Our commitments to artists and content creators in the AI paradigm

At Epidemic Sound, human creativity will always come first. We believe in artists, their power to move people, to change the world. We believe in content creators, their ability to inspire, to galvanize.

That doesn’t mean we don’t believe in the transformative effects of technology, though. In fact, we embrace it — we’ve built our platform for content creators on technology, after all.

But in a world where AI dominates headlines and redefines norms, human talent will always lie at the core of our business. Technology is not a talent. Technology is a tool to empower talent.

Epidemic Sound was founded on a belief that music licensing should be simple and fair. In launching and honing that solution, we’ve utilized our two superpowers — music and technology — and focused on empowering, not hindering, two creative groups: artists and content creators.

• In 2009, we launched an industry-first music licensing model. It simplified the process for content creators and gave artists predictable payment for their tracks.
• In 2015,we created a music subscription service for YouTubers, catering to a new wave of content creators. Simultaneously, we started distributing tracks on music streaming platforms, introducing a 50/50 royalty split with artists.
• In 2021, we rolled out a third revenue stream for artists: our Soundtrack Bonus of $1.5 million, which has grown year-on-year, to be $4.2 million for 2026.
• Since 2021, we’ve expanded our suite of sophisticated, AI-powered music discovery tools for content creators, including EAR and Soundmatch.
• In 2025, we’ve rolled out more AI tools and consolidated our commitment to remuneration at each stage: 

Voices

Voices is our text-to-voice feature, using professional voice actors who receive both up-front payments and ongoing usage bonuses.

Adapt

Adapt enables creators to edit, shape, and customize music for their content. We’ve introduced a new Adaptive Soundtrack Bonus pool of over $1 million to reward the artists of the adapted tracks.

Epidemic Sound remains well positioned for the AI-paradigm; our innovative rights structure provides clarity. We have full rights to our tracks by owning them outright, unrivaled data insight from billions of daily video views across online platforms, as well as a wealth of feedback from how people interact with music on our platform.

This has allowed us to lead new and innovative work in adaptation and discovery tools, which stay focused on the problems we’re solving for artists and content creators.  

These are our commitments to them — artists and content creators — as we continue to soundtrack the world together in the new AI paradigm.

Our commitments in the AI paradigm

1. Human creativity will always transcend technology

We will always invest in music from human artists, working directly with them as our primary focus. Human creativity can be supercharged by technology, but never replaced. 

2. AI music must provide another revenue stream for artists

While we deeply believe in the power of AI to enhance creativity, our commitment remains to music made by real artists and ensuring that the value of human creativity is both recognized and rewarded appropriately, and continue to develop our remuneration model for artists to reflect that.

3. AI tools must address genuine user needs

Our vision is to create the world’s best soundtracking platform. That means we will stay laser-focused on user needs, developing further AI-powered music discovery features and adaptive tools that solve real problems for content creators.