While some AI music companies have focused on churning the soulless slop that’s overrunning Spotify with spam, Claimy is doing something different.
The Paris startup, which recently announced a $1.8m funding round, is using AI to help human musicians and publishers reclaim unpaid royalties.
Royalties…
… are payments made to creators and copyright holders any time their music is sold or used. That includes physical media sales; TV, film, advertising, and game syncs; radio and streaming play; and “public performance” fees from clubs, hotels, restaurants, or other venues where their music is played.
Fun fact: The Black Eyed Peas’ inescapable club anthem “Boom Boom Pow” generated $860k just in public performance fees, but the most lucrative song of all time is… “Happy Birthday.”
But Claimy estimates that 30% of music royalties are never paid to recipients, resulting in billions lost, per Music Business Worldwide.
Why?
Per MBW, outdated infrastructure and missing data have led to a breakdown in tracking who is owed what.
Claimy’s system:
- Analyzes rightsholders’ catalogs for info on every version of a song — remixes, acoustic, live, sped-up, slowed-down, etc.
- Compares payment reports and catalogs and automatically reports discrepancies to collecting agencies.
- Offers insights on users’ music use and expected payments.
Claimy currently focuses on publishing rights in France and the UK, and manages rights for musicians including pop icon Celine Dion.
It will use its latest funding round to expand to more European countries and eventually the US, and other types of rights usage.
And that’s not all
Like every other industry on the planet, AI is making a move:
NYC-based Musicinfra, an AI-powered clearinghouse founded in 2023 that claims to increase payouts and streamline connections between rights holders and music users, announced a $5m funding round last month.
Of course, there is another question with all this AI music business: Music that is entirely AI-generated cannot be copyrighted in the US, but will human musicians receive compensation for the models that train on their work?
