Unlocking melodic creativity and building community with ethical generative AI

A Venn Diagram has emerged in the AI-generated music landscape. On one side are the ethical models—fairly trained on licensed data and stock music for the most part. While they are artist-friendly, their output can sometimes end up sounding like elevator music. On the other side of the spectrum are unethical AI companies—the ones that steal and scrape data to train their models. While this unethically trained generative AI is extremely harmful to artists, their products can be killer.

Lemonaide, the artist-first creative AI, sits at the center of this generative-AI music Venn Diagram, balancing strong ethics and outstanding quality by producing fairly trained high-resolution loops that are ready to be made into art by professional producers. Now introducing Collab Club, Lemonaide equips these producers with the tools to train AI models with their own catalogs of music—opening the door to new collaborations as well as new revenue streams.

“The technology and AI training that went into my model is incredible,” says artist Kato on the Track. “I’m just excited to work with the brilliant Lemonaide team to be the first Producer to have their own AI model and offer it to Beat Makers and Producers around the world.” 

“All AI models are massive sets of data. We’re taking the bet that people don’t just want to work with an AI model; they want to work with creative materials and creative people,” explains Lemonaide Founder and CEO Michael “MJ” Jacob. “Lemonaide Collab Club connects creators with some of today’s best producers—building a strong creative community while giving artists agency in the AI space.” 

Music was a life saver for MJ growing up—a secondary life and escape from reality. “My childhood was pretty traumatizing. My father was handed a life sentence when I was 12 and my family lost our house. Hip hop taught me how to believe in myself.”

At 17 years old, MJ’s older brother encouraged him to get a job to support the family, so he pursued a career in tech and AI, eventually landing a job at Google but never giving up on his sidehustle of rapping and working with AI in music.  

As MJ’s work with AI-generated music evolved, he crossed paths with Anirudh Mani who was working as a machine learning scientists for Amazon’s Alexa team at the time while producing music on the side. Anirudh, who approached his production a lot like a computer scientist, didn’t know much about MJ beyond the fact that he was open to experimenting with AI in music. In a moment of complete serendipity, Anirudh sent MJ a Twitter DM asking him to rap on one of his tracks. They met, MJ showed Anirudh Lemonaide 1.0, and the two realized how much they had in common. 

Similarly to MJ, Anirudh’s music journey had started early in life—learning the keys as a young boy before being introduced to Audacity in middle school. Although his band had performed in front of thousands of people in India, he set aside his music to pursue an education and career. “I come from a middle class family in India, so the expectation is that first you become an engineer or doctor and then you can find your passion,” says Anirudh, now Lemonaide’s Chief Science Officer. “Sending me abroad for college was a major commitment by my entire family, and one that I am endlessly grateful for.”

Anirudh’s Twitter DM about a feature collab eventually grew into the cofounding of AI startup Lemonaide. Since then, the company has focused on helping musicians find new ways to write, produce, and create, while keeping the artist front and center. Today, Lemonade is determined to do this by building inspiration-sparking generative AI models—all fairly trained on ethically sourced data. 

“My ultimate goal for Lemonaide is to create something that a kid stumbles across and find the joy in making music,” says MJ.

“And we are focused on doing it the right way,” adds Anirudh. “Collab Club is our next step in ensuring that producers have their own say and agency over the use of their data as they create new AI-powered revenue streams.”