AI & the music business: Stuart Dredge breaks down the ambitions, possibilities – plus the ethical & legal issues – that AI music brings to the music business

Music Ally Focus

Ep. 127: In this special episode, Music Ally’s Head of Insight, Stuart Dredge talks to our Editor Joe Sparrow, and focuses squarely on AI and music in 2023 – a topic that has caused so much excitement, confusion, innovation, and concern all at once.

Stuart breaks down the ambitions and possibilities – as well as the ethical and legal issues – that AI music is bringing to the music business:

❱ AI music is human music... for better or worse – We often talk about AI as if it were sentient already - AI is doing this, AI is doing that... but actually it’s humans behind it all – building these AIs, deciding what to train them on, and choosing whether to create music ethically... or not.

❱ A battle for control... and industry tensions – The music industry has come together very quickly to set out its principles for how creative AI should be regulated: around permission, payment and transparency. But it’s not as simple as ‚music against AI’ – there are new concepts that are being discussed around who gets to choose how music is used and by whom.

❱ AI is not just about pushing a button – AI music is seen by some as profoundly uncreative: you hit a button and a song comes out - and it’s probably not very good. But that’s not actually the direction of travel: the latest wave of musical AIs are about prompting platforms into creating good snippets of music then human musicians using their creativity to turn them into better work.

“Johnny Cash” sings Barbie Girl –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAFdzBTe2lg

Tach Teaches – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REqIJJLJbsc

Cathy Dennis’ “Toxic” demo – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7dk9DXFrwk

Skipping robots – https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/462433-most-skips-by-a-robot-in-one-minute

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