{"id":237553,"date":"2025-08-05T13:47:57","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T12:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=237553"},"modified":"2025-08-05T13:47:57","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T12:47:57","slug":"eleven-music-new-ai-rival-to-suno-launches-with-merlin-kobalt-licensing-deals-in-the-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/eleven-music-new-ai-rival-to-suno-launches-with-merlin-kobalt-licensing-deals-in-the-bag\/","title":{"rendered":"Eleven Music, new AI rival to Suno, launches with Kobalt, Merlin deals \u2013 and warnings for users who want to infringe copyrights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AI audio company ElevenLabs has launched Eleven Music \u2013 a platform that&#8217;s said to generate &#8220;studio-grade music&#8221; from &#8220;natural language prompts&#8221; \u2013 after striking partnerships with independent music licensing organization Merlin and publisher Kobalt.<\/p>\n<p>London and New York-based <a href=\"https:\/\/elevenlabs.io\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>ElevenLabs<\/strong><\/a> announced the launch on Tuesday (August 5), marking its expansion beyond voice synthesis into full AI music generation.<\/p>\n<p>According to a press release, <strong>Eleven Music<\/strong> enables users to create tracks across any genre or style, with or without vocals, in numerous languages&#8230; within minutes.<\/p>\n<p>As such, <strong>Eleven Music<\/strong> enters the busy generative AI music space, competing with <strong>Suno and Udio<\/strong>.<\/p>\n      <div class=\"mb-advert__incontent\">      <div class=\"mb-advert mb-advert__tweeny hidden-xs hidden-ms hidden-sm\" data-loaded=\"no\" data-sizes=\"992 1200 1440\" data-name=\"628x90 Sponsor banner #5 (992+1200+1440)\" data-params=\"dfp_sponsor5_628\" id=\"dfp_sponsor5_628\"><\/div>      <div class=\"mb-advert mb-advert__banner mb-advert__banner--inline hidden-xs hidden-sm hidden-md hidden-lg\" data-loaded=\"no\" data-sizes=\"480\" data-name=\"468x60 Sponsor banner #5 (480)\" data-params=\"dfp_sponsor5_468\" id=\"dfp_sponsor5_468\"><\/div>      <div class=\"mb-advert mb-advert__mobile mb-advert__mobile--inline hidden-ms hidden-md hidden-lg\" data-loaded=\"no\" data-sizes=\"320 768\" data-name=\"300x50 Sponsor banner #5 (320+768)\" data-params=\"dfp_sponsor5_300\" id=\"dfp_sponsor5_300\"><\/div>      <\/div>      \n<p>Unlike those two platforms, however, <strong>Eleven Music<\/strong> is already inking licensing agreements with major rightsholders. Said rightsholders are convinced their works are being duly protected&#8230; and compensated.<\/p>\n<p>Its media release today (August 5) stated: &#8220;Eleven Music was built in partnership with artists, labels, and publishers, and includes guardrails to protect rightsholders.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Laurent Hubert<\/strong>, CEO of Kobalt, said: &#8220;Our songwriters and clients entrust us to ensure that the AI revolution includes both strong protections for their intellectual property rights for AI training, as well as forward-looking and thoughtful opportunities to participate in AI revenue streams, subject to clear and fair guardrails.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;ElevenLabs has been a collaborative partner, committed to sourcing data directly from rightsholders and protecting them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>With that in mind, it&#8217;s interesting to scan <strong>Eleven Music&#8217;s<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/elevenlabs.io\/music-terms\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">terms and conditions<\/a> for making tunes on its platform.<\/p>\n<p>Under <strong>&#8216;Prohibited Inputs&#8217;<\/strong>, users agree that they are &#8220;expressly prohibited&#8221; from submitting any of the following prompts:<\/p>\n<ul><li><em><strong>\u00a0Any artist&#8217;s (whether living or deceased) real name or stage name;<\/strong><\/em><\/li><li><em><strong>Any songwriter&#8217;s (whether living or deceased) real name or stage name;<\/strong><\/em><\/li><li><em><strong>Any song title;<\/strong><\/em><\/li><li><em><strong>Any album title;<\/strong><\/em><\/li><li><em><strong>Any music publisher company&#8217;s name;<\/strong><\/em><\/li><li><em><strong>Any music label&#8217;s name; or<\/strong><\/em><\/li><li><em><strong>A substantial or distinct portion of any song&#8217;s lyrics such that a reasonable person would determine the prompt was intended to reference a particular song.<\/strong><\/em><\/li><\/ul>\n<p>In addition, the <strong>T&#8217;s and C&#8217;s<\/strong> prohibit deliberate infringement of rightsholders&#8217; music rights \u2013 and deep-fakery:<\/p>\n<ul><li><em><strong>Customer shall not prompt or induce Music to generate Output that is known or is reasonably likely to infringe any third party&#8217;s intellectual property or other protected rights.<\/strong><\/em><\/li><li><em><strong>Customer must not deploy any Output that it knew or should have known would or is reasonably likely to infringe a third party&#8217;s intellectual property or other protected rights.<\/strong><\/em><\/li><li><em><strong>Customer shall not prompt Music to generate Output that replicates or mimics the voice, likeness, or identifiable characteristics of any recording artist in a manner that is likely to be found misleading, confusing, or implies a false impression of association or endorsement.<\/strong><\/em><\/li><\/ul>\n      <div class=\"mb-advert__incontent\">      <div class=\"mb-advert mb-advert__spu\" data-loaded=\"no\" data-name=\"300x250 Sponsor MPU #1\" data-params=\"dfp_spu1\" id=\"dfp_spu1\"><\/div>      <\/div>      \n<p>ElevenLabs says its partnerships with<strong> Kobalt and Merlin<\/strong> will enable &#8220;premier artists and songwriters&#8221; represented by both organizations to participate in developing Eleven Music Pro, a subsequent model planned for release in the coming months.