How AI is used in the music industry

21

October

2023

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Writing this during the Amsterdam Dance Event weekend, this blog is written about using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the music industry.

AI technology is increasingly used as support in various industries. One of these industries is the music industry and the opportunities are truly endless. The use of AI in the music industry can be divided into three uses. Firstly, there is instrumental and vocal reproduction. Here, tone transfer algorithms are used to reproduce existing music with different tones or voices. A recent trend on social media platform TikTok is the AI Music covers, where the user can choose the singer (who does not need be able to sing) and the song. AI will generate the song using the input “artist”. For example, listen to this song where Freddie Mercury sings Skyfall by Adele. Obviously, Freddie Mercury had sadly passed away long before this song was released:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx_nltXJwJo

A second way of using AI in the music industry is mixing and mastering, which helps artists to balance instruments or clean up the audio in a song. For example, Paul McCartney has used AI this summer on an old recording from 1978 of John Lennon to clean up and use the vocals for a new song.

Third and last, AI is also used for song composition. This might be the type of use where the current music industry is most afraid of. AI models are trained based on the melodies, rhythms and forms of current music. Then, based on that, users can give instructions on what song should be composed. AI is able to generate high-quality music which is easily modified to one’s liking. For example, Don Diablo, a Dutch DJ is nowadays referring to himself as a “digital artist”, due to his use with AI. According to him, the opportunities are endless, and he does not see this technology developing further as a risk to the music industry.

Bibliography:

Palamara, J. (2023, August 14). 3 ways AI is transforming music. The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/3-ways-ai-is-transforming-music-210598

Reid, J. (2023, June 13). Paul McCartney says A.I. got John Lennon’s voice on ‘last Beatles record’. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/13/paul-mccartney-says-ai-got-john-lennons-voice-on-last-beatles-record.html

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Can You Become a Music Producer Without Any Knowledge? With This AI Tool, You Can!

19

October

2023

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As we experience rapid development in Artificial Intelligence (AI), the music industry is one of the areas where it’s trying to find its application. Seemingly, an unlikely industry for the application of AI tools, where traits like human creativity and musical talent are key for success, AI appears to be a promising entrant. One of the impressive current examples is an AI-based music-generating platform called Boomy (Boomy, 2023). I discovered Boomy through a social media post where the influencer challenged the viewers to guess which music was created by humans and which one was AI-generated. Interestingly, for most of the cases, it was very difficult to tell them apart correctly. It immediately made me curious to check the platform out and see if that’s actually possible to create such music without any musical background. To my surprise, it was! Apart from its impressive music-generating capability, I was pleasantly surprised with its user interface. As it allowed me to create a complete song within a few steps. In the pictures below I tried to include the main stages of creating a song through Boomy to give an idea of how AI is making the process so easy. The first step is to choose a genre you prefer:

Afterwards, you are presented with the style of music you wanna proceed with:

And in live time, it composes the track based on the previous steps:

Lastly, it presents you with a final song with the option to name, edit, or add your own vocals on top of it.

So as you can see, the process of creating new music is easy enough for a beginner without any musical knowledge. However, the question of how exactly the ‘new music’ is new still stands. Similarly to other AI generative tools, Boomy is also exposed to the question of how it sources the sounds it uses to create the music. Are the any potential copyright infringements? And if so how exactly it’s planning to solve them?

In addition, to the quality of the music itself, while it delivers surprisingly high-quality content, for an experienced ear it can still be distinguished from a professionally produced track. So to call it a replacement for human musicians is an overstatement at this moment. However, it can definitely be used by beginner producers to start their journey in the music industry. And for other users, it can be a neat trick to impress friends.

All in all, it technically can help you to produce a song without a musical background, but it is still far from replacing traditional processes of music production. What do you think about Boomy? Would you consider using similar AI-based tools to jumpstart your career in certain industries?

References:

Boomy – Make Generative Music with Artificial Intelligence. (2023). Boomy.com. Retrieved October 19, 2023, from https://boomy.com/

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Mubert – creative opportunity for music professionals as well as amateur music enjoyers

17

October

2023

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“Creating your own music with generative AI tool”, I wonder what 16 years old me would think about this idea. If someone were to explain to me that I can make pieces of music simply by typing words into computer, I would still have a hard time believing this. It could mean that I no longer had to go to music classes every Tuesday evening, and instead I could write down my music ideas at home and observe what outcomes appear within seconds.     

