Conversations around AI and the music industry have often been sticky with pessimism, which is no surprise given that fearing the unknown has always been a fundamentally regressive part of the human experience.
It certainly doesn’t help matters when horror films play on our fears. In the age of the advancement of medical technologies, Frankenstein’s monster was created, and techno-horror has been giving us the creeps since The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). For the non-tech-minded masses, tales of horror are the bases for their cognitive biases.
The prospect of an increasingly more digital future, which threatens our creativity and labour even more than late-stage capitalism, has confounded the fear of progressive change to the nth degree. No one welcomes the increased possibility of redundancy in a world where your worth is determined, in large, by your contribution to it and the respective paycheques. But the advances of AI don’t need to mean doom, gloom, and dystopia.
There has long been the belief that AI in the music industry will be the final death knell for artists. But an increasing number of artists are proving that embracing AI doesn’t have to be synonymous with the cannibalisation of creativity. And whether you realise it or not, AI is already having a drastic impact on how you discover and consume music. It is also helping to rectify one of the main issues in the music industry; the oversaturation of it, which drags talent under the swathes of poorly produced spaff.
The main inspiration behind this article was the recently released AI Stable Diffusion music video from the UK alternative artist, Witch of the East, who has been showcasing her AI-created art before launching the music video for her single, A Tale of the Lonely.
Stable Diffusion is a recently introduced text-to-image model which professes to enable billions of people to create stunning art in seconds. But make no mistake, producing the trippy gothic Francis Bacon-Esque music video took hours. And Witch of the East has been a beguilingly sensational artist in her own organic right since the launch of her grungy 2019 debut album, Queen of Insecurity. The video, which takes you down a blackened occultist rabbit hole, provides a mesmeric aesthetic to her off-kilter confession of destabilising loneliness, one that is sure to provide ample resonance as we slip into the promise of a winter of discontent.
In her own words, “AI tools are just another way to bring ideas to light; an extra colour on the paintbrush or musical note on the spectrum”.
How AI is Improving the Music Industry
For any optimism around AI, it is crucial to understand that AI isn’t here to replace human capabilities but to enhance them through higher productivity and efficiency. In the same way that you wouldn’t bemoan a washing machine for speeding up the process of laundry, AI shouldn’t be begrudged for the way it can speed up processes and take the slog out of repetitive tasks.
Music Composing & Mastering
Take AI’s role in music creation as an example. AI tools, such as Magenta, Amper, and Flow Machines, can analyse the data in compositions to reveal characteristics and patterns that will take the sound to the next level, sparing the process of trial and error. The human role remains, while AI provides efficiency.
AI can also be a great music mastering tool. While this limits the need to outsource, AI mastering tools such as LANDR, which can finish the task in minutes, means that more artists can get a professional finish without the cost – which many cannot afford in our current financial climate.
Music Marketing & Promotion
AI has long been integrated into marketing to determine target audiences, monitor consumer behaviour, and put products in front of the right people at the fraction of the cost of traditional marketing methods. In the music industry, AI can determine engagement, track patterns, and help artists to increase revenue by targeting the right audiences.
If you have ever used YouTube to listen to music, which two billion people worldwide do, you have already experienced the benefits of AI and machine learning through the recommendations. Those recommendations happen through deep insights into tastes based on listening patterns. The Spotify Discovery playlists are also AI-curated through big data insights and machine learning to save users the hassle of manually searching for music that hits the spot.
Talent Discovery
AI filtering engines filter thousands of songs every day to introduce music fans to new artists they would otherwise have missed by going off past listening habits. These filtering engines don’t discriminate on genre; they make recommendations based on the quality of the music. So, for any artist afraid that the insurgence of AI in the music industry will mean that they’re competing with flawless melody-making robots, the reality is that the artists who deserve to break through based on the quality of their music have a better chance of making a mark.
Major record labels are also leaning on AI more to discover new artists. With advanced analytics, such as predictive modelling, they can mine Spotify, SoundCloud and other streaming platforms for the best unsigned talent. This type of AI may leave people in A&R fearing for their relevancy in the music industry, but A&R reps are still a crucial cog in the industry machine, as it isn’t only streaming sites that are mined for musical talent. Music blogs, social media platforms and touring data can also be mined by AI filtering engines to see who is hot.
Final Thoughts
A music industry that revolves around metadata isn’t our future; if you peek behind the curtain and look behind the scenes, it is our present.
Music traditionalists may not like the advancements made in the industry with their preference of nostalgically lusting for the days when everything was analog. But these misinformed dinosaurs shouldn’t lead the discussion on machine learning in the music industry. Ironically, they are probably already enjoying the benefits of personalised music recommendations; unless they can’t pull themselves away from the records they listened to when they graduated high school.
Using AI tools to dive forward your music career can lead to lower production costs, reduced human error and increased time efficiency; forget the plot to iRobot, and embrace its potential.
Article by Amelia Vandergast
Image Credits: Witch of the East