Artificial Intelligence is Altering the Music Industry
If you have read any of my previous work, you would know that I talk about artificial intelligence, a lot. This article is slightly different. I am going to discuss why artificial intelligence is making waves in the music industry and how it is changing business of the music industry for the better.
One of my favourite quotes mentioning artificial intelligence is by Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce:
“We need to constantly be open to new ideas and approaches, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and be willing to challenge assumptions.”
I believe this quote is true to say in terms of using artificial intelligence to complete creative processes. In order to move forward with the idea of using AI in these types of industries, we need to be motivated and keep an open mind.
Artificial intelligence can be used to make new and original music. In terms of creativity, we always thought it was impossible for technology to reach the same caliber as humans. As we have seen with AI, that is not necessarily true. This article is going to take you through the changes that artificial intelligence is making in the music industry, the technologies aiding these changes as well as the business changes that have been made.
How can AI Benefit the Music Industry?
Artificial intelligence is changing the music industry as we know it. There are many benefits to using artificial intelligence in the music industry, especially from a business standpoint. Artificial intelligence can be used to recommend customers songs and also create the music itself.
One of the most significant changes artificial intelligence has made is in terms of personalization. We now get recommended songs, albums, artists and playlists based off of the music we listen to. These recommendations are sent to us using artificially intelligent algorithms. Data is collected from our usage on the app, it is curated and fed into artificial intelligence systems that learn what we listen to and it sends us new music that we may like according to what we have previously listened to. From a business perspective, this is incredible.
The way the music industry makes money is interesting as not many people know how it is done. Typically, a record label earns 30% of the overall song revenue. So if a song makes $300,000, the record label keep $90,000 and the rest of the money is distributed between the people who made the song, for example producers, songwriters, and singers. If a record label could use an AI machine to cut some of those costs by creating a song themselves, they would acquire a lot more revenue.
There are many more benefits to using artificial intelligence in the music industry. These benefits are primarily business focused and how it can be used to increase productivity and revenue.
Technologies being used to Create Music
Google Brain Magenta research project uses artificial intelligence to write and produce songs. It explores the use of machine learning (scientific study of algorithms and statistical models, a subset of AI) in a creative process, such as making music. It also explores deep learning (machine learning methods but based on neural networks) as well as reinforcement learning (trains algorithms with a reward/punishment system) in order to produce songs. The most popular feature with musicians is GrooVAE. This feature sets it apart from other technologies as it uses neural networks to sound human. This tool can be used by any level of musician. From an established and experienced musician using the continue tool to break through creative blocks to upcoming musicians figuring out how to create music using the generate tool.
Another company experimenting with artificial intelligence and music is Sony. According to Sony itself , its main aim is “achieving augmented creativity of artist in music.” Sony’s Flow Machines, based in Paris has actually has released a song named “Daddy’s Car” that is written and produced by artificial intelligence. An analytical model called the Markov Chain (model describing a sequence of possible events, the probability of each event depends on the state of the previous event). It identifies patterns, imitates and then varies them to create its own original composition. At the moment, this machine can compose a melody but not generate a full song automatically.
The final tool I am going to be discussing is AIVA (artificial intelligence visual artist). AIVA is a tool that uses AI to generate music for both personal and business usage. It uses both deep learning and reinforcement learning, similar to Google’s Magenta above. AIVA is able to create classical music, this is a talent we thought to be exclusively a human quality. AIVA released its first album, Genesis (you can listen to it here), in November of 2016. It is also important to note that AIVA is a recognised composer as of 2017.
AI and Streaming — Business is Changing
The way we listen to music has changed. We no longer purchase physical copies of the songs. We pay a service to allow us to stream the music as long as we have access to internet or the music saved to the application for offline usage. The music industry has benefited from this change, as long as they can keep up. Spotify is the most popular music streaming service with over 96 million subscribers and over 170 million users overall according to Matthew Field of The Telegraph. They have 40% of the global streaming market which is extremely impressive.
According to Scott Cohen (music industry expert and co-founder of The Orchard) over 20,000 new songs are uploaded to Spotify daily. Artificial intelligence is necessary to filter these uploads and distribute them accordingly to people’s specific interests and music tastes. The key to doing this? Data! Data drives artificial intelligence. The more data you can feed your algorithms, the better. According to Wouter de Bie, Spotify users “create 600 gigabytes of data” daily.
Conclusion
To conclude, I think it is safe to say that the music industry is one of the main industries that have both suffered and benefited greatly at the hands of technological change. But in this era of streaming all forms of entertainment, the use of artificial intelligence is working.
There is a great quote by Daniel Ek, “ I had two passions growing up — one was music, one was technology. I tried to play in a band for a while, but I was never talented enough to make it. And I started companies. One day came along and I decided to combine the two — and there was Spotify.”
If you are interested in reading up on AI and creativity, Mark Ryan of the Digital Advocate team does great work on that topic.
If you would like to try out Oracle’s Cloud Service, I have been given a free trial link for readers to use.
*All views and opinions expressed are mine and not that of Oracle*
