Back in the early noughts, as some of you might remember, the music industry collapsed. The whole model got destroyed, wiped out, never to be seen again. Before that unfortunate event, we used to buy the music we wanted to listen to. I realise this foreign concept might appear unhinged to my younger cats out there, but it used to be the way. Thanks to that, labels were able to finance artists. They could pay for recording, touring, promotion, etc…
Selling physical music made this industry possible since the very early days.
Don’t throw rocks at me just yet. I will not embark on a long historical explanation of how things used to be done in 1915. My point is, you’d record a single, press it on vinyl and sell as many of them as you possibly could. The medium of choice evolved a few times throughout the 20th century.
The concept did not: exchanging cash for physical pieces of art.
Enter Napster. On 1 June 1999 to be precise, the doom of our industry was born. Music was now free for everyone to enjoy.
It took the mighty big heads of the Big Three (Warner, Sony, Universal) quite a while to figure out a way out of this mess. The answer: jump on the streaming wagon. Only with the newfound success of platforms like Spotify (and a lot of negotiation) were they able to move back into the land of profit.
We’re still nowhere near where we were at the peak of the album era, and we never will be again. But they were at least able to monetise this new way of consuming music. This, by the way, is only true for the majors and their artists. As an indie musician, you cannot, quite realistically, count on streaming revenue to cover your rent.
But I digress.
Today, we have a new Napster. Its name? AI. Artificial Intelligence. At this point, everyone has heard of it. And most people have heard some music created by AI, whether they know it or not.
AI creates music out of thin air (not quite; read more about its environmental impact).
People are also having fun with creating music in the style of a particular artist. It’s been more or less successful, depending on what they fed the machine with. Yet some results are quite impressive. You may even have heard Heart On My Sleeve. This song, cloning the voices of Drake and The Weekend, went viral. No one noticed, or cared, that it was not them singing.
And that’s where the problem lies. Who will care?
Certainly not the public. If it sounds like Drake, who will give a damn if it’s not actually him? Who will even ask the question?
Major labels? Are you kidding me? This is the golden opportunity. They don’t need artists anymore. They can create music out of nothing (Universal has been working on its own AI tool by the way. How lovely).
They will find a way to protect these new creations, then release them. Business as usual. Or better even. Boom.
Speaking of streaming platforms, why would they sit still? If anyone can create the content now, why not them? Why would they need the artists OR the labels? They’ll make up their own stuff! This will create a clash with the Big Three though, so they will all have to sit down and find a compromise. The majors will threaten to remove their back catalog if the platforms start creating and releasing music themselves. It’s only a guess, but it should be an interesting conversation, I reckon.
Too bad no artists will be invited to the table.
Streaming, in its modern form, has been with us for more than a decade now. Yet I still have to explain on a weekly basis that it doesn’t pay artists shit. How long will it take for the average Joe to grasp the damages of AI? Another ten years? Twenty? And by that time, the true artists will be long gone. Having killed themselves or doing some menial jobs to feed themselves.
Same difference.
AI is scary news. It’s just been born and is already quite impressive. Sure, it’s still very flawed, but imagine what it will be able to do in a couple of years’ time.
But then again, what do I know…
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