Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl on the Inevitability of AI: ‘The Genie Is Not Going Back’

Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl has a message for a music industry facing disruption from artificial intelligence that’s often likened to the rise of file-sharing a quarter century ago: “You have to embrace technology, because it’s not like you can put technology in a bottle,” he said during an onstage interview at the Code Conference in Laguna Niguel, Calif, on Tuesday. “The genie is not going back.”

He should know. Kyncl, who replaced retiring WMG CEO Stephen Cooper in February, is a former executive at YouTube and helped usher in an era of user-generated video content and YouTube personalities that compete on a global scale against multi-national media companies. That experience shaped how Kyncl views the music business’ current dilemma with artificial intelligence.

Kyncl said he believes the music industry already has a blueprint for turning AI into big business: YouTube’s Content ID technology. In YouTube’s early days, he recalled, the company was often sued by content owners because its users uploaded music or video without permission. Not long after Google acquired YouTube in 2006, the company set about building a fingerprinting technology — Copyright ID — to track copyrighted material on the platform and give copyright owners the ability to reject or monetize their works in user-generated content. Content ID allowed YouTube to turn adversarial relationships with copyright owners into commercial relationships.

“Out of that we built a multibillion-dollar business, which now is [a] multibillion dollar business per year,” said Kyncl. “And it was an incredible new revenue stream for everyone. AI is that with new super tools. So, we need to approach it with the same thoughtfulness.”

A key challenge is harnessing AI in music is giving artists the ability to opt out. If an artist doesn’t want their music or voice to be the source of AI-created derivative works, they need to be protected, Kyncl said. “And we need to figure out how to do that at scale, not [a] one-off,” he added. “We need to develop rules of the road. I like to call it the fine print for the blueprint. We got the blueprint from UGC. Now we have to figure out the fine print for AI.”

WMG’s efforts to develop the “fine print for AI” are focused on streaming platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Spotify, according to Kyncl. “When people create content, they want it to be seen or heard [and] will flock to the largest platforms. So, our work is focused collaboratively with the platforms and making sure that we’re defining the rules of the road together with them.”