[SATIRE]

NEW YORK — Warner Music Group (WMG) announced a groundbreaking partnership with AI music platform Suno this week, effectively launching a new era of “asset optimization” that allows the company to generate revenue from artists without the traditional friction of artist involvement. Under the agreement, WMG will license the voices and likenesses of opted-in talent, allowing users to generate songs instantly without booking studio time or dealing with creative differences.

The move comes just months after the recording industry filed lawsuits against AI generators for copyright infringement, a strategy executives now describe as “pre-negotiation leverage.” The new deal addresses what leadership identified as the primary inefficiency in the music business: the musicians themselves. “For decades, our content output was strictly limited by biological constraints,” said Elena Rodriguez, VP of Digital Assets at WMG. “Legacy artists require approximately eight hours of sleep daily, often demand creative input on their own albums, and occasionally lose their voices during tours. By digitizing the vocal asset, we can finally decouple the intellectual property from the biological host.”

The partnership allows WMG to scale artist output from one album every two years to approximately 4,000 tracks per minute. While the company stated that artists must “opt in,” industry analysts noted that the definition of opting in might soon be synonymous with “signing a standard recording contract.” The initiative promises to reduce overhead significantly by eliminating line items such as tour buses, backstage catering, and rehabilitation stays.

“From a P&L perspective, the ROI on a digital likeness is vastly superior to a human,” explained Marcus Chen, Chief Financial Officer. “An AI version of Ed Sheeran does not require a per diem, never complains about press junkets, and can perform in 74 distinct markets simultaneously without incurring a single travel expense. We are simply aligning our talent acquisition strategy with the reality that software is more reliable than people.”

At press time, WMG was reportedly developing a “Live” tour experience consisting of a single server rack on a stage, with tickets starting at $250 for the chance to watch the hard drive spin.

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