The first edition of the Billboard Arabia Music Awards (BBAMAs) is set for Dec. 11 at the iconic KAFD in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The awards show is part of the first-ever Riyadh Music Week, an initiative bringing together the global music community for a series of music festivals and events. ​

Billboard Arabia has become the ultimate destination for discovering Arab artists, with the awards show celebrating a year of music milestones and achievements, including the launch of its flagship charts and other initiatives. The BBAMAs will honor trailblazers and rising stars with awards across a wide range of categories, including top artist, female artist and male artist, along with the year’s hottest songs and more. ​

Unlike other music award shows, BBAMA winners will be selected based on their ranking on Billboard Arabia’s flagship charts, including the Hot 100 and Artist 100, as well as the newly launched dialect charts – Khaleeji, Egyptian, Levantine and Magharebi – and genre-specific charts – Arabic Hip-Hop, Arabic Indie, Shelat and Mahraganat. Billboard Arabia’s Charts follow the well-established parameters set by the Billboard brand over the last eight decades.

In addition to recognizing the top artists and music of the year, the BBAMAs will showcase Saudi Arabia and the region’s diverse talent through live performances and surprise collaborations, featuring both established and emerging artists. It will also include performances from some of the biggest international artists.​

“In just one year, Billboard Arabia has become the fastest-growing music platform that truly reflects the preferences of millions of music fans and followers across the globe,” Jomana R. Alrashid, CEO of SRMG, said in a statement. “Through the support of the Saudi Music Commission, part of the Ministry of Culture, and SRMG’s strategic partnership with Billboard, this significantly strengthens our ability to spotlight Arab artists to bring their work to global audiences and grow the region’s vibrant music industry.”

Rami M. Zeidan, managing director of Billboard Arabia, said: “I am proud to announce the first edition of the Billboard Arabia Music Awards. As one of the fastest growing music hubs, Riyadh is the perfect location to celebrate the achievements of Arab artists around the world. Audiences will experience the diversity of Arab music firsthand through live performances. They will see their favorite artists like never before. This is what BBAMAs are all about: ensuring that Arab artists, their music and their stories receive the well-deserved recognition both regionally and globally.” ​

Billboard Arabia, a pioneering platform at the intersection of culture and music, celebrates the artistry and diversity of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Launched as a partnership between SRMG, the largest integrated media group from the MENA region, and Billboard, the world’s most influential music media brand, its mission is to redefine the global music landscape.

Mike Van, president of Billboard, stated: “We are proud to bring the Billboard Music Awards (BBMAs) to Riyadh. The show remains the preeminent music event worldwide. The BBMAs celebrate and recognize musical talent and chart achievements and we’re thrilled to extend this legacy and vision to the MENA region, highlighting the musical excellence of Arab artists.  This show will not only celebrate artists’ commercial success, but also highlight their real impact on the music industry. The focus is on spotlighting artists and the evolving music landscape. Winning at the Billboard Music Awards is not just about one night; it represents an important moment elevating artists toward sustained success in their careers. This year, with the launch of the Billboard Arabia Music Awards, we are applying the same metric-based methodology to showcase Arab artists who have resonated most with music fans worldwide.”​

Billboard Arabia was launched in June 2023 to spotlight Arab artists and their stories on a global stage. Since then, it has introduced several iconic Billboard franchises to the MENA region, including Billboard Arabia News, Women in Music and Charts. These initiatives have established the necessary infrastructure to help both established and new artists reach wider audiences. Billboard Arabia has also developed several unique IPs that further highlight the Arab voices, including its exclusive studio session series, Jalsat Billboard Arabia, and its groundbreaking initiative, Sounds of the Land. ​

Performances and ticket information will be announced in the coming weeks. For more updates and news, visit billboardarabia.com.

As more music industry entrepreneurs rush into the nascent AI sector, the number of new companies seems to grow by the day. To help artists, creators and others navigate the space, Billboard has compiled a directory of music-centric AI startups.

