1. Roli Launches AI Piano Coach Using Hand Tracking
Credit: Roli YT Screenshot
Roli released AI Music Coach, software that tracks 27 hand joints at 90 frames per second to provide real-time verbal feedback during piano practice. The tool works with Roli’s Airwave device and Piano hardware, combining gamification with personalized lessons to address practice loneliness that causes most learners to quit.
This represents a counter-movement in AI music education. While generative AI in music education raises concerns about replacing human creativity, Roli bets on the assistive vs generative AI distinction. Roland Lamb, ROLI CEO, addressed the AI skepticism in the Roli announcement: “”AI helps us to be more human by doing things like teaching us the piano and giving access to people who either don’t live near a teacher, afford one, or find one.””
If you’re a teacher, tools like this will handle scale correction. Your value shifts to teaching musicality and interpretation. If you’re learning, the competitive advantage isn’t prompting AI to make songs. It’s building physical chops the AI cannot replicate. Closed beta opens now for Airwave owners, with public beta launching by end of March 2026.
2. ElevenLabs Raises $500M at $11 Billion Valuation
ElevenLabs closed a $500 million Series D round on February 5, 2026, led by Sequoia Capital. The London and New York-based company is now valued at nearly five times its closest AI music rival. This brings total funding to $781 million since its 2022 founding.
The ElevenLabs AI music generator launched six months ago as a direct competitor to Suno and Udio. But the company is not chasing viral hits. It is building a full media production stack for enterprise clients who need legally cleared audio. Over 60% of Fortune 500 companies already use ElevenLabs tools. Annual recurring revenue sits at $330 million.
ElevenLabs holds Merlin and Kobalt licensing deals that competitors lack. These agreements create a 50/50 revenue split between publishing and recording rights. This matters because Suno faces an RIAA copyright lawsuit with damages up to $150,000 per song. For game studios, ad agencies, and corporate clients, ElevenLabs is the only viable path. If you use AI music for client work, YouTube monetization, or games, ElevenLabs offers legal protection that Suno cannot match.
3. Suno Executive Challenges Closed AI Music Platform Model
Credit: Jimmy Fontaine
Suno Chief Music Officer Paul Sinclair published a LinkedIn post during Grammy week opposing “walled garden” AI platforms that prevent users from exporting or distributing generated music. The former Warner Music Group executive argued AI tools should function as open studios, allowing creators to move work across platforms and reach streaming services.
Sinclair spent six days meeting with artists, producers, managers, and lawyers at Grammy week events. He found broad agreement that the industry faces its biggest technology inflection point yet. “”At the center of today’s debate is control versus empowerment,”” Sinclair wrote. He argued that locking music into closed systems over the past 25 years would have killed streaming, blocked bedroom producers from the Hot 100, and prevented fans from becoming creators.
This split affects your workflow directly. Walled gardens protect label catalogs but trap emerging artists who need exportable stems to build careers. Open platforms let you use AI as a stem generator, pulling vocals or textures into your DAW while maintaining human-in-the-loop copyright status. As Spotify’s AI music policy and WIPO AI music fair use guidelines take shape, the platforms you choose now will determine whether your AI-assisted work reaches audiences or stays locked in a box.
4. Apple Acquires Q.ai for $1.6 Billion Audio Tech
Apple bought Q.ai, a Tel Aviv AI audio startup, for $1.6 billion in its second-largest acquisition. Q.ai specializes in silent speech technology that detects emotions and words through facial micromovements. The 100-person team, led by CEO Aviad Maizels, joins Apple. Maizels previously sold PrimeSense to Apple in 2013, which became the foundation for Face ID.
Q.ai’s core technology isolates vocal signals from facial micro-movements and noisy backgrounds. For working musicians, this represents the potential death of the “studio environment” requirement. Studio-quality vocal capture will no longer require a treated room. Vocalists could “mark” melodies through subvocalization on a tour bus, with AI interpreting muscle movements to render clean audio sketches. Producers gain the promise of perfect isolation, eliminating bleed from live room recordings.
Apple is solving the “”input problem”” while competitors focus on generative tools. By owning the capture layer, Apple commoditizes expensive outboard gear. The gap between a $200 USB mic and your iPhone’s microphone array is closing. This technology connects directly to Apple’s Spatial Audio and Logic Pro AI features. The accessibility implications are significant. Musicians with limited vocal projection could perform complex runs via facial mapping. Yet this requires constant facial scanning, trading audio privacy for biometric surveillance.
5. LALAL.AI Launches First VST Plugin for DAW Integration
LALAL.AI released its first VST plugin, bringing AI stem separation directly into DAWs like Ableton and FL Studio. The plugin uses the Lyra model optimized for local processing on consumer hardware, currently splitting audio into vocals and instrumentals with six-instrument separation coming soon. The tool requires a $15 monthly Pro subscription, competing against free options in Logic Pro and established tools like Steinberg SpectraLayers.
For five years, LALAL.AI users exported audio, uploaded to a website, waited, downloaded stems, and re-imported files. That workflow dies today. The company’s first VST3 plugin eliminates the tab-jumping ritual by placing AI-powered stem separation directly on your channel strip. You now separate vocals from instrumentals without leaving your session.
The plugin runs on the Lyra model, engineered for local processing on standard consumer hardware. This differs from LALAL.AI’s cloud-based Andromeda model, which offers higher fidelity but requires server-side processing. Built-in De-Echo and noise canceling features address common separation artifacts without requiring external repair tools. LALAL.AI enters a crowded battlefield. Steinberg SpectraLayers Pro 12 and Logic Pro 11.2 both outperformed LALAL.AI’s Andromeda model in MusicRadar’s recent testing of best AI stem splitters. If you produce sample-based music, this plugin removes the friction between hearing a sound and using it.
