AI & Music
I just watched the following video that Rick Beato uploaded and I think it is too spot on and up to date to not share:
Rick is among the top Youtubers in the world and I consider him second to none when it comes to music. Great guy, multi instrumentalist, great producer and also has one of the most experienced pair of ears in the world.
In the above video he predicts what is going to happen with AI in music and how it is going to shape things. I totally agree with what he foresees but my opinion is based more on imagination than experience while he has done so much more miles in this business that put such a weight in his words so it really worth spending a few minutes listening to what he's got to say.
Of course AI is such a massive milestone for mankind that its music side effects is only a fraction of it. How the future will be like when spiritual work can be done in the absence of humans? If we suffer today from fake news how tomorrow will look like when fake will go beyond deep and everybody will have the "truth" that fits their narrative? Will we become more lazy relying on AI answers and end up asking "how do I tuck myself to bed?"
AI has amazing positive potentials but the above can cause reasonable fears. Personally speaking, what counterweights those is the fact that every big step ahead for mankind was causing similar technophobic reactions which most of them proved to be overreacting and this might just be one more time like that in history. Of course, just like a knife, it's all in the way you use it - you can cut your salad or your fingers. The latter is no fun but we don't want a world without knives. However, a knife can't create art - AI can. Or will we stop calling it "Art"? And how will the approach of people towards art will be shaped since they will be able to produce any kind of it without being artists?
I’m going to explore it a lot more as I’m fascinated by it and in my line of work, I feel that if I ignore it l I’ll get left behind. So that’s why I’m going to see what options there are for music, art and code.
He is indeed not saying things that I disagree with. What I missed in his talk, is what shall the real artist approach be? Though am not a musician myself, or working in the music business, I have several friends who are musicians. As well I know quite well some parts of the electronic music business. For decades, I have seen that most artists on this side of the music business earn their living through performance. Not through the production and release of music (anymore, like 20 to 25 years ago it was still different in this business, but slowly it went from earning a bit to not anything relevant anymore). Producing music is used much more as a marketing tool these days. Without new music, no brand recognition is what bookers and promoters think and say. Hence, no productions mean no bookings for the artists. Whether this idea of bookers and promoters is true or not. Since in fact, most people don't care and by now electronic music (house, techno, trance etc etc) is mainstream which basically means, most peeps paying for music, entry tickets to club events and festivals, don't really care who performs. Most of them trigger on the few BIG names, regardless if they are 'good' or not so 'good'. The good side of this type of music going mainstream is that more artists can earn a living, and their gig fees increased tremendously compared to what they were paid 3, 2 and even 1 decade ago. My prediction is that, either: artists will have to perform more in real-life settings as well as take less money for their gigs, orrrrr artists are one of the first professions that will see massive unemployment. The heydays for artists earning tons of money are at their end. That is my prediction ;) Added to what this guy had to say about streaming platforms starting to compete with music publishers with their own AI artists... Well, why not take this a little step further. Eventually, we'll have a music app on our phone that generates the music we want to listen to, an app that creates its own music, just for ourselves. No need for a company to create the AI music and stream it to us. The AI artists will sit right in our app, AI artists that we create ourselves, or better said, our own AI knows what we want and creates whatever we want to hear right spot. When this isn't happening in the coming decade, then in a few decades. Just think of it, when we get quantum computing right, the race for quantum computing to fit in a device such as a smart phone, smart watch or whatever device we gone think of, will be on big time. With such computing power in our pockets, anything can be created locally, in our app on our own mobile devices ;)
Your thoughts match my thoughts - I see the things to come in the same way. Thank you for your substantial input, .