Earlier this month, Spotify announced a new deal with Universal Music Group, the biggest of the big three, to add a feature “allowing fans to create covers and remixes of their favorite songs from participating artists and songwriters.” The tool, “powered by generative AI,” promises to “open up additional revenue streams” and “new ways to drive discovery.” Users will have to pay to access it, the companies said, with some of that money going to participating artists. On Spotify, according to the company’s co-CEO, the feature will allow “one song to become 10,000 songs.”

It’s obvious enough what’s in this for Spotify. The streaming giant can offer a legally sanctioned sharing economy that is accessible only on its service. If instantly remixing popular music becomes the next big thing, they get a bigger listenership and more subscription revenue and their platform becomes even harder to escape. And if this doesn’t turn out to be something people want, well, no big deal.

But what about the record labels? In the announcement, UMG suggested that this was just another example of “leading the industry through technology changes” and that this deal was an example of “responsible AI” in a time when many of the label’s artists are worried about it. In an interview with the Financial Times, Spotify’s co-CEO Alex Norström was less subtle. “There’s a lot of rogue attempts at this,” he said. Spotify can be “the one that’s legal,” he continued, and “the one that’s controlled,” in contrast to........

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