What Is Anthropic’s ‘Claude FM’ and Is Your Music Part of It?

Photo Credit: Claude FM

Anthropic’s Claude FM is a 24-7 music stream playlist on YouTube comprised of actual artists’ music. But is the music being properly licensed?

AI company Anthropic has been beefing with the music industry in the form of a legal battle with publishers who have sued it for copyright infringement. To help boost its image, the company has been working with the likes of Spotify to integrate DSPs into its Claude chatbot. Now, Anthropic is branching out into the lo-fi music streaming space on YouTube in the form of “Claude FM.”

Claude FM is a 24-7 music stream on YouTube that started broadcasting on May 9. The stream describes itself as “music for thinking and building… made and curated by musicians.” That means it’s not AI-generated music, but songs from real artists. Each artist and track is credited in the top-right corner of the stream—but does that mean this music has been properly licensed and the artists are being paid for their involvement?

Discussion about the stream on Reddit revealed that at least one artist, Ben Seretan, was unaware that his music was being used and was unsure whether he was being paid for that usage. But another artist, Yuuki Matthews, confirmed that “three of my songs were licensed by Anthropic for this. They paid my licensor a standard fee for the usage.”

Redditors seem to agree that Anthropic is “probably not just straight-up stealing the music.” Most likely, they’re licensing it through a third-party aggregator or service, and the artists are paid through that service—not directly by Anthropic.

Another theory is that because it’s a YouTube stream, the licensing is handled by YouTube’s own Content ID system. If an artist’s music is registered, they would automatically get paid for the plays on the stream, but they wouldn’t necessarily know the exact source of that traffic. But since at least one artist confirmed their music was licensed for a standard fee, that makes the YouTube Content ID theory seem less likely. However, it could still be the case for some of the artists whose work is being used.

Ultimately, Claude FM isn’t going to serve as a major strategic shift for Anthropic. It seems like something its developers may have introduced for their own workflow soundtrack, made available to the general public via YouTube. Since the music isn’t AI-generated, it isn’t raising huge concerns in the industry, and the artists are (most likely) getting paid either via YouTube or a third-party license aggregator for their involvement.