To me, it’s beyond a doubt that we’ll all be listening to AI-created music within a few decades, and probably much sooner. The most important way in for this type of music is mood playlists. After the first couple of songs on such playlists, most people tune the music out and get back to their main activity. Does it really matter who has created the song then? Does it matter whether they’re alive? Does it matter whether they’ve ever been alive at all?
[EDIT Aug 15: a small disclaimer since a piece linking here makes an incorrect claim. I don’t thinkĀ allĀ AI-created music needs a human narrative. I believe the future contains a lot of adaptive, and generative music. More on my point of view in this piece: Computers won’t have to be creative]
We are all creative, and therefore I think it doesn’t matter whether computers will be able to be creative. We are creative as listeners. Computers will be able to predict what we like, then test thousands of versions on playlists until they have the exact right version of the song. As a matter of fact, AI offers the prospect of personalized music, or music as precision medicine as The Sync Project calls it.
A point that’s made often is that AI-created music lacks part of the story people expect with music. People bring it up as an obstacle that can’t be overcome, but it feels like that’s just because of a decision to stop thinking as soon as the point is brought up. Let’s think further.
For one, I think AI-created music already is and will continue to be born in collaboration with people. People will increasingly take the role ofĀ curators of music created through algorithms. Secondly, why not give music a story?
Last week at IDAGIOĀ Tech Talks, the music streaming service for classical music where I’m Product Director, we had the pleasure of hearingĀ Ivan Yamshchikov talk about his neural network capable of music composition. With his colleague, Alexey Tikhonov, they fed their system 600 hours of compositions and had it compose a new work in the style of Scriabin.Ā The human narrative was added at the end: as it was performed live by acclaimed musicians (see below).
This is how you get people to knowingly listen to music by artificial intelligence. Most consumption of AI music will be through ignorance of the source of the music. Yet people will warm up to the idea of AI being involved in the music creation process, just like they warmed up to electric guitars, samplers, and computers being used as instruments.
And that’s the narrative that will make it human: artificial intelligence as an instrument which requires a whole new skill set for artists to successfully work with it, and evoke in listeners what they want to.
The top row on Instagram excites me. I check Instagram more often & only bother scrolling down the feed once a day, if I don’t forget. I’ve previously explained how Instagram’s Snapchat-cloned Stories functionality represents a great marketing opportunity for artists. Now I want to signify its broader importance to music, and social media in general.
Instagram’s top row containing stories
ā ļø You should be paying a lot of attention to Instagram Stories
Remember Facebook back in 2007-2010? Back when people were still posting Facebook updates in third person?
2008-style third person Facebook status update
Back then, Facebook was so compelling to just post stuff to. It was useful and fun, despite having to write status updates in third person being kind of awkward.
People would post a lot. Interaction would be high. Much of what people were posting was public. Then everyone’s family started to join. Random people from different moments in your life started adding each other. And more recently I’ve been getting more friend requests from people I know professionally than LinkedIn invites.
Facebook is not fun anymore.
Facebook is useful, but it’s not fun. People are more careful about what they choose to post. And now, people who have been using the internet since the 90s are reaching retirement age. Your family is going to be on Facebook all day; watching you.
Just posting quick thoughts on Facebook makes no sense anyway. My Facebook used to be full of “anyone want to grab a drink tonight?” but now you can’t be sure if that message even gets seen by friends. Facebook is not a timely medium anymore. If you want to do ‘spontaneous drinks’ with random friends, you better post a status update 2 days in advance.
Instagram used to be fun
The thing people used to say about Instagram, was that that’s where all the young people fled as their parents and other relatives started using Facebook. It was fun, because it was actually instant: you had a sense of what friends were up to. The filters made it easy to make decent photos and have them look ok, or artsy, or whatever.
But over time, people grew aware once more that what they post is there to stay, started feeling self-conscious, and a lot of the fun faded.
Fun is why people create
When people are having fun they interact, they dance, they talk, they laugh, they share, they kiss, and they open up. This is why Facebook was so good: people were mindlessly posting things because it was fun. Then they became self-conscious. This is why Instagram was so good, but then people became self-conscious. And this is what Snapchat absolutely nailed with their ephemeral content.
I doubt Snapchat invented the idea, but their timing of launching an app where users can share moments that expire every 24 hours was perfect. Their augmented reality filters gave people a way to keep sharing, to keep creating, even when they were uninspired. Super fun.
How Instagram became fun again
Facebook, which owns Instagram, tried to buy Snapchat, but their offer was declined. I guess the Silicon Valley version of “if you can’t beat them, join them” goes:
“If they won’t join you, copy them.”