One of the tools that allows such an innovative solution is Mubert. Depending on the desired goal, users can choose different versions of this tool with respective subscription plans. In this blog post however, I will focus only on the basic function called Mubert Render. One of its big advantages is relative ease of use, as there are only two fields that need to be specified. The first field is a text box where users can indicate mood/genre/instrument or even BPM of created music piece. Then, users choose the length of sample and simply click on “generate track”. When describing desired goal just by one word, the results were not that precise unfortunately, as even for key word “acoustic” tracks would sound electronic and would lack distinction of used instruments. Additionally, after changing single words, the results would still sound very similar to each other. However, as sentences grew with more detailed descriptions, created pieces became more interesting and pleasing to the ear. For me, finding a satisfying piece that matched my expectations took a while, and eventually it worked after I specified not only key words, but also the music key for whole sample. As an improvement idea, it would be interesting to add option to divide instruments in given sample and set different key words and rhythms for each of them.  

Definitely, tools like Mubert provide an opportunity for creators to expand their music portfolios (Weingrad & Kumar, 2023). It is especially important for smaller artists, as at the start of their career they don’t have enough resources to invest in professional equipment. It can be also useful for people that simply enjoy music and would like to try creating something for themselves for free. Even though AI-created music can’t fully compete with human-created songs yet, it can be used as a source of inspiration and experimentation.

References   

https://mubert.com/render

Weingrad, H. W., & Kumar, P. K. (2023). Embracing AI’s disruption of the music industry: advantages, challenges and the future. https://www.dglaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/WLT_Weingrad-Kumar.pdf

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Music meets machines: ethical insights into AI composition

9

October

2023

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A viral sensation known as “Heart on My Sleeve” has taken the spotlight this year. This song garnered over 600 000 streams on Spotify, 15 million views on TikTok, and around 275 000 views on YouTube (Snapes, 2023). It is created entirely by artificial intelligence, this song seamlessly melds the voices of renowned artists The Weeknd and Drake. It tricks listeners into believing it was a genuine collaboration.

Here you can find the viral song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HZ2ie2ErFI

But why were people amazed about this song after figuring out it is composed by AI? The attention that the song got, was because of the ability to mimic the exact style of these artists. Initially, many fans were convinced that this was an unreleased song from The Weeknd and Drake. However, the truth behind this viral hit sparks a lot of questions about crossing technology and creativity.

What could be the ethical considerations in AI-driven music creation?

The first and foremost is copyright and intellectual property. AI generated music raises questions about copyright and intellectual property. Determining the rightful owner of a piece of music created or assisted by AI can be complex. According to international and European copyright law, authors are automatically granted protection upon the creation of original works. However, the use of AI systems, tools, and techniques in the creative process has complicated matters (Bulayenko et al., 2022).

Second, some argue that AI-created music lacks the human emotion and creativity (Carter, 2023). Ethical concerns arise when AI imitates specific artists’ styles too closely, blurring the line between inspiration and plagiarism (Shaffi, 2023).

Third, companies and developers needs to take in consider that they should be transparent about the use of AI in music creation. Clear labeling and disclosure of AI-generated music can help listeners make informed decisions about what they want to listen.

As we witness the boundary between technology and creativity blur, the ethical dimensions of AI-driven music creation become increasingly relevant. How do you feel about AI-generated music mimicking the styles of beloved artists? Share your thoughts below, I would love to hear your perspective.


References:
Bulayenko, O., Pedro Quintais, J., Poort, J., & Gervais, D. (2022, 22 april). AI Music Outputs: Challenges to the Copyright Legal Framework – Part I – Kluwer Copyright Blog. Kluwer Copyright Blog. https://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2022/04/22/ai-music-outputs-challenges-to-the-copyright-legal-framework-part-i/
Carter, G. (2023, 13 maart). AI generated music – the future of the fall of creativity? Music Gateway. https://www.musicgateway.com/blog/music-production/ai-generated-music-the-future-of-the-fall-of-creativity#:~:text=The%20main%20disadvantage%20of%20AI,music%20created%20by%20a%20human.
Shaffi, S. (2023, 23 januari). ‘It’s the opposite of art’: Why illustrators are furious about AI. the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/jan/23/its-the-opposite-of-art-why-illustrators-are-furious-about-ai
Snapes, L. (2023, 18 april). AI song featuring fake drake and weeknd vocals pulled from streaming services. the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/18/ai-song-featuring-fake-drake-and-weeknd-vocals-pulled-from-streaming-services

