Today’s established big names in the music industry like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran are often fighting it out for the top spot in the music charts, but a new player might have arrived and it is something they will not have encountered before: Artificial Intelligence (AI).
AI forces like Amper and Jukedeck enable artists and computers to collaborate and create new music. Taryn Southern, an internet personality and singer, released an album that was entirely created using Amper. Artists and producers like Southern can choose to change and manipulate parts of a track, but Amper is able to independently create a song without human interference too. Southern’s first song ‘Break Free’ is an evident example of that (Straight, 2017).
Music created by AI requires no copyright either. In 2011, photographer David Slater was following a troop of macaques, when one of them pressed the shutter button and made a selfie. This infamous photo resulted in a lawsuit due to copyright issues. The question arose: ‘can the monkey hold the rights to the photo?’. Last week, the case was finally settled with an agreement. Slater holds the rights, but he will donate 25% of future revenues to charities (NYPost, 2017). However, this lawsuit has significant consequences. The U.S. Copyright Office has now declared that ‘works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author’ were ineligible (Hollywoodreporter, 2017).
This means that music created by AI is not protected by law. Therefore, new artists using AI when creating music need to ensure that there is some human input or contribution to secure the rights to a particular song or album and avoid a lawsuit (Hollywoodreporter, 2017).
The big question remains whether we will start to see AI-generated hit-songs top the charts in the near future. Current software suggests that there is potential, but people from the AI music industry try to temper the expectations. Jukedeck’s CEO Ed Newton-Rex says it doesn’t need to be better than Ed Sheeran or Adele. Instead of AI music being better than a certain artist, the question that should be asked is ‘will it be useful for people?’. AI startups hope that AI Music will inspire human artists rather than threaten them. (Guardian, 2017).
Nobody knows exactly how big the impact of AI-generated music will be. It can be considered as either an opportunity or a threat by producers and artists. What do you think the future holds for the music industry? Will AI start producing global hits or will we always value human artists more?
References:
https://www.straight.com/music/954856/artificial-intelligence-penned-entire-pop-music-album-and-its-not-actually-bad http://nypost.com/2017/09/12/suit-settled-over-selfie-monkey-photo-copyright/ http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/artificial-intelligence-ushers-era-music-moneyball-guest-column-1038175 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/06/artificial-intelligence-and-will-we-be-slaves-to-the-algorithm