So that’s what they did.
Instagram became fun again. Their filters are slowly becoming better, but Snapchat still has them beat: it doesn’t really matter. Instagram has this ecosystem of personalities that are looking to get discovered, looking to bind audiences to them, and Instagram is a great way to get new people to find you.
You use image posts with hash tags to get people to find you (and those lame auto follow/unfollow scripts). Instagram models also use Tinder‘s Instagram integration: they just go match with a lot of people and then some of them will convert to Instagram followers. And then, through Instagram Stories you keep your audience engaged with you, at least once every 24 hours.
How I’m using Instagram Stories
I tend to watch all of my friends’ stories. I’ve never really cared for following personalities or brands on Instagram, but most of my friends do that, and they also check those stories.
I post videos and photos to my stories basically daily, and often 5 to 15 a day. You don’t worry too much about what you post: it expires, and if it’s bad you know that people can just flick through stories fast anyway. This gives incentive to create powerful content too: you know it has to be fun from the first second, and you know having some diversity makes people come back to your stories often.
Things I post:
‘Moments’: being in the office on Sunday, travel, having lunch with friends, nice views, parties, etc.;
Hints: previews of what I’m working on (I actually added the title of this article to a story);
Calls: “anyone want to join me for…?” — it really doesn’t matter what the picture that goes with it is, as long as it’s fun and doesn’t confuse. I was looking for someone to join me to IKEA and I put that call in a pic with graffiti.
Time-lapse vids: these are a really fun way to put a lot of content in one short story and communicate action, e.g. moving from the office to a party on Friday;
Vids of vids:Ā fits into moments, but basically if you’re at home watching artsy YouTube videos, weird Japanese commercials, memes, whatever, you can post quick snaps of that too — it helps with diversity & it’s FUN;
Creative:Ā doing funky stuff with the filters, pinning surfers šĀ to foam in the bath tub while the water flows, reality distortion like Hyperspektiv, using Pantone‘s photo app, etc.;
And then there is music.
Why I’m using Instagram Stories to share music
In that context, using Instagram Stories to share music makes so much sense, it’s so much fun.
When you post a 4 minute YouTube video to Facebook, nobody listens. Ok, maybe that 1 dude that always reacts with a lot of emoji, but nobody else. When you insert a short clip combined with an interesting visual into your Instagram Stories, you have a captive audience.
I wrote about Instagram Stories last month, and I don’t like repetition, but I’m so excited about this: the web is about doing what gets you the most attention, and the highest quality attention. I don’t know any other medium, other than my newsletter, that gives me a better type of attention than Instagram Stories.
And my newsletter is basically professional. So if it’s just about friends, then Instagram Stories is the best for me.
Plus people engage! Instead of acknowledging you by clicking a meaningless like button or heart icon, they actually reply to your public stories. With words! Like human beings!
They’ll say: “wow, that’s such a cool track, I didn’t know you were into that too!” or “did you know they have a concert soon?” or “what is this? can you send me more of this?”
Media changes music
The record changed music. MTV changed music. Then the internet changed music by allowing the emergence of global undergrounds. The playlist economy changed music because producers now optimize tracks to lower the skip rate, bringing the vocals into the first few seconds of the track.
The Stories format could further affect music, because it stresses the importance of making an impact with a song, even if people hear just a few seconds of any part of it. Good music has that already, so fingers crossed: we’ll see much more great music made.
I finally figured out one of my life goals. I want to make our shared collective culture more participative. Itās abstract, but itās the first time in my life that Iāve been really confident about the fact that Iāll be happy to spend decades on solving a problem.
Some people are planners; they know exactly what they will be doing 5 years from now. I donāt even know what continent Iāll be living on then ā let alone what Iāll be doing. But that changed, partly through MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE, but also by the kind of crossroads presented to me when I needed to make the choice between joining IDAGIO or continuing MxTxF as an agency.
Iād been there before. Over a decade ago, I was dropping out of the second study I had started. I knew my parents would be furious if I didnāt bundle the announcement of dropping out with an announcement and a clear direction for what I did want. Iām not the type of person to set clear goals for these things and then chase them ā it doesnāt give me the intrinsic motivation I need, and most goals are materialist and arbitrary. Iām an intuitive person, so I needed to do some introspection & look for patterns that would reveal what are those intrinsic motivators.
At that time, I found that Iām fascinated by all aspects of communication ā from advertising, to intercultural communication, social psychology, mass marketing, even product development. So thatās what I studied.
