AI Artist Xania Monet Has Racked Up Millions of Streams. How Much Money Is That Worth?
Monet’s AI-powered R&B tracks are climbing the charts and forcing long-simmering questions over royalty payouts for AI-created tracks to the fore.
AI-powered artist Xania Monet’s songs have racked up more than 17 million total on-demand streams in the U.S. since her Suno-crafted R&B tracks were released about two months ago, according to Luminate.
What exactly is that worth?
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Monet — the creation of 31-year-old Mississippi-based woman Talisha Jones, who used AI to craft Monet’s image and Suno to make the music — was signed to a multimillion-dollar record deal by the independent music company Hallwood Media last week after a bidding war roped in several labels, one of which offered as much as $3 million.
Using industry data from the RIAA, Luminate and other financial sources at major and indie labels to estimate how much money a song makes per audio and video stream, digital download and airplay spin, Billboard estimates Monet’s songs have generated more than $50,000 in less than two months. But how much of that Jones, Monet’s human creator, or Hallwood Media may be able to collect is less clear.
Most digital streaming platforms, including Spotify, do not have specific policies for AI music, which may mean these songs can accrue royalties the same as human-made songs do. The United States Copyright Office has said that songs authored by a human that use AI to assist in the creation of music are copyrightable, but that fully AI-generated songs are not.
The law is not yet settled on the matter, and several major music companies are currently suing Suno and another AI music generator, Udio, over copyright infringement for allegedly illegally ingesting their music to train algorithms.
Whether fully or partially AI-generated, songs involving AI are now charting more frequently. In June, Vinih Pray’s “A Million Colors” was hailed as the first-known AI song to chart on the TikTok Viral 50, and it has accumulated around 950,000 official U.S. on-demand audio and video streams, which Billboard estimates generated roughly $6,300. Later in June, AI act The Velvet Sundown benefited from controversy after Reddit users discovered that the performers in the band were not real-life humans. The Velvet Sundown’s most popular song, “Dust on the Wind,” racked up just under 900,000 official U.S. on-demand audio and video streams, which Billboard estimates generated slightly less than $6,000 in revenue.
The Music Fights Fraud Alliance has called for greater scrutiny by streaming platforms around content like The Velvet Sundown’s, saying that bots, manipulated playlists and other factors can be used to make songs look more popular than they are. The group’s CEO, Michael Lewan, says this kind of artificial streaming can occur with both AI-generated and human-made music.
All that said, Monet’s five-song catalog has generated more than $52,000 and nearly 17 million total on-demand official U.S. streams — a figure that nearly doubled from last week — according to Billboard estimates based on Luminate data. The catalog had racked up 12,500 album consumption units as of the week ending Sept. 18.
Monet’s most popular track, “How Was I Supposed to Know?,” which has ranked in the top 10 on Billboard’s R&B Digital Song Sales for two weeks in a row and hit No. 22 last week on the Digital Song Sales chart overall, has accumulated 22,700 song equivalents in the U.S. and more than 3 million on-demand audio and video streams.
If all royalties were paid out for this track, Billboard estimates it would total nearly $21,800 in master recording and publishing rights.
Monet’s next most popular track, “I Ask For So Little,” which has 1.56 million total on-demand U.S. streams, has so far generated around $10,000 in revenue from master and publishing rights. The track “This Ain’t No Tryout,” which has 1.2 million on-demand streams, has generated $8,360. “The Strong Don’t Get a Break” has generated an estimated $6,500, and “Let God, Let Go” has generated around $5,500, as of Sept. 18, according to Billboard estimates.
More than a decade since streaming became the dominant mode of music consumption, stakeholders are actively exploring changes to royalty payout models, with some calling for “functional music” songs like the sounds of white noise and birds — and possibly AI-generated songs — to receive royalty rates that are lower than human-generated music, or to be excluded from the revenue pool entirely.
All of which makes it nearly impossible to determine how much either Jones or her label would be able to take in from streams and sales of such songs in the end. But the revenue generated in theory is still significant — and growing by the day.
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