Given how quickly the sector is growing, this is not an exhaustive list, but it will continue to be updated. The directory also does not make judgment calls about the quality of the models’ outputs and whether their training process is “ethical.” It is an agnostic directory of what is available. Potential users should research any company they are considering.

Although a number of the following companies fit into more than one business sector, for the sake of brevity, no company is listed more than once.

To learn more about what is considered to be an “ethical” AI model, please read our AI FAQs, where key questions are answered by top experts in the field, or visit Fairly Trained, a nonprofit dedicated to certifying “ethical” AI music models.

General Music Creation

AIVA: A music generator that also provides additional editing tools so that users can edit the generated songs and make them their own.

Beatoven: A text-to-music generator that provides royalty-free music for content creators.

Boomy: This music generator creates instrumentals using a number of controllable parameters such as genre and BPM. It also allows users to publish and monetize their generated works.

Create: A stem and sample arrangement tool created by Splice. This model uses AI to generate new arrangements of different Splice samples, which are intended to spark the songwriting process and help users find new samples.

Gennie: A text-to-music generator created by Soundation that produces 12-second-long samples.

Hydra II: A text-to-music generator created by Rightsify that aims to create royalty-free music for commercial spaces. It is trained on Rightsify’s owned catalog of songs.

Infinite Album: A music generator that provides “fully licensed” and “copyright safe” AI music for gamers.

Jen: A text-to-music generator created by Futureverse that was trained on 40 licensed music catalogs and uses blockchain technology to verify and timestamp its creations.

Lemonaide: A “melodic idea” generator. This model creates musical ideas in MIDI form to help songwriters get started on their next idea.

MusicGen: A text-to-music generator created by Meta.

Music LM: A text-to-music generator created by Google.

Ripple: A music generator created by ByteDance. This product can convert a hummed melody into an instrumental and can expand upon the result.

Song Starter: A music generator created by BandLab that is designed to help young artists start new song ideas.

Soundful: This company has collaborated with Kaskade, Starrah and other artists and producers to create their own AI beat generators, a new play on the “type-beat.”

SoundGen: A text-to-music generator that can also act as a “musical assistant” to help flesh out a creator’s music.

Soundraw: A generator that creates royalty-free beats, some of which have been used by Trippie Redd, Fivio Foreign and French Montana.

Stable Audio: A text-to-music generator created by Stability AI. This model also offers audio-to-audio generation, which enables users to manipulate any uploaded audio sample using text prompts.

Suno: A text-to-music generator. This model can create lyrics, vocals and instrumentals with the click of a button. Suno and another generator, Udio, are currently being sued by the three major music companies for alleged widespread copyright infringement during the training process. Suno and Udio claim the training qualifies as fair use under U.S. copyright law and contend the lawsuits are attempts to stifle independent competition.

Tuney: A music generator. This model is known for soundtracking brand advertisements and offering “adaptive music” to make a generated track better fit any given project.

Udio: A text-to-music generator that can create lyrics, vocals and instrumentals with a keyboard stroke. This model is best known for generating “BBL Drizzy,” a parody song by comic Willonius Hatcher that was then sampled by Metro Boomin and became a viral hit. Udio, like Suno, is defending itself against a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the three major music companies. Udio and Suno claim their training counts as fair use and accuse the label groups of attempting to stifle independent competition.

Voice Conversion

Covers.AI: A voice filter platform created by Mayk.It. The platform offers the ability to build your own AI voice, as well as try on the voices of characters like SpongeBob, Mario or Ash Ketcham.

Elf.Tech: A Grimes voice filter created by CreateSafe and Grimes. This tool is the first major artist-voice converter, and Grimes debuted it in response to the virality of Ghostwriter977’s “Heart on My Sleeve,” which deepfaked the voices of Drake and The Weeknd.

Hooky: A voice filter platform best known for its official partnership with Lauv, who used Hooky technology to translate his song “Love U Like That” into Korean.

Kits.AI: A voice filter, stem separation and mastering platform. This company can provide DIY voice cloning as well as a suite of other generic types of voices. It is certified by Fairly Trained.

Supertone: A voice filter platform, acquired by HYBE, that allows users to change their voice in real time. It also offers a tool called Clear to remove noise and reverb from vocal stems.

