If you’ve been around for as long as I have, you would have consumed music in many different ways. I remember listening to my father’s copy of Led Zeppelin III on cassette and Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ on vinyl.
As I grew older, I started buying CDs and even purchased a few minidiscs. The latter started with Nine Inch Nails’ Broken. But all that changed with digital downloads and MP3s.
Back then, I was the guy people reached out to for a copy of a particular song or album because my collection was extensive. But now, I don’t own a single CD or MP3 thanks to streaming services.
The music industry has long been guilty of evolving rapidly, but often, it was at the expense of the audience. Napster was a direct response to that! But things are getting better in the age of data.
Over the past decade, most of us in the western hemisphere have been listening to our favorite artists through platforms like Spotify (who have over 200 million active users). But while the mode of consumption may have changed, the fierce competition within the industry remains the same.
Record companies have to quickly adapt to the listeners’ continuously changing tastes and meet their continually rising expectations. While there were questions about how platforms like Spotify would be able to monetize their offering in 2008, today, it’s the single most significant driver of revenue for the industry.
AI Provides Personalized Recommendations
Streaming services are successful because of user-generated content, carefully curated (and shared) playlists, and personalized recommendations. Artificial Intelligence (AI) got in through the door to enable personalized recommendations, but it has grown to become so much more.
Making recommendations, whether it be on Amazon, Apple Music, or Netflix leverages AI and Machine Learning (ML) to identify patterns in the data and make recommendations. Almost all of us have experienced it and know the true value of this technology. However, this was no easy feat.
Read more on Artificial Intelligence in music and whether we are ready to replace Taylor Swift with robots on the Intersog Blog.
Written by Andrew Zola.