This time, I noticed a new pattern, which is one of the recurring themes in what Iāve been doing since I left university. Noticing this helped me set new goals and prioritize various things: doing MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE as an agency would expose me to many different things, but I wasnāt sure it would give me the depth that I needed to grow as a professional. I donāt want to be a consultant, I want to build things, and help people build things: creating a better world in the process. Joining IDAGIO meant an opportunity to continue developing myself to become one of the best product people in digital music, solve an important problem, and prove that companies can thrive by focusing on āniche’ behaviours in music.
Now letās get back to the goal and the title of this piece.
The last century radically changed music. Through the recording becoming the default way in which people consume music, major things changed:
Music got less participative: you can just hit the play button, instead of playing an instrument or singing;
Music got more individualistic;
Music got static and would sound the same every time you hear it;
Music got more corporate, because the rise of the recording went hand in hand with mass consumerism.
One of the most clever tricks in consumption culture has been to convince people to express themselves by buying, consuming, instead of creating. Fashion cycles have us replacing perfectly good wardrobes.
More importantly, the shared songs of our culture were replaced by corporate-owned pop music.
I talk a lot about how I think music will become more dynamic, less static, more interactive, more adaptive, but I think āpop musicā is important. We need songs that everyone around us knows, songs to sing along to, to joke with, to play in a party and everyone instantly knows how to go along with it.
This used to be folk music: musicians would hear songs from traveling musicians, and then make them their own. Now that dynamic of ownerless songs, performed by many, has been replaced by pop of which the original is always attributed to 1 performer.
I think itās important that we take away the song from the single performer and make it live among many performers (this is also why I find classical music so interesting). That sounds like a very bold thing to do, and would require a massive change in culture, but actually itās more simple.
We have computers in our pockets that are more powerful than the computers on our desks a few years ago. Weāre reaching the end of the smartphone cycle: weāre introducing artificial intelligence, smart sensors, and voice-activated devices into out lives. Soon enough, entering commands into a smartphone is going to look as archaic as using MS-DOS would be to a teenager now.
Music has always been quick to react to technology: two of the biggest streams in music right now, hiphop and electronic, were both born out of a shift in technology. We are living in a world on which digital information is increasingly layered on our every day reality. Things are interactive, on-demand, and social. Music as a media format is actually behind on this, but it took hiphop and electronic music 20 or 30 years to reach maturity, for a long time operating outside of what was allowed in legal but also aesthetic terms.
The music of the future will do a better job at involving the listener than 20th century music has. The tragedy of last centuryās music was that it paired with consumption culture, which locked the listener out of meaningful participation, but now the ālistenerā is actively remixing memes, making GIFs, and doing playbacks on Musically in order to communicate with friends.
The new creative generation is coming up, and for them, newly created culture will have a participative dimension by default.
Thanks for reading – hope it was all coherent. I’m in bed with flu, but never missed a Monday deadline for my mail-outs and I intend on never changing that.
My music consumption has been clearly impacted by the lack of net neutrality on my new mobile plan. Here are my key takeaways as a heavy user of music services.
This Spring, I moved from The Netherlands to Berlin, which means setting up new contracts for everything. While I’m still waiting for my flat to be connected to the internet (for 2 months already!), my mobile plan is keeping me connected.
My mobile provider Telekom, known as T-Mobile in most countries, is zero-rating certain partner services. So data consumed by streaming from the Netflix or YouTube bundles are not deducted from my 6GB / month data bundle.
I decided to give the bundle a try, as I think the EU will eventually declare zero-rating in violation of net neutrality (which means the telco should compensate me or release me from the plan). Net neutrality demands that you treat all traffic the same, and while they’re not prioritizing traffic of particular services over others in terms of speed, zero-rating does influence consumer decisions over what service they use.
Here are my main take aways of living without net neutrality for the last 6 weeks or so.
1. Zero-rating influences the services you use
This is beyond a doubt for me. When I want to listen to music, I now search music on YouTube (zero-rated partner) instead of through Spotify (not a zero-rated partner). I basically only listen to Spotify through offline synced music, and have stopped using it as a way to explore music – until I get WiFi at home, or Spotify gets zero-rated.
Telekom’s current zero-rated partners
2. Spotify’s stickiness is strong
Despite the fact that Apple Music, Amazon Prime Music, and Napster (Rhapsody) are all included in the zero-rated partners, I’ve somehow stuck with Spotify. I have so many years of history in there, that it’s hard to start using a different app.
