Imogen Heap Releases AI Music Platform With Jen

British musician Imogen Heap has partnered with AI music platform Jen to offer five of her songs as the foundation for people to create AI-generated songs.

The Big Picture: Everyone, from companies like YouTube and UMG to musicians like Grimes, has been experimenting with AI-powered music generators that offer top-tier pro artistry as a foundation. What makes the Heap-Jen partnership stand out are the technical and ethical innovations — key factors that could determine which platforms succeed in the long run.

Between the Prompts: Is using Jen like DJing in the AI era?

• Imogen Heap is offering five of her songs — “Headlock,” “Goodnight and Go,” “Just For Now,” “Last Night of an Empire,” and “What Have You Done to Me” — on Jen as the basis for new AI song generations.
• Each song will be a “stylefilter” — a “vibe” foundation that’s mixed with a text-based prompt to create a new song.
• Each stylefilter is available for $4.99 (or $7.99 for a “higher strength version”), which allows for up to 90 minutes of creations that people can use how they want (except to train other AI models).
• Only instrumental versions of songs can be created thus far, but Jen plans to add a vocal element soon.

The Future: Imogen Heap is one of the many artists who have chosen an “if you can’t beat them, join them” mentality toward the rise of AI… but with the intention of guiding its development in a way that respects her creativity and ensures she gets paid. Jen, which was founded by former label execs Shara Senderoff and Mike Caren, says it will only ever train its system using the exclusive licenses it receives from artists.

Jen says that more stylefilters from other artists are forthcoming, so it’s possible that the platform could be an interesting new revenue stream for musicians.