its first licensing deal with an AI company, ElevenLabs<\/a>.<\/p>\nAnnounced in early August, the partnership is for the company\u2019s new Eleven Music tool. Although the initial model is trained on production music, a new \u2018Pro\u2019 version slated for release in the coming months will be trained on music via deals with Merlin and publisher Kobalt.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, we\u2019re in the blender when it comes to AI. We\u2019re being shaken about, and we\u2019re all a little on tilt because of that,\u201d says Sirota of the wider industry sentiment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are massive challenges that need to be addressed. To use music to train a model without permission is copyright infringement, and no one should be doing that. That\u2019s just simple. I don\u2019t even know why that\u2019s still open for debate!\u201d<\/p>\n
The ElevenLabs deal started as a carefully-constrained pilot in 2024: \u201cThey weren\u2019t sure about what they wanted to do. We weren\u2019t sure about them. It was a little bit try-before-you-buy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what we told our members was this: it\u2019s a great way to experiment, it\u2019s safe, and it\u2019s someone that we believe is on the right side of history and could be the right partner for us. You don\u2019t get to play the game unless you\u2019re on the field! How can you develop a strategy unless you start to experiment?\u201d<\/p>\n
Sirota says that the pilot showed ElevenLabs had the right philosophy and mindset, as well as respect for creatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s additive to the creative industry,\u201d he continues. \u201cWe found the right guardrails. Everything that we deemed non-negotiable, we achieved in this deal, because we found the right partner to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the deal was reported in the music-industry press, Sirota is surprised that it didn\u2019t make bigger waves. He thinks it has wider significance: proving that this kind of licensing deal CAN be done \u2013\u00a0despite claims by some AI companies and their investors that music licensing is too complex and\/or that rightsholders are too difficult to deal with.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Merlin can achieve a groundbreaking deal with ElevenLabs \u2013 a company backed by Andreessen Horowitz, no less! \u2013\u00a0to license music in a way that they can accept and work with, then it is possible to do it. Period. It\u2019s proven to the world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Sirota also suggests that the deal is evidence that the independent sector may be able to move faster to license AI models than the major labels.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor some of the biggest players, their concern is that unless everything can be controlled, they don\u2019t want to license,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy view is if you find the right partner with the right mindset, and you have the right overlapping business interests and the incentive structure is right, you can achieve that. But for some others in the space, all they see is downside. or risk, and they can\u2019t get past that to think about the upside.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBoring is bad? Well, I say I\u2019m going to make operational rigour sexy again!\u201d<\/p>\n
Jeremy Sirota<\/p>\n
AI and music is about more than \u2018AI music\u2019 though. Sirota is just as excited about how AI technologies might help independent labels in other ways.<\/p>\n
AI to handle the routine admin side of music-industry workflows may not make as many headlines as the glamorous (but controversial) GenAI issues, but Sirota thinks the former deserves more attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cI once heard [journalist and researcher] Cherie Hu say \u2018boring is bad\u2019. Well, I say I\u2019m going to make operational rigour sexy again!\u201d he laughs, before deploying a restaurant metaphor to explain why.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could have the greatest food, the greatest staff, the greatest marketing, but if you don\u2019t reduce the cost to wash linens by 50%, that\u2019s the difference between profitable and unprofitable,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to automate more. We need to make a process for this and apply technology against this more\u2026 I don\u2019t know exactly how this is going to work, but there\u2019s going to be a future model that is a step-function leap in how we operate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I think about AI and the tooling and what it brings, I see a world where it is really beneficial to independent labels and how they work with art.\u201d<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t mean that they\u2019ll be creating AI musicians. It\u2019s more about the workflows.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something you can start to nibble at around how it empowers creativity. How you can better control costs so you can take greater risks,\u201d he says. \u201cI can\u2019t quite put my finger on it yet, but I feel this breakthrough moment coming, and it\u2019s going to happen within the independent space.\u201d<\/p>\n
Is that not going to lead to mass redundancies at independent music firms when the AIs start doing people\u2019s jobs? Sirota says not, pointing to Merlin\u2019s development of an AI chatbot for member inquiries as an example.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole point of that is to empower you. It\u2019s freeing you up to do the human stuff that matters so much more. The phone calls, the visits, the space to think more pro-actively, to zoom out and think about how we engage members better. There\u2019s no AI tool or agent to do that yet,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, I\u2019m leaving, but if I was continuing, I don\u2019t see the need to fire anyone at our company. Every single one of them, AI can free them up more. Their time can be spent on way more valuable stuff than just \u2018oh man, we didn\u2019t get the daily delivery in the right format from Spotify, and now we\u2019ve got to go back and fix it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI do not need another AI or tech overlord talking to us about how they want to live to 500 and fly us to Mars\u201d<\/p>\n
Jeremy Sirota<\/p>\n
