Leveraging NVIDIA AI infrastructure and drawing from the world's leading music catalog comprising millions of culture-defining tracks, this collaboration aims to pioneer responsible AI for music discovery, creation, and engagement
SANTA MONICA, Calif., Jan. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Universal Music Group (EURONEXT: UMG), the world leader in music-based entertainment, announced today a collaboration with NVIDIA to pioneer responsible AI for music discovery, creation, and engagement leveraging NVIDIA AI infrastructure and UMG's industry-leading music catalog comprising millions of tracks covering every genre and era.
UMG is collaborating with NVIDIA to enrich and enhance the music experience of the billions of music consumers worldwide who enjoy the world's most popular form of entertainment. NVIDIA and UMG will undertake collaborative research and development to promote shared objectives of advancing human music creation and rightsholder compensation.
The collaboration will explore new avenues to enrich music experiences by utilizing AI to elevate discovery, engagement and consumption beyond current constructs of search and personalization. Further, the companies will pursue new approaches to leverage AI in order to protect artists' work and ensure proper attribution of music-based content.
- Revolutionizing Music Discovery: NVIDIA and UMG are extending the NVIDIA Music Flamingo model to transform how fans discover music. Music Flamingo sets a new standard in music intelligence by moving beyond surface-level recognition to deliver rich, human-like understanding of songs. Built on NVIDIA's advanced Audio Flamingo architecture, the model processes full-length tracks-up to 15 minutes-with unprecedented precision, capturing harmony, structure, timbre, lyrics, and cultural context. It uses chain-of-thought reasoning to enable nuanced interpretation of musical elements, from chord progressions to emotional arcs. NVIDIA Music Flamingo outperforms leading models across 10+ benchmarks in music captioning, instrument recognition, and multilingual lyric transcription. By interpreting the deeper layers of each track, Music Flamingo enables listeners to explore music in ways that go far beyond traditional tags or genres, making discovery more personal and meaningful.
- Enhancing Fan Engagement: These technologies help unlock interactive experiences that allow artists to connect with audiences beyond conventional playlists or search. For artists, Music Flamingo opens new creative possibilities-providing tools to analyze, describe, and share their music with unprecedented depth. For fans, it powers richer discovery experiences, surfacing songs not just by genre or tempo, but by emotional narrative and cultural resonance, helping established artists reach fans in deeper, more interactive ways, while providing emerging artists with greater opportunities to be discovered by music lovers who are the most likely to become dedicated fans.
- Empowering Artists with Creation Tools: To ensure AI-driven music creation tools genuinely empower artists, NVIDIA and UMG will establish a dedicated artist incubator. This incubator brings together artists, songwriters, and producers to co-design and test new AI-powered tools, integrating them into real-world creative workflows. By prioritizing hands-on artist involvement, the incubator develops solutions that enhance originality and authenticity-serving as a direct antidote to generic, "AI slop" outputs, and placing artists at the center of responsible AI innovation.
Sir Lucian Grainge, UMG's Chairman and CEO, said, "We're excited to establish this ground-breaking strategic relationship which unites the world's leading technology company with the world's leading music company in a shared mission to harness revolutionary AI technology to dramatically advance the interests of the creative community and the role of music in global culture. We eagerly embrace the opportunities that AI presents, and the fact that NVIDIA is choosing to take a leadership position in the tech industry in their commitment to responsible AI principles is critically important. We look forward to working closely with NVIDIA to direct AI's unprecedented transformational potential towards the service of artists and their fans as we work together to set new standards for innovation within the industry, while protecting and respecting copyright and human creativity."
UMG's Music & Advanced Machine Learning Lab (MAML) previously trained its models using NVIDIA's AI infrastructure. The collaboration will employ both companies' research capabilities, establishing creative laboratories that foster comprehensive input from artists, songwriters, music labels and publishers, in part by leveraging UMG's world-class studio operations such as Abbey Road Studios in London and Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. In addition, UMG will use NVIDIA AI infrastructure in the development of responsibly trained AI-driven business and creative processes.
Throughout the collaboration, NVIDIA will work with UMG and its artists to obtain in-depth feedback on product development that will empower established artists to engage with their fans in deeper, more interactive ways, while also providing emerging artists with unprecedented opportunities to be discovered and connect with new audiences worldwide.
"We're entering an era where a music catalog can be explored like an intelligent universe - conversational, contextual, and genuinely interactive", said Richard Kerris, NVIDIA VP/GM of Media. "By extending NVIDIA's Music Flamingo with UMG's unmatched catalog and creative ecosystem, we're going to change how fans discover, understand, and engage with music on a global scale. And we'll do it the right way: responsibly, with safeguards that protect artists' work, ensure attribution, and respect copyright."
As this collaboration sets new standards for innovation and responsibility in the music industry, artists and fans alike stand to benefit from the transformative potential of AI. NVIDIA and UMG are committed to shaping a future where technology and creativity unite to unlock new possibilities for artists and fans everywhere.
For media enquiries contact:
Universal Music Group
James Murtagh-Hopkins james.murtagh-hopkins@umusic.com
About Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group exists to shape culture through the power of artistry. UMG is the world leader in music-based entertainment, with a broad array of businesses engaged in recorded music, music publishing, merchandising and audiovisual content. Featuring the most comprehensive catalogue of recordings and songs across every musical genre, UMG identifies and develops artists and produces and distributes the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful music in the world. Committed to artistry, innovation and entrepreneurship, UMG fosters the development of services, platforms and business models in order to broaden artistic and commercial opportunities for our artists and create new experiences for fans. For more information, visit www.universalmusic.com.
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