The Future of Music

18

October

2018

5/5 (2)

 

Music is experienced in many different ways, ranging from massive concerts, to singing along to songs in a car, to just casually listening to some music when studying or hanging out. The ways music is created and delivered to listeners has changed drastically over the past years and will keep evolving in the future. In this blog two upcoming developments in the creation and delivery of music will be explained.

 

Recommendations are nothing new for music streaming services such as Apple Music, Spotify, etc. At the moment though they are primarily used for analytics, besides providing personalized recommendations. For these services, it’s powerful to be able to recognize what kind of music will become a trend and which characteristics make that music popular. When creating new songs, this information can be leveraged by artists to create a new hit. However, AI will be able to compose music without interference of a human (Gautam, et al. 2018). Coupling this with the data from recommendation systems will bring artists an opportunity to use AI as an aid in making music (Deahl, 2018).

 

Concerts are an important part of experiencing an artist and the music they make. However, they are fairly expensive and most of the times difficult to access because of sold out tickets or distance to the concerts location. To solve this, concerts could come to anyone’s home by using virtual reality. Spotify might for example add a button on an artist’s page to stream a concert through VR glasses, even allowing you to position yourself in the front row, or even on stage behind the drummer. This idea isn’t that crazy either, some big artists like Coldplay, Stevie Wonder and Imagine Dragons have already offered concerts in VR (Esteves, 2018).

 

Music has always been evolving, changing the way it’s been made and delivered. New technologies will make the experience even more immersive and allow business to create and capture value through many new business models. Let’s see how it play’s out, but one thing is certain: the experience will only get better.

 

 

 

Deahl, D., 2018-last update, How AI-Generated Music Is Changing The Way Hits Are Made. Available: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/31/17777008/artificial-intelligence- taryn-southern-amper-music [16-10-2018].

Esteves, A., 2018-last update, When Vr Meets Reality – How Live Concerts Could Be Enhanced By 21st-Century Opera Glasses.
Available: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/how-live-concerts-could-be- enhanced-by-21st-century-opera-glasses-a8002606.html [16-10-2018].

Gautam, S. And Soni, S., 2018. Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Music Composition.

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Sharing Data With Apps: Does It Matter?

30

September

2018

5/5 (5)

You’ve just downloaded a new app and are starting it up for the first time. After the loading screen a bunch of questions pop up: can X-app send you messages? / share your location with X-app / give X-app access to your contacts-photos. It never ends. Everyone is familiar with this scenario, but what does it matter?

Although it doesn’t seem dangerous to share these details, it might put you in more harm than you think. Sharing your location can expose yourself, or others, without you wanting to or knowing it. When using car sharing apps like Uber or Lyft, or tracking your exercises with Apple watch or Strava, you’re trusting these companies with information about yourself. Unfortunately, these companies don’t always properly take care of the data. 4iQ monitors the surface, social and deep and dark web for identity records exposed in data breaches and accidental leaks1. They found ride sharing companies in Mexico and India that accidentally exposed sensitive information to the web. User’s ride requests include the time, exact pick-up location, number, addresses etc. This information and more was all available with a bit of digging.

When this information is combined with other location-based services, or even Twitter and Instagram, it can impose a real threat. The site PleaseRobMe.com is a prime example of this. It combines a stream of updates from various location-based networks and shows when users have checked in somewhere with for example Instagram… and thus aren’t at home. Knowing someone isn’t home gives the perfect chance for burgers to go and rob them (Siegler, 2018).

These cases already show the importance of keeping your privacy in check, but Strava stepped up the game in giving away information that probably shouldn’t be given away (Blue, 2018). Classified information even. In 2017, Strava (an app that tracks your exercises, where you’ve been, how fast etc.) published their global heat map. This heat map was built up from 1 billion sportive activities, 3 trillion longitude and latitude points, and 10 terabytes of data. It shows the most used trials to run, or best roads to ride your bike. It does, however, also show the location and patrolling routes of military bases, like this one in Kandahar, Afghanistan (Triebert et al., 2018).

So, willingly sharing data like your location could make yourself a target of criminals with malicious purposes. Or when combined with millions of other locations, it can even lead to the military reviewing their guidelines for wireless devices (Sly et al., 2018). These things definitely make me think about the privacy settings on my phone and whether companies are properly taking care of my data.

References:

  1. https://4iq.com/
  2. Siegler, M. (2018). Please Rob Me Makes Foursquare Super Useful For Burglars. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2010/02/17/please-rob-me-makes-foursquare-super-useful-for-burglars/ [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].
  3. Blue, V. (2018). Strava’s fitness heatmaps are a ‘potential catastrophe’. [online] Engadget. Available at: https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/02/strava-s-fitness-heatmaps-are-a-potential-catastrophe/?guccounter=1 [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].
  4. Triebert, C., Koetll, C. and Tiefenthäler, A. (2018). How Strava’s Heat Map Uncovers Military Bases. [online] NYTimes.com – Video. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000005705502/big-data-big-problems-how-stravas-heat-map-uncovers-military-bases.html [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].
  5. Sly, L., Lamothe, D. and Timberg, C. (2018). U.S. military reviewing its rules after fitness trackers exposed sensitive data. [online] Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the-us-military-reviews-its-rules-as-new-details-of-us-soldiers-and-bases-emerge/2018/01/29/6310d518-050f-11e8-aa61-f3391373867e_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.798cbfa5ea54 [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].

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