Voice-Swap: A voice filter and stem separation platform. This company offers an exclusive roster of artist voices to choose from, including Imogen Heap, and it hopes to become an “agency” for artists’ voices.

Vocoflex: A voice filter plug-in created by Dreamtonics that offers the ability to change the tone of a singer’s voice in real time.

Stem Separation

Audioshake: A stem separation and lyric transcription tool. This company is best known for its recent participation in Disney’s accelerator program.

LALA.AI: A stem separation and voice conversion tool.

Moises AI: A stem separation, pitch-changer, chord detection and smart metronome tool created by Music AI.

Sounds.Studio: A stem separation tool created by Never Before Heard Sounds.

Stem-Swap: A stem separation tool created by Voice-Swap.

Dynamic Music

Endel: A personalized soundscape generator that enhances activities including sleep and focus. The company also releases collaborations with artists like Grimes, James Blake and 6LACK.

Lifescore: A personalized soundtrack generator that enhances activities like driving, working out and more.

Plus Music.AI: A personalized soundtrack generator for video-game play.

Reactional Music: A personalized soundtrack generator that adapts music with actions taken in video games in real time.

Management

Drop Track: An AI-powered music publicity tool.

Musical AI: An AI-powered rights management tool that enables rights holders to manage their catalog and license their works for generative AI training as desired.

Musiio: An AI music tagging and search tool owned by SoundCloud. This tool creates fingerprints to better track and search songs, and it automates tagging songs by mood, keywords, language, genre and lyrical content.

Triniti: A suite of AI tools for music creation, marketing, management and distribution created by CreateSafe. It is best known for the AI voice application programming interface behind Grimes’ Elf.Tech synthetic voice model.

Other

Hook: An AI music remix app that allows users to create mashups and edits with proper licensing in place.

LANDR: A suite of plug-ins and producer services, many of which are powered by AI, including an AI mastering tool.

Morpho: A timbre transfer tool created by Neutone.

Major labels and distribution companies were once distinct entities with different ways of doing business. In today’s music industry, however, “distributors are starting to look like labels, and labels are starting to look like distributors,” says entertainment attorney David Fritz. 

Each of the major label groups has its own distribution arm: Sony relies on The Orchard, Universal leans on Virgin, Warner has ADA. Confusingly, at varying points in the last five years, many of the frontline labels have launched distribution offerings too, whether that’s Republic (Imperial), 300 (Sparta), Alamo (which is affiliated with both Santa Anna and another distribution company, Foundation), or Interscope. Sony also has AWAL, which focuses more on nurturing individual artists, whereas The Orchard usually looks to sign and support labels. These companies are all in competition with each other — and often with the various frontline labels as well. 

For Kirk Harding, a veteran artist manager and co-owner of the Bad Habit label, the meaning of all this activity is clear. “Everyone knows what the future is,” he says. “The major labels are going to be distribution companies with really big catalogs.”

This would have been hard to fathom just five years ago. “It’s a fundamental change in how we’re operating,” acknowledges one major label A&R executive. 

Frontline major label deals typically come with budgets — for recording, marketing and more — along with access to teams of people who can theoretically help artists find new songwriting partners, polish their TikTok clips and find money to support a tour. Since the label invests resources and services in the artists, it takes a significant chunk of the money that they earn, as well as rights to the songs they make. 

Distribution deals are often the polar opposite. They typically come with far less money up front, few, if any, services, and significantly shorter terms. Since the company offering the deal doesn’t commit much, it doesn’t take much. 

The frontline major labels were historically opposed to offering distribution agreements precisely because they tend to be short-term deals where the majority of the money made goes to the artist. That severely limits the upside for the record companies, which through the decades built their multi-billion-dollar valuations via long-term agreements — often five albums or more — in which they obtained artists’ recordings in perpetuity. Each major label group maintained a distribution arm for acts that insisted on a different arrangement, or for independent labels that needed help to get to market, but the frontline labels almost always signed the stars, and were thus seen as the real engines of growth. 

