The Amazing Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming The Music Industry

The days of debating if artificial intelligence (AI) will impact the music industry are over. Artificial intelligence is already used in many ways. Now it's time to consider how much it will influence how we create and consume music....

Businesses are being reshaped by technology, and those in the music industry are no exception. According to a McKinsey report, 70 per cent of companies will have adopted at least one AI technology by 2030. The promise of AI is that it will complement and augment our human capabilities. As we make better choices and become more effective and efficient thanks to the insights and support AI provides, it can drive growth and innovation. As a result of AI's impact, the creative process will likely transform.

Scott Cohen is one thought leader in the music industry who saw the potential impact of technology on the music industry's future when others didn't. His thoughts for a distribution company in the digital music age ultimately became The Orchard, which was acquired by Sony in 2015 for $200 million. During his keynote presentation at the Eurosonic Nooderslag conference, he said, "Every ten years something kills the music industry. If you want to know what's next look at the tech world."

He explained that there are 20,000 new tracks uploaded to Spotify every day and AI is critical for helping sort through the options and delivering recommendations to listeners based on what they’ve listened to in the past. Cohen believes that AI and big data made the “music genre” obsolete because AI-generated playlists are made not based on genre, but what is determined to be good music.

I was reflecting on this last night when I was listening to Spotify. They now present me with four "Daily Mixes" made for me in four different genres. I listen to them and usually mark "Like" on maybe 20% to 25% of the songs when then improves their future recommendations. I thought of how that is millions times better than the way I found new music back in the late 60s or early 70s -- the only method available then was to listen to radio (I avoided all "Top 40" format and listened to more eclectic FM), listen to what friends were listening to, and judging albums by the cover artwork. Spotify runs on Hortonworks, a big data company I worked for briefly a couple years ago: InformationWeek, 9/17/2013, Spotify Embraces Hortonworks, Dumps Cloudera. I'm shopping for new home loudspeakers now and the professional speaker reviews always list five to ten obscure songs that the reviewer used to evaluate the speaker. In the old days, there was almost no way for me to find those songs, but today I can find about 98% of them on Spotify in seconds. Just last night I found a recommendation in a speaker review for "Ramirez: Missa Criolla; Navidad Nuestra; Navidad en Verano" ("Christmas in Summer") by Ariel Ramirez, Jose Carreras, Grupo Huancara and others from 1988. I found it almost instantly on Spotify and really enjoyed it. The fact that Big Data and AI can do this for tens or hundreds of millions of simultaneous listeners and hundreds of millions or billions of songs is just stupefying. Big Data and AI have really transformed music. There are two sad things for me in this, though: 1) this happened so late in my life and 2) there aren't enough hours in the day to enjoy all the great music that Spotify finds for me.

That is true to a large extent. However, the article is clearly aimed at AI technology removing "rote" human activity. Warner Music Group acquired a tech start-up last year that uses an algorithm to review social, streaming and touring data to find promising talent. Apple also acquired a start-up that specializes in music analytics to support the A&R process. Thus the A&R guy who has 10 yrs experience and has landed one or two stars gets replaced by a bot that backtests well. This is especially relevant today, since most revenues aren't coming from interesting music like progressive rock or hard rock, but I-IV-V genres: The Hip-Hop/Rap genre had the largest genre-share of total album consumption, 21.7% up from 17.5% in 2017. Pop and Rock followed with 20.1% and 14% respectively. • For the third year in a row, Hip-Hop/Rap was the top genre in terms of total song consumption, 24.7% up from 20.9% in 2017, with Pop second at 19% share followed by Rock at 12%. • Streaming of titles in the Rock genre (including Rock, Alternative, Metal, Indie Rock, Punk) went from 19% in 2017 down to 11% in 2018. 11% were Latin songs.

I spent decades carefully building which by the late 1990s was probably the ultimate rock and pop record collection. At one time, I had over 2,000 compact discs and about as many LPs and cassette tapes. Many of the cassette tapes were recorded right off the radio - shows like Dr. Demento, King Biscuit Flower Hour, Casey Kasem's Top 40 shows, year-end countdowns, etc. Good collection of stuff that I'd happily put on YouTube to share with all if I had assurance I wouldn't get sued for doing so. I estimate that I much have spent $50,000 over the years buying music, not to mention the countless hours organizing and cataloguing it all. Now it's all for naught. For about $10 a month on a service like Apple Music or Spotify, I can stream pretty much anything that I want to hear. New and old. Millions of songs and albums with the push of a few buttons. I used to think my record collection was an "investment" but that does not appear to be panning out. For example, my vinyl LP of "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac might fetch five bucks on eBay. Back in 1977, I paid $7.98 for it (and at the time, it was hard earned money). Some investment! Fact is, why would anybody (but a nerdy collector) want to buy an old vinyl version of "Rumours" when you can so easily stream it on your device on demand? There was a time when record collecting was a passion and a reflection of your good (or bad) taste. But other than those taped radio shows from the 1970s and 80s, there is nothing unique about my collection anymore. Not even my kids want any part of it.

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