The role of Artificial Intelligence and other Automation technologies in the musical landscape and how they’re moulding the future of the music industry.
Picture yourself grooving to your favorite piece of music, thinking if you could ever create anything likely near that meticulously crafted work of art. You're not a virtuoso after all, unlike the composer who composed the piece. But guess what, Computers with the algorithmic aid of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning might just be able to imitate the subtle patterns and musical expertise associated with not only recreating such work but augmenting to it as well.
The use of algorithms and computational methods in music composition and production has been prevalent since the 1950s. Technology has always been ubiquitous around the musical landscape. Enter Automation techniques and AI, pushing the boundaries even further by every other technological advancement. Although the music industry has been revolutionized by such technologies in unprecedented ways, we've still got a long way ahead of us.
AI in the production of modern music
Music is older than language, and before there were any software or automation techniques, nature created its own music, you know. The wind chimes, the drizzling water drops, and other such sounds. Then in the 1700s, the first automation algorithm for music generation was introduced. Although it wasn't until the 1900s that automation in music production started to be used extensively. British computer scientist "Alan Turing" was the pioneer who recorded the first computer-generated music.
Fast forward to today, Music is at the cutting edge of technology. The music industry is dominated by algorithms and automation. Digitalization and streaming platforms are serving as the main grounds for this.
Ever wondered how Spotify recommends the right music for you or how a teenage anime girl with long, turquoise twin tails could sing the songs of your choice? That's because it's actually a Vocaloid software named "Hatsune Miku" and Spotify uses ML algorithms and Deep learning architectures to recommend you music and tracks to stream and download based on your day to day listening patterns.
But the real question is How good is AI at creating actual music? And will it ever get as good as its human counterparts?
These are tentative questions and are hard to answer that easily. Artists and composers have been experimenting with a variety of computational techniques for music production. Some works use mathematically inspired methods to create rhythmic patterns and melodic structures. Various developers have exploited the vast library of the musical database and with the help of extensive algorithmic knowledge, they've developed some impressive software and prototypes.
One such composer is AIVA (Artificial Intelligence Virtual Artist) created in February 2016. AIVA specializes in Classical and symphonic music composition. It became the world’s first virtual composer to be recognized by a music society (SACEM). AIVA is a published composer; its first studio album "Genesis" was released in November 2016. The second album "Among the Stars" in 2018. In his mesmerizing TED Talk, "Pierre Barreau" talks about the concept of musical photographs which was featured in the 2013 Sci-fi film "Her". He plays compositions created by AIVA and shares his dream to create original live soundtracks based on our moods and personalities.
You can create your own personalized track using the web service on AIVA's website. Now even amateur artists can make music in the blink of an eye. As cool as it seems, the ramifications of total automation and creating music with no prior musical background are conspicuous in the modern musical arena.
Other projects that are stealing the Headlines
- Jukedeck is a British startup aimed to create scores for films and videos and aids independent artists to work on their own projects.
- Amper Music is a more advanced venture, which supports production and performance besides music composition. It was founded by three Hollywood film composers to support amateur artists.
- Sony's Flow Machine supports collaboration with human artists to develop enhanced AI algorithms for music production. It is funded by the European Research Council and is controlled by Sony CSL (Computer Science Laboratories).
- Google's Magenta is another innovative research project that's pushing the boundaries of AI to create noteworthy Art and Music.
Efficiency at the cost of Creativity?
As with every other industry that embraces the powers of AI and deep learning, it catapults growth and efficiency and the music industry is no exception to that. In a McKinsey report, it was reported that 70 percent of companies will have adopted at least one AI technology by 2030. So, with such insights, production and innovation will be at an all-time high, in fact, they already are.
The profound effect that AI has on the entertainment industries, especially music, is unprecedented, but as I noted earlier, the ramifications for this are evident too, and that's something the creators just can't turn a blind eye to.
Music creation is a deeply creative process and composers put all their heart and soul into it. It's an expression of the artist's emotions channeled into sounds and lyrics. With the advent of AI, this process has reduced to a series of mathematical patterns based on sounds. Creativity is lost somewhere along the way. Music is something that helps us connect with a part of us that makes us emotional beings. Computer-generated sounds may surely entertain us, but they can't connect to us on a deeper level. At least in the present scenario, it's debatable.
Seth Cohen is an outspoken leader who saw the profound impact of technology on the music industry. 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. In addition, he suggests that our current paradigm of infinite choice is broken and recommends an alternative model of trusted recommendations.
These insights are poignant and direct, but the underlying concerns for the artistic essence in music creation, as well as music production, can't be smothered under the pressure of progression.
Marketing in Music and Future of AI
According to BuzzAngle Music’s 2018 Year-End Report, novice artists are hard to discover and often talented artists left undiscovered, without efficient search techniques. Spotify's Discover Weekly uses AI-based algorithms to help users sort through the vast library of streams and recommends new music appealing to them.
Artificial intelligence is also helping the industry with A&R (artist and repertoire) discovery. 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.
"Artificial Intelligence is omnipresent around the music topography, and these two fields will be inseparable in the coming times.”
Although Automation has brought a paradigm shift into the music composition process, it still needs a human touch to appeal to the masses. Currently, in music composition, AI is mostly used for recursive tasks. The use of AI is not going to make human-generated music obsolete, at least not anytime soon. We need to understand that these are augmentative tools and are meant to create music as an accompaniment to the human composers. Therefore, assuming that it will take over the musical landscape and dethrone human artists sounds more like a conspiracy theory.
Sure, as these services get more and more intelligent and the algorithm becomes more complex by each passing year, the human indulgence is being limited too. That's meritorious until the human workload is reduced and not the creative verdict. We as human beings create music to express ourselves and technology should be used to aid us in such endeavors without erasing the expression itself.
Mohammad Zaigam
Bachelor of Technology
Computer Science & Engineering
2018-22
