The next disruption of the music industry?

Terence Eden — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 12:16:54 +0000

Another short - and probably incorrect - prediction about disruption.

Spotify, for all its tech, isn't magically disruptive. The business model is similar to a radio station. It pays music publishers based on what songs its listeners' request.

(This is grossly oversimplified. Stick with me.)

Spotify buys a product wholesale and then sells it retail.

This is different from, say, the original Napster which paid nothing for its product and then gave it away for free.

Is there a way to provide value to consumers and extract revenue from them, without paying for music to be produced?

What if the next Spotify could take a free product and sell it to customers? Most musicians and studio staff won't work for free. But machines will.

Algorithm generated music. Feed an AI the top 10,000 rock and roll songs and then let it spit out an infinite stream of "original" music. Assuming a good-enough AI, would people buy a subscription to it? Possibly. Lots of people use music as background noise.

With enough reinforcement from listeners - ratings, dwell time, repeat requests - a company could create an insurmountable moat around their business. They would have the most aesthetically pleasing procedurally generated music.

Now, this ignores a lot of things about what people like about music! Plenty of people want to hear a specific band play a specific song - not even a decent cover band will do. But for those of us who just want the radio on in the background, it could be a compelling proposition.

There might be questions of copyright - especially if a model is trained on a catalogue of existing songs. People might reject the idea of paying for mechanically generated sounds.

AI isn't free. It costs money to design, train, and reinforce. But it is probably cheaper than getting humans to produce music.

It might not sound original, or amazing, or have any "humanity" behind it. But it'll be marginally cheaper and more convenient. No more having to hit the "next track" button when a band's "Jazz Odyssey" starts playing.

I'm not saying this is the future. I'm saying I expect someone to try this - or something similar - as a way to disrupt the music industry.

Although, judging by the current state of AI generated music, maybe not!

disruption – Terence Eden’s Blog

The next disruption of the music industry?