Artists Strive to Be Less Famous & Give Fans the Reins

Clara Alex
3 min readNov 29, 2023

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Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash

In an era where the digital frontier converges with musical innovation, artists are steering the wheel of change, handing the reins to their fans with a harmony powered by artificial intelligence.

Kill the DJ delves into the stories of avant-garde musicians embracing AI rather than fearing it and reshaping the creative landscape through open-sourced vocal replicas, digital twins, and YouTube’s bold AI experiment.

Voice cloning is akin to fan-fiction (driven by Grimes)

In a surprising move that echoes the avant-garde spirit of her music, electronic artist Grimes has invited fans to immerse themselves in her universe through Elf.Tech, an open-source software transforming the boundaries of vocal collaboration. More than 15,000 compositions with the singer’s voice have emerged from the beta phase, where users input their own singing recordings, and Elf.Tech creates renditions in the voice of Grimes herself.

Elf.Tech, driven by the cutting-edge Triniti AI model, exemplifies a paradigm shift in creative collaboration. And Grimes, true to her promise, eagerly embraces the user-generated content, offering a democratic 50% split of master recording royalties for those who choose to broadcast their AI-made compositions online.

The rationale? According to Grime’s manager Daouda Leonard’s interview to Rolling Stone, “She [Grimes] often says that creativity is a conversation with those who came before us and those who are going to come after us. She’s like, ‘Well, let me open-source that. Let me allow people to access what the universe gave me as a gift. And if I do that, what are the new experiences that can be created out of that?’”

He then adds, “What’s the difference between this and what people have been doing with properties like League of Legends, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etcetera, where they’re making all of this amazing fan art and they’re also monetizing that amazing fan art?”

In her interview to the Have a Nice Future podcast by Wired, Grimes even said some songs made by fans were so impressive she regretted she wasn’t the one to compose them. In the same podcast, she claimed she wanted to be “less famous.”

Now, Grimes takes her AI story to the next level, teaming up with CreateSafe’s Triniti API to launch a platform that invites artists to share their new works on major streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and more. Since the platform’s inception, over 1,000 songs have already been generated.

In the spirit of collaboration and innovation, creators using Grimes’ voice through this platform are offered a 50% share of the master recording royalties, ensuring a fair and mutually beneficial exchange in the evolving landscape of AI-driven music creation.

If you head over to Spotify right now and enter “Grimes,” you’ll see two artists: Grimes and GrimesAI. Who performs better?

👉 Read more on Kill the DJ.

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Clara Alex
Clara Alex

Written by Clara Alex

Managing Editor at Kill the DJ. Content strategist in audio tech companies. Write about music, AI in audio, podcasting, and all things audio.

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