As for GenAI music, Sirota hopes that the ElevenLabs deal will support the wider music industry\u2019s efforts to persuade policymakers to regulate AI in a copyright-friendly way. He\u2019s spikily entertaining about the AI and tech moguls who are on the other side of this lobbying battle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do not need another AI or tech overlord talking to us about how they want to live to 500 and fly us to Mars!\u201d he says, before segueing into the bigger regulatory questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the biggest mistakes society has made, probably in its history, is deciding that technology was different, and that the normal rules of how we regulate everything else, and how we treat every other industry, don\u2019t apply to it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat you\u2019re seeing now is that tension continuing to assert itself, and it ebbs and flows as different types of governments with different philosophies come in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Talking of regulation inevitably brings the conversation round to another current battle: UMG-owned Virgin Music Group\u2019s attempt to buy Downtown Music Holdings, and the efforts of various independent bodies and labels to persuade regulators to block it.<\/p>\n
Sirota has views, but he chooses his words carefully, noting that he still has plenty of friends at major labels whose passion for music he respects.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut companies want to make more money, right? That\u2019s what a company tries to do. And in a world where you have consolidation, the concern is that it can create \u2013\u00a0I\u2019m not saying it does, but it can create \u2013\u00a0market-distorting actions in the marketplace, and that is the concern,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Some of the rhetoric from UMG\u2019s side of this battle has pushed back at the idea that independent labels are united in their opposition to the deal \u2013\u00a0suggesting that bodies like Impala and WIN don\u2019t speak for everyone.<\/p>\n
That could be seen as an attempt to fragment the independent sector? One that comes not long after TikTok decided not to renew its licensing deal with Merlin, preferring instead to license labels individually. More fragmentation.<\/p>\n
Right from the start, Merlin was about collective power: negotiating deals on behalf of its members to give them parity with the majors. In 2025, is that collective power under threat? Sirota challenges the theory in several ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole point of independence is they make independent decisions. They\u2019ve always done that. This is why they do what they do and run what they run. So the idea that they would always all agree with each other, it\u2019s never existed!\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t normally blast figures out, but let\u2019s talk figures. The revenues [for Merlin members] increase by 17% year-over-year. That is clearly over-indexing against the market. And keep in mind that every year or two, one \u2013\u00a0if not two \u2013\u00a0of our largest members are acquired. So that 17% is not really 17%: it could be closer to 30% even.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo any time someone says \u2018Oh, this is the end of Merlin: TikTok disaggregated you and took you apart\u2026\u2019 Well, they did the same thing to Universal and they did the same thing to the NMPA. We just have less tools in our arsenal to fight this. But then we come back,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe closed our Spotify deal a couple of months ago, and I would say it\u2019s the strongest the partnership has been since I got here. We just closed a groundbreaking deal \u2013\u00a0just us \u2013 with the leading AI company.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want a strong Merlin. The marketplace needs a strong Merlin. And one of my core goals over this year was to ensure that Merlin is as strong as possible for whoever takes over.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI never wanted Merlin to be an indie representing indies. I wanted it to be a global powerhouse!\u201d<\/p>\n
Jeremy sirota<\/p>\n
Which begs one obvious question. Who IS going to take over? By a quirk of fate, every time Music Ally has met up with Sirota before, a Big Industry Job has been vacant, and he\u2019s been a reliable source of shrewd guesses about who, say, the next IFPI boss or Warner Music CEO might be.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unfair to turn the tables now: who the next Merlin CEO should be is a matter for the company\u2019s board, and Sirota is in no mood to step on their toes by giving his opinions publicly. However, he does have something to say about the potential skillsets required to follow a builder\/warrior founding CEO and then an innovator\/moderniser successor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d say optimiser and relationship builder. Not because I didn\u2019t do those things, but there\u2019s only 24 hours in the day and I\u2019m told you\u2019re supposed to use six of them to sleep!\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope I\u2019m leaving this organisation in a way that someone can come in and say \u2018Man, this shit just runs!\u2019 They\u2019ll just need to provide some course corrections to optimise how that works and deliver more value.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which, he hopes, will then give them time to focus on the relationship-building side of the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not just talking about the members. How do you spend more time with the trade associations? How do you spend more time with the partners? How do you spend more time throughout the industry?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never wanted Merlin to be [just] an indie representing indies. I wanted it to be a global powerhouse! So it\u2019s about expanding into conversations with people we were never talking to before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Related Stories\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s not just cats. Y\u2019know what it is? It\u2019s herding cats, dogs, zebras, whales AND groundhogs. It\u2019s way…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,23412,60,23413,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-28407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-indies","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-merlin","12":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/ElevenLabs-homepage.png\")
<\/p>\n