Now, thanks to streaming, social media and advances in music production technology, artists can record songs, distribute them and amass fans on their own, meaning they have the luxury of turning down unappealing deals. And it turns out that, given the choice, many artists want to maintain flexibility — and make the majority of the money from their art. “Every artist we talk to is asking for a distro situation,” the A&R says. 

This puts major labels in a bind. The long duration of traditional recording agreements allowed them to build up massive catalogs. This in turn ensured they had leverage in negotiations with streaming platforms — and protected them as catalog listening grew in the streaming era. The rise of short-term distribution deals, then, seems likely to erode the size of their catalogs over time even quicker than 35-year termination rights, meaning major labels are effectively mortgaging their future for short-term gains.

But like politicians looking to win re-election, they may feel they have no other choice. Even executives who believe distribution deals don’t make sense for them say they’re now feeling pressured to offer them anyway. “Majors have had to adapt and start offering different types of agreements just to even be in the ring on some of these potential signings,” says Gandhar Savur, a music lawyer. 

Not only that, but the major labels have been losing market share to an array of new digital distributors that undercut them by allowing artists to upload songs to streaming platforms for a negligible fee or small percentage of royalties. This forces the majors to play defense. “They see some indie artists that come out of distribution systems and think, ‘I want that too,’” says Joie Manda, a former major label executive who launched Encore Recordings in 2021. 

Offering distribution deals isn’t just about playing defense, though. They can help the majors limit risk by signing artists earlier, when they have smaller fan bases, which makes deals cheaper. Artists who do well and need additional support can later be “upstreamed” to a more traditional frontline arrangement. (And if the majors want to sign a viral act that lucked into one big song but has little other music of promise, a distribution deal may be the best way to do that.) 

For artists, all the major label forays into distribution mean they potentially have a lot of different options at their disposal. “Artists want choices; they want the option for high service or low service, long term or short term,” says Mike Caren, founder of Artist Partner Group. “The choices are out there, and some companies want to provide all the choices under a single banner.” 

Making the right choice remains a challenge, however. 

A distribution deal “is not a label deal,” Harding emphasizes — even if it’s with a label. “All you can expect them to do is distribute. If you want them to do more, you have to pay more.”

Young artists in particular may not understand these distinctions, or know which option is better for them. Caren cautions that distribution agreements “can become traps where confusing pitches lead to false promises of short term with high service,” he says, adding, “This can be an unsustainable and dangerous territory that may lead to a lot of frustrated artists.” 

Distribution offers will often come with one advance to cover all of an artist’s needs, according to Matt Buser, a music lawyer. “It forces artists to budget out all these different buckets of money,” he explains. “It gives them a lot of autonomy. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, and you blow all the money, and you have to ask for more, the record company gets more rights, or a longer deal, or something in exchange.”

It’s not uncommon for artists to be messaged distribution agreements via Instagram the moment they start to show growth — some companies don’t even pretend to want to meet the acts they sign. There are distributors who “play moneyball where they send very low-risk, low-effort offers to kids at scale,” says Eric Parker, who manages the rising U.K. act Myles Smith, among others. “I’ve seen one distributor send the exact same agreement to over 10 different kids.” 

Parker calls this approach “race to the bottom A&R-ing in the age of data analytics.” It’s like using artists as lottery tickets — buy as many as possible as cheaply as possible, and pray one gets lucky. 

Manda also believes some artists “are not getting the right guidance” when they’re evaluating different offers from labels and distributors. “Artists need to spend time with, and talk with, the people they might partner with,” he says. 

He has a dim view of the major labels’ decision to throw themselves headlong into distribution. The majors “need to lean more into their superpower, which is signing, developing and breaking superstars over the long term,” Manda says. It’s notable that, even as the majors expand their distribution webs, most of the recent breakout artists this year — Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Benson Boone, Teddy Swims — have come via traditional label deals. 

Despite this, the major label scramble to get artists into distribution deals continues. “Everyone is competing now in the space of, ‘It’s no longer wait and see what this becomes — stick it into distribution,’” says one senior executive. “Every artist has two or three distro offers after one video.”