Universal Music Group is partnering with Nvidia to bring a new AI model to one of the world’s largest music catalogs. In other initiatives, Tuesday’s Announcement Talks expansion of Nvidia’s music AI models musical flamingoWhich is designed to mimic how humans understand music by recognizing subtle elements such as song structure, harmony, emotional arc and chord progressions.
But UMG’s statement emphasized that its collaboration with Nvidia advances “responsible AI,” which aims to make music easier to discover, engage with, and create. To that end point, the companies will promote “their shared objectives of advancing humane music creation and rightsholder compensation.”
The Music Flamingo model, which was published in November 2025 by Nvidia and researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park, can process tracks up to 15 minutes long. Details about how the model will be incorporated into UMG’s catalog are scarce, but artists will be able to use Music Flamingo to better analyze their music, as well as describe and share music “with unprecedented depth,” according to the statement. Meanwhile, fans may find music in new ways beyond genre or playlist, such as through emotion or “cultural resonance”.
The announcement is also vague about how the partnership will work when it comes to AI-powered music creation tools, but promises a “dedicated artist incubator” to help design and test the tool, which will “serve as a direct antidote to generic, ‘AI slop’ output, and put artists at the center of responsible AI innovation.” What this means in practice remains to be seen.
While not UMG’s first partnership with an AI company, Nvidia is perhaps its highest-profile collaboration in the field. “UMG is embracing the opportunities offered by AI,” UMG CEO Lucian Grainge said in a statement, looking forward to “directing AI’s unprecedented transformative potential to serve artists and their fans.”
Nvidia’s AI model combined with “UMG’s unmatched catalog and creative ecosystem” will “transform the way fans discover, understand and connect with music globally,” Richard Kerris, Nvidia’s vice president and general manager of media, said in a statement. “And we’ll do it the right way: responsibly, with safeguards that protect artists’ work, ensure attribution and respect copyrights.”