<\/p>\n<p>Kobalt&#8217;s<strong> Hubert<\/strong> added, &#8220;ElevenLabs has been a collaborative partner, committed to sourcing data directly from rightsholders and protecting them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are excited about this partnership and seeing ElevenLabs become a pioneer in licensing premium music for its Music Pro offering. <strong>Kobalt<\/strong> looks forward to working with our songwriters and partners who wish to be part of this opportunity with ElevenLabs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The launch represents a natural progression for ElevenLabs, which was founded in 2022 by CEO <strong>Mati Staniszewski<\/strong> and CTO<strong> Piotr D\u0105bkowski<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><figure class=\"mbw-articlepic mbw-articlepic--right\"><a class=\"link-internal\" href=\"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/files\/2023\/04\/HubertLaurent-Headshot.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/files\/2023\/04\/HubertLaurent-Headshot.jpeg\" data-lightbox=\"image-set\" data-title=\"\"><img  class=\"lazyload\" src=\"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/files\/2023\/04\/HubertLaurent-Headshot-80x100.jpeg\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/files\/2023\/04\/HubertLaurent-Headshot-80x100.jpeg 80w, https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/files\/2023\/04\/HubertLaurent-Headshot-160x200.jpeg 160w, https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/files\/2023\/04\/HubertLaurent-Headshot-320x400.jpeg 320w, https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/files\/2023\/04\/HubertLaurent-Headshot-418x523.jpeg 418w, https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/files\/2023\/04\/HubertLaurent-Headshot-648x810.jpeg 648w, https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/files\/2023\/04\/HubertLaurent-Headshot-836x1045.jpeg 836w, https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/files\/2023\/04\/HubertLaurent-Headshot-1296x1620.jpeg 1296w\" data-sizes=\"auto\"><i class=\"fas fa-search-plus magnifying-glass-icon\"><\/i><\/a><\/figure><p>&#8220;ElevenLabs has been a collaborative partner, committed to sourcing data directly from rightsholders and protecting them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Laurent Hubert, Kobalt<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>To date, it&#8217;s been best known for its AI voiceover and voice agent tech, which it claims is used by\u00a0millions of individuals and thousands of businesses, including employees from over 72% of the Fortune 500.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As an AI audio company, expanding into music was a natural progression, and we are thrilled to introduce Eleven Music today,&#8221; said <strong>Staniszewski<\/strong> of today&#8217;s announcement.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve heard massive demand from our enterprise partners and users for a music model like this and we took our time to ship one that we&#8217;re certain they&#8217;ll love.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re proud to do so in collaboration with <strong>music industry partners<\/strong> who recognize the vast benefits and possibilities of AI innovation in music.&#8221;<\/p>\n      <div class=\"mb-advert__incontent\">      <div class=\"mb-advert mb-advert__spu\" data-loaded=\"no\" data-name=\"300x250 Sponsor MPU #2\" data-params=\"dfp_spu2\" id=\"dfp_spu2\"><\/div>      <\/div>      \n<p><strong>Jeremy Sirota<\/strong>, CEO of Merlin, added: &#8220;We are excited to partner with ElevenLabs. Our partnership with ElevenLabs demonstrates that music rightsholders can negotiate thoughtful, forward-looking agreements with AI companies.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Together, we have created responsible guardrails that showcase how AI companies and music rightsholders can collaborate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;We&#8217;re proud to [launch Eleven Music] in collaboration with <strong>music industry partners<\/strong> who recognize the vast benefits and possibilities of AI innovation in music.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>ElevenLabs<\/strong> launched publicly in January 2023.<\/p>\n<p>The company <a href=\"https:\/\/elevenlabs.io\/blog\/series-c\">raised a $180 million Series C funding round<\/a> in January 2025, valuing it at <strong>$3.3 billion<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>In December 2024, it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/bmg-parent-bertelsmann-partners-with-elevenlabs-plans-ai-generated-music-features\/\">announced a partnership with BMG&#8217;s parent company Bertelsmann<\/a>, which included plans to add AI-generated music features.<\/p>\n<p>ElevenLabs has also recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/pro\/ai-music-firm-elevenlabs-sourceaudio-training-deals\/\">signed a training pact with SourceAudio<\/a>, giving it access to millions of <strong>pre-cleared songs<\/strong> for AI training through SourceAudio&#8217;s dataset licensing program.<\/p>\n<p>ElevenLabs&#8217; proactive approach to music licensing currently stands in contrast to competitors <strong>Suno and Udio<\/strong>, both of which are facing lawsuits from major record labels over alleged copyright infringement in their training data.<\/p>\n<p>While industry rumors suggest some major music companies are in licensing discussions with <strong>Suno and\/or Udio<\/strong>, no official agreements have been confirmed to date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A list of &#8216;prohibited inputs&#8217; spells out ElevenLabs&#8217; determination to not allow users to infringe copyright<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":237554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[134468,133295,131536],"class_list":["post-237553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-eleven-music","tag-elevenlabs","tag-suno"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}