time. They can even make some money by allowing people to use their voices like Grimes has offered by splitting 50/50 royalties for any songs made with her voice.

A producer could get unique access to use the voice of “a music legend who’s no longer with us,” he said.

Timbaland says there are a lot of legal parts around copyrighting and revenue-sharing that need to be established before the future of music can proceed, but he’s currently working on an AI startup to get AI voice filter technology ready to sell.

Timbalands motivation for embracing AI voice filters so soon stems from the limited amount of Black Americans profiting from creating or investing in technologies that end up changing the world.

“We’re the culture man, so I at least got to come in the door,” he said. “Usually someone else gets to it and it blows up.”

The current question of AI is “Is it ethical?”. Even more so when we’re seeing artists like Biggie being brought back from the dead. Timbaland has said that he doesn’t intend on releasing the Biggie song, at least not without the consent of the late rapper’s estate. However, he does intend to commercialize the voice filter software that helped create it. Most of the quality of AI voices lately has been pretty amateur, but the software that was developed by Light Energy Labs has been refined to a point where the output is of high enough quality to use in a song.

Timbaland has decided that it’s time to go public with his project that solves AI: “I got a solution — I’ve been working on it — that’s going to be beneficial to everyone,” he told his 3.9 million Instagram followers on May 2. “In the meantime … I always wanted to work with Big, but I never got a chance to — until today. It came out right.”

I don’t think AI-generated songs are going to stop anytime soon, if anything, based on this news it’s only going to get more popular and be used more. The biggest thing is finding a way to make it as ethical as possible. There are artists that don’t want their voices being used but still are. After all the heat from the fake Drake and the Weeknd song, we know Drake is not into it. Since then, I have seen countless songs popping up with his voice being AI-generated. AI in music could be amazing and change the way of music, but we need to respect the boundaries.

I’m pumped to see what comes next with AI and who else in the industry is willing to share their thoughts and promote the new technology.

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Thanks for reading this week's newsletter. I hope you enjoyed it and look forward to providing you with more content that helps you level up throughout 2023. In the meantime, make sure to take a look at the top-quality sounds I use on my website! 👇🏿

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-Ocean