The AI-powered music-making app business is hotting up. In May, music-making platform Splice, reported to be valued at nearly $500 million, launched an artificial intelligence-powered music app called CoSo, which uses what Splice calls its'Complementary Sounds' AI technology to create music "in split-seconds". Bandlab, meanwhile, the social music-making platform that recently raised $65 million, has an AI-powered app called SongStarter that, it claims, can "generate royalty-free music in seconds". Could TikTok and parent ByteDance be one of the sector's next major players? Back in July 2019, ByteDance acquired Jukedeck, a UK-based AI Music startup that specialized in creating royalty-free music for user-generated online videos.

The process for publishers and content creators to source the appropriate rights for music usage can be so laborious and expensive that most don't bother – instead relying on royalty-free music. Composer Kevin MacLeod made over 2000 pieces of royalty-free music available to consumers via Creative Commons, a network which shares free-to-use resources with creators. As long as he is credited as the composer, the tracks can be used freely by users and, as a result, his music has been featured widely across films, video games and TikToks. He makes his income through his donation-based Patreon account. 'This is the way to do music distribution.