I have a lot of friends on Apple Music, because they were the first major Western music service to launch in Russia and really double down on the market (as opposed to Deezer, which struggled to gain traction). Having lived there a few years, most of my friends are on there now. But having done 2 three month trials, I never really developed a feeling for the service. Can’t stand iTunes either by the way (I listen to files through VLC Mediaplayer instead).
But the key point here is:
Music is not the most important part of music services. It’s the behaviours around the music. For Spotify, the only service that has managed to help me find a new home for some of my behaviours is YouTube, but to move collection management to a new place: no way.
And to clarify that first statement: if you have all the music, and a lot of other services do too, the music is no longer the key point that people come to you for. People never had a music access problem: piracy solved that. The music access issue was an industry problem, not a consumer-problem.
3. It’s hard to dig into niches through YouTube’s mobile app
I’ve been trying to use the YouTube app as a kind of radio station, because it sucks to search for decent playlists in there. The problem with the Play Next function, is that when you start on something very niche, it sends you ‘upward’ to more popular tracks. So if you’re listening to underground trap, you end up on Migos after a couple of tracks.
Likewise for related music on particular music videos. You have to sift through unrelated recommendations that are related to your personal profile, rather than the particular thing you’re viewing, but even then, it directs you out of the niche and into the mainstream.
4. Netflix finally found its way into my life
I’ve never really developed a strong habit for Netflix, but it finally happened. Browsing the web, and reading article after article, gets tiring when you’re doing it from a small mobile screen (I’m on iPhone 5s).
Besides, I get ‘data anxiety’: am I using too much data? Will I have enough data at the end of the month? Better play it safe: Netflix.
This actually pulls me away from Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, and other social platforms. Which brings me to my next point.
5. Using YouTube as my default mobile music service is keeping me from social networks
The thing with YouTube is that it can’t keep playing music in the background, unless you are on a certain subscription that’s not available in Germany.
Because of this, I have to choose: am I going to listen to music, or am I going to write to a friend, see what they’re posting on Instagram, etc.
6. If I cared less about music, I’d switch services
The reason why I’m using YouTube, if not obvious by now, is because it’s a nice temporary space to do some of the things I’d prefer to do on Spotify.
But if I were less invested in Spotify, I’d 100% be using one of the partner services offered. I would not even consider any other options. And I think this goes for most consumers, who are not quite as heavy users of music services. It’s troubling: it gives ISPs and mobile operators a lot of control over the music, video, and social landscape.
And for one aspect of music, it already changed me over: I stopped watching live streams on Facebook and Twitch, and instead the only place where I watch live video is YouTube now.
Last week, at SĆ³nar+D, I finally got to try out TheWaveVR as the founders were there to demo and pitch in the startup competition. The company has built a way for DJs to perform in VR and bring an audience from around the world together. It does this in a very fun and visual way, and this was probably the first time that a VR experience has made me seriously considering buying a VR setup.
Here’s why.
Over the last decade, I’ve spent a lot of time discovering music on Soundcloud and have seen microgenres rise and fall, with some blowing up and changing the sound of pop (e.g. moombahton, and then ‘EDM trap’). Subcultures and music styles used to be clustered to particular cities, but because of online platforms people from around the world can build on each other’s sounds rapidly. I call it ‘Soundcloud culture’, although the phenomenon is not limited to Soundcloud.
Tools like Turntable.fm, and now Plug.dj, have made it possible for people to gather online into chatrooms and play music to each other. These subcultures have embraced these tools to throw small online gatherings, bringing together all the top producers in their styles for virtual listening parties, or cyber raves.
It’s very akin to the subcultures that exist around video games, and particularly MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft. There’s a sense of community and friendship, because people get to share something they don’t get to do irl (‘in real life’). I’ve written about gamers as a music subculture before, but I haven’t pointed out the connection to Soundcloud culture.
Many of these pioneering DJs and producers in microgenres have nowhere to go. They might not live anywhere with clubs, be too young to go to any, or there might simply not be enough critical mass for their sound to take it into the local clubs. So they take it online, where every niche can find an audience (for an example of a microgenre, check out Gorge). As with many gamers, it becomes far easier for these producers to express themselves virtually than in non-digital settings.
Back to TheWaveVR.
TheWaveVR isĀ taking this to the next level, making the entire experience more immersive. What caught my attention is when Aaron Lemke, one of the founders, explained to me that they’re doing a weekly rave at a set time. All of the above instantly clicked into place.
When gamers have free time, they check out Steam, Battle.net, or similar tools, to see if any of their friends or team members are online, so they can play a round or just sign on, chat, and hang out. Social