He just had to go there… After endorsing gen-AI music generation platform Suno, appearing as 'creative advisor' in its promo videos, super producer Timbaland has created a new AI-based entertainment company, and its first AI-generated artist, TaTa, has a debut single dropping soon.
Timbaland, has co-founded the company – Stage Zero – alongside his creative partner, Zayd Portillo, and film producer Rocky Mudaliar, essentially being the logical extension of his work with Suno that saw him spending “ten hours a day” experimenting with the platform.
”I saw the path,” he told Rolling Stone, “but I had to wait till everything caught up.”
”Ultimately what Tim’s here to do is to pioneer a new genre of music – A-pop, artificial pop,” says Mudaliar, who originally met with Timbaland to work on a documentary about his career.
However, with Mudaliar’s knowledge of video and Timbaland’s prolific work in music it didn’t take long for the pair to put their heads together for something new.
And the intention – it seems – is for Stage Zero to have multiple projects in progress from multiple artists across genres and platforms. All of which don’t exist, don’t require paying and can appear (or disappear) at their owner’s behest any time, any place.
“I’m not just producing tracks anymore. I’m producing systems, stories, and stars from scratch,” Timbaland told Billboard.
“[TaTa] is not an avatar. She is not a character. TaTa is a living, learning, autonomous music artist built with AI. TaTa is the start of something bigger. She’s the first artist of a new generation. A-Pop is the next cultural evolution, and TaTa is its first icon.
“The artists of tomorrow won’t just be human, they’ll be IP, code and robotics that are fully autonomous. That’s what we’re building at Stage Zero,” says Mudaliar
Powered by Suno
TaTa’s music is, of course, the product of Timbaland’s tight relationship with Suno. As before, he and engineer Portillo produce music in demo form, but now hand that to Suno to take further.
Adding his lyrics (or using AI to generate them) the pair are taking advantage of Suno’s new Personas feature to create a virtual vocalist that can be repeated and, through fine-tuning, be perfect every time.
“It came to a point where I’m like, ‘Yo, this voice, it’s amazing,'” Timbaland says. “We have these stacks of music that needed to be finished,” explains Portillo.
“And then it just so happened that the TaTa ones were just getting finished faster. There was just something about those songs that were just like. ‘Man, this just flows.'”
Will the big three kill AI music?… Or choose to own it instead?
Stage Zero’s new avenue of artist creation comes as Suno and its rival service Udio have come under increasing legal pressure from the ‘big three’ labels with Sony, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group over their use of their content to train their algorithms.
Currently both companies are being sued and potentially the big three have the power to cripple the likes of Suno, denying them the use of their content and thus the source of their power.
However, recent rumours have suggested that rather than attempt to kill AI music generation (a battle that, much like their turn-of-the-century war against digital distribution and streaming they could never conceivably win) the big three may have a sinister plan B…
It’s thought that a deal may be afoot in which the likes of Suno allow themselves to be swallowed up in exchange for a cut of the resultant profits.
Thus – in a nightmarish scenario for music and musicians – with Suno’s tech on board, the labels could then conceivably generate and sell music without the need for any artists, musicians, engineers or producers at all…
And faced with the prospect of either ceasing to exist versus earning their cut of all music forever, it’s clearly a win for Suno too.
It’s a situation that hardly bears thinking about, but both Timbaland and Portillo remain upbeat on where this is all heading. ”It’s gonna be a bit of a battle,” Mudaliar agrees, “but it’s not going anywhere…. We were thinking about the example of the influencer itself and how ridiculous that might’ve sounded 10 years ago, where we’re like, ‘Nah, there’s no way YouTubers can be bigger than actors.’ And now they’re the biggest stars in the world.”
TaTa’s debut single (with an album to follow) is coming soon.
Beware.
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