Large-Scale Training Data Attribution for Music Generative Models via Unlearning

Woosung Choi

Junghyun Koo

Kin Wai Cheuk

Joan Serrà

Marco A. Martínez-Ramírez

Yukara Ikemiya

Naoki Murata

Yuhta Takida

Wei-Hsiang Liao

Yuki Mitsufuji

NeurIPS-25

2025

Abstract

This paper explores the use of unlearning methods for training data attribution (TDA) in music generative models trained on large-scale datasets. TDA aims to identify which specific training data points contributed to the generation of a particular output from a specific model. This is crucial in the context of AI-generated music, where proper recognition and credit for original artists are generally overlooked. By enabling white-box attribution, our work supports a fairer system for acknowledging artistic contributions and addresses pressing concerns related to AI ethics and copyright. We apply unlearning-based attribution to a text-to-music diffusion model trained on a large-scale dataset and investigate its feasibility and behavior in this setting. To validate the method, we perform a grid search over different hyperparameter configurations and quantitatively evaluate the consistency of the unlearning approach. We then compare attribution patterns from unlearning with those from a similarity-based approach. Our findings suggest that unlearning-based approaches can be effectively adapted to music generative models, introducing large-scale TDA to this domain and paving the way for more ethical and accountable AI systems for music creation.