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My best friend, Spotify

29

September

2021

5/5 (1)

In today’s world the majority of society utilizes social media. Being connected to a large number of people all around the globe goes hand in hand with sharing personal information about yourself. More and more people criticize the lack of privacy due to large amounts of data collected by services such as Facebook or Instagram. Nevertheless, I was recently thinking about that issue. It is not a secret that social media users are obliged to share personal information to a certain extent. However, the life users show on their platforms is often superficial. Hence, I was thinking about other services, such as Spotify, where the collection of personal information is less obvious compared to other social media services. Everyone with a passion for music knows that your taste in music can say a lot about yourself and your personality. Music can connect people, cultures but also impact someone’s sense of style and fashion. Further, the music we listen to often reflects our current state and mood. Nevertheless, people are less hesitant towards getting a Spotify description than creating a Facebook account considering privacy and data regulations. Now the question arises: Who knows me best?

In order to answer this question it is important to take a look at the techology behind Spotify. As most people know, Spotify is not only known for its wide range of music, but also its personalized features. Especially for its ‘Daily-Mix’ introduced in 2015, which is a playlist personalized to each users recent listenings and preferences.

To create this playlist, Spotify needs to extract information, by making use of three so-called recommendation models. The first model is known as collaborative filtering. You can visualize this as a huge matrix consisting of millions of vectors representing the amount of users by the amount of songs. Explained in everyday language, Spotify analyses your listening habits and matches them to similar users. Based on that the algorithm recommends you similar songs other users with a similar taste in music liked. The second model uses Natural Language Processing (NLP). In short, Spotify scans the web to look for articles, blog posts or discussions related to a specific song, artist or genre and connects them. This can also be done by scanning lyrics. To illustrate this, you can think of rap music. Many artists use similar terms. Also when speaking about rap music in ‘natural language’ users often communicate in a certain slang. By connection several dots, Spotify can detect similar music and make a connection between songs or artists. The most recent recommendation model introduced, analyses raw audio models. Spotify identified that the two previously described models put upcoming artists at a disadvantage. Hence in this last model, the raw audio is analyzed for Acousticness, Danceability, Energy, Instrumentalness, Liveness, Speechiness, Tempo, and Valence. Through that, Spotify recognizes similar songs and groups them together.

Overall, it seems like Spotify knows its users better than any other platform does. Spotify might even know more about us and our mental state than we do ourselves or want to admit to ourselves. Hence, it is questionable to distrust social media platforms but use Spotify without questioning it. Let me know in the comments how you feel about this!

Anderson, A., Maystre, L., Anderson, I., Mehrotra, R., & Lalmas, M. (2020). Algorithmic Effects on the Diversity of Consumption on Spotify. Proceedings of The Web Conference 2020. Published. https://doi.org/10.1145/3366423.3380281

Ciocca, S. (2020, April 9). How Does Spotify Know You So Well? – Featured Stories. Medium. https://medium.com/s/story/spotifys-discover-weekly-how-machine-learning-finds-your-new-music-19a41ab76efe

Spotify. (2021). Web API Reference | Spotify for Developers. https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/

Tiffany, K. (2018, February 5). You can now play with Spotify’s recommendation algorithm in your browser. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/2/5/16974194/spotify-recommendation-algorithm-playlist-hack-nelson

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ORANGE MIGHT BE THE NEW BLACK, BUT SPOTIFY IS UNDOUBTEDLY DIFFERENT FROM NETFLIX

18

October

2018

No ratings yet. The recent news about the growth of Netflix subscribers reveals a strong and sound business model. Executives prediction of 5m net new users was far below the actual number of subscribers who joined the platform in the past three months (around 7m). Furthermore, more than 6m of them are international clients, meaning that the business is steadily expanding outside the US.

Because both companies are massive, rapidly expanding and active in the media and entertainment industry, Netflix and Spotify are often compared and considered alike enterprises. In reality, there are some important and structural differences that cannot be disregarded.

Although the two offer an all-you-can-stream service in exchange of a monthly fee, Spotify also provides customers with a free of charge subscription, while Netflix does not, having user subscriptions as the main source of revenues. This implies that as thousands of active users of the music stream app are not paying for the service, accepting the limitations that this entails, the Swedish company also relies on revenues from advertisement.

