Spotify Recruits Stability AI’s Julian Parker to its ‘Artist-First AI’ Team
Julian Parker has joined Spotify to contribute to its ‘artist-first AI’ initiative. He previously held the position of senior researcher for Stability AI’s Stable Audio series of generative AI music models.
Spotify unveiled its ‘artist-first AI’ initiative in October 2023, establishing partnerships with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, Merlin, and Believe, with the intention of developing “breakthrough experiences for fans and artists.”
Licensing agreements between Spotify and Universal Music Group were announced on May 21, allowing Spotify Premium subscribers to generate AI-powered fan covers and remixes.
Parker’s appointment, based in London, demonstrates Spotify’s increased investment in the ‘artist-first AI’ initiative. He recently concluded his work on Stability AI’s Stable Audio 3.0, released on May 20.
Stable Audio 3.0 comprises four music generation models trained on fully licensed data, capable of producing outputs up to six minutes and 20 seconds in length.
Parker will be working alongside Sebastian Ewert (Director of Research), Peter Sobot (Staff Machine Learning Engineer in Spotify’s Audio Intelligence Lab), and Rachel Bittner (Senior Research Scientist) at Spotify.
Julian Parker stated via LinkedIn: “It’s been a wonderful two and a bit years at Stability AI, and I’m super proud of the models we’ve released together – Stable Audio 2.0, Stable Audio Open, Stable Codec/TAAE, Stable Audio Open Small, Stable Audio 2.5 and finally SAME and Stable Audio 3.”
