ElevenLabs has launched a newly revamped iteration of ElevenMusic, its AI-powered music platform. Through it, fans can stream, create and remix music, turning them from “passive listeners into active participants,” according to a blog post. This follows the August 2025 launch of ElevenMusic’s original AI music model under the same name, which allowed users to create AI music from written prompts and to use those songs specifically for commercial purposes.
As of Wednesday (April 29), users of ElevenMusic can either make fully new songs — prompting first from a lyric, melody or mood to get an AI-generated song — or remix existing songs’ genres or tempos to make them their own. In a press release about the revamped service, ElevenMusic touts itself as “fully licensed” and “artist-first by design.”
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This marks what appears to be a significant shift in ElevenMusic’s business plan. Originally, in August 2025, ElevenMusic announced licensing deals with Kobalt and Merlin (as well as synchronization licensing platform SourceAudio), and it was explained then that this would be a platform for users to create music for commercial purposes.
In an email to Kobalt signees after the 2025 ElevenMusic deal, obtained by Billboard, “the basic concept” of the new ElevenMusic model was described as a way “to help power a scalable, AI-driven production music library that creates custom audio for studios, brands and creators. It’s not meant to replace traditional uses of [one’s] repertoire, but to add value alongside them.” Use cases for the Eleven Music model were listed as “background music for brands, agencies and studios,” “novelty songs” and “UGC-safe content for social platforms.”
The newly launched ElevenMusic service is now chasing the everyday music fan as opposed to professional clients who are looking for production library music. ElevenMusic now touts itself as a “fan engagement layer, creating a place where artists can involve fans in the creative process,” while allowing its users to move “beyond tactic catalogs toward a more adaptive and participatory mode.”
At the time of its launch, the newly reintroduced ElevenMusic features about 4,000 human artists on the platform — mostly emerging acts — whose music can be streamed or remixed by users. It also features the two volumes of its self-assembled The Eleven Album series, which showcases AI-assisted music made alongside participating artists. Artists featured in the volumes include Liza Minnelli, Art Garfunkel, “BBL Drizzy” creator King Willonius, The Danger Twins and Justin Love.
The Wednesday press release about ElevenMusic notes that it gives users a “direct path to monetization while enabling fans to actively participate in the music itself,” but it does not provide details on how that compensation works. However, previous Billboard reporting on the original launch in August 2025 revealed more details on how artists and music companies would be paid.
An email to Kobalt signees at the time about the publisher’s deal with ElevenMusic noted that participants would receive a “pro-rata share of a royalty pool based on how many of [the artist/songwriters’] works were used to train the [Eleven Music] model relative to others.” A source close to the deal also explained that this meant participating artists/writers would receive royalties relative to how many songs they represented in the overall dataset.
The results would then be “weighted using digital proxies,” which the source noted meant that royalty payouts wouldn’t just take into account how many songs one had in the dataset but also the popularity of those songs, determined by looking at their metrics on other digital platforms. The source declined to specify exactly what Kobalt’s “digital proxies” were. It is unclear if the new changes to the platform will impact this payment structure. (Less is known about the nature of Merlin’s deal with ElevenMusic.)
“We’re building with the artist and songwriter communities, not around them,” said Derek Cournoyer, music strategy lead at ElevenLabs, about the launch. “Everything about ElevenMusic, from our fully licensed music model to our commercial approach, is designed with that principle at heart. We’re excited to give fans a more active way to experience the music they love, and create a new gateway into DJing.”