Furthermore, the two industries they are engaged in, are indeed very dissimilar. First, in terms of production expenses: while almost anybody can produce and broadcast a song, films and series are extremely more costly. This is translated into different incentives for producers: on the one hand, artists and songwriters are likely to rely on as many platforms as possible to increase the diffusion of their pieces to extrapolate most value out of them. On the other, to start the process, filmmakers need sponsors who spread the risk they face by investing in more than one production.

With respect to this, it can be highlighted that Netflix is also involved in the creation of content, while Spotify is not. The former therefore is both a producer and a distributor, while the latter merely offers a product that can be easily found on other platforms.

Spotify is in a weak position when setting prices. In particular, its costs rise as more people subscribe to the platform and stream the song because labels, that still play a major role in the industry, generally pay artists per user who listens to their songs. For this reason, scalability constitutes an issue for the company. Instead, Netflix enjoys a reduction in its per unit costs as more users subscribe to the platform, becoming over time a crucial partner that enables studios to enlarge their reach.

Only the following years will tell us whether Spotify succeeds in the difficult task of transforming its business model into a more sustainable one or whether, after having changed the way people listen and pay for music, it will be replaced by some other company.

Sources:
https://www.barrons.com/articles/spotify-why-it-is-and-isnt-like-netflix-1522939226
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-23/why-spotify-can-t-scale-like-netflix
https://www.ft.com/content/f6512c08-d163-11e8-a9f2-7574db66bcd5
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/spotify-stock-price-netflix-cant-compare-2018-4-1020586061
https://www.valuechampion.sg/5-reasons-why-spotify-not-netflix-music

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Technology Of The Week – Music (Streaming) Industry – Group 6

16

September

2016

No ratings yet. The music industry has been disrupted by IT advances. We used to listen to music on mp3-players and nowadays we stream music and listen to music everywhere we are. The music industry became a newly vulnerable market.  This market was newly easy to enter through technological changes, a drop in costs and through the ease of spreading music online. It was a cheap small step to streaming services. Furthermore, the industry was attractive to attack because of the high fixed costs the record companies had to cover. Record companies made it difficult to defend themselves, because the companies did not compete with the new online distribution strategies, which left them far behind in the market.

We analysed Deezer and Plugify to get a better understanding of the disruption in the music industry. Deezer is an independent online music streaming provider, has 6 million subscribers and is available in 180 countries. Deezer operates as a multi-sided platform business model. One segment finances the other segment. The user is looking for music, while the advertiser is looking for an audience to advertise their products. Deezer focuses on a long tail strategy. Because there are no stocking costs online, Deezer could provide an unlimited amount of songs, what means all niche tastes can be served. Also the lower costs of making music support the niche market. Plugify is an online platform to book live music. The customer searches for a desired artist and can book and pay online. The business model of Plugify consists of two key players, the customers and the artists.

When we look at the comparison between Deezer and Plugify, we see that Plugify has a first mover advantage in their field and that Deezer faces a lot of competitors who supply similar services to their customers. For Plugify the power of supply is high as they need as much artists as possible and they only operate in the Dutch market. The power of supply for Deezer is low. There are only a few artists who refuse to deliver their music. The power of buyers of Plugify is high as customers can easily find artist online. The power of buyers of Deezer is low, because Deezer has a large customer base also due to their partnerships with telecom companies. Besides, when a customer has to pay for their account, they often don’t want to leave. For Plugify there is a high threath of new entry in comparison to Deezer where this is low, because the market is already dominated. The revenue model of Plugify consists of a 8-12% commission per booking as Deezer focuses on subscription fees and advertisement income. The cost structure of Plugify and Deezer is quite the same.

In the future there will also be changes in the music industry.  Artists will earn money through performances instead of selling music. There will be more music experience through virtual reality, more music personalisation and sharing music through social media channels will become easier. And of course music streaming will become mainstream.

By:

373396 Florine Koot

365545 Christianne ‘t Hart

376005 Elisabeth Kuyf

376482 Emilia Mertens

References:

Retrieved 14 september 2016, from http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~clemons/files/JMIS-.Online_MusicV3_doc.pdf

Plugify (2016) Retrieved 14 september 2016, from http://www.emerce.nl/interviews/plugify-online-bands-boeken-fluitje-cent.

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