Amazon enters the AI music composition space
This week, Amazon became the latest big tech company to enter the AI music composition space. There was lots of note in their announcement (check out the full video here). Below are seven quick takeaways.
First, that’s now 4 of the ‘big 5’ tech companies who have publicly announced work in AI composition:
❓ AAPL
✅ AMZN
✅ FB
✅ GOOG
✅ MSFT
Apple have kept quiet, but you never know what they’re working on behind the scenes. This is clearly a space the big tech companies think is important enough to be looking into.
Second, Amazon has made a physical keyboard. This is one of the first forays into AI composition hardware we’ve seen . Generative models have largely been confined to being used via apps and websites up till now, but we’ll likely start to see more and more hardware integrate the technology.
Third, they’re using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), a pretty new approach, invented in 2014. One network learns to generate, another learns to judge the output, both gradually get better. Expect to see more using this approach.
Fourth, they’re (at least currently) focused on completing people’s ideas, as opposed to generating music from scratch. This is a good approach, assisting human creativity instead of replacing it. The question is, how long will they confine their models to this?
Fifth is how or when this might be used in Amazon Music. Amazon Music accounts for 12% of the global music streaming market, and it’s growing fast: according to the Financial Times, it grew 70% last year, compared to Spotify’s 25%. If Amazon start to use this tech in their streaming offering, that’s a big deal.
Sixth, Amazon owns the voice space: Alexa commands a 70% market share of home speakers in the US. And voice technology is making it less likely that users know, or care, what music is playing. “Alexa, play some piano music.” What’s to stop Amazon integrating this generative AI into Alexa? It’s way harder to know you’re listening to AI music in a voice-first world.
Seventh, Amazon is famous for embracing automation. One example: Reuters reported this year that Amazon has piloted a system that packs boxes 4 or 5x faster than a human can. If generative AI lets them cut costs in music streaming, is that an opportunity they’ll ignore?
I don’t know what Amazon’s plans are for this technology. But their getting into this space isn’t something people should ignore — it’s just the latest example that this technology is working, and we need to get serious about assessing its implications.
This was originally sent out as part of a newsletter on music and technology I write. You can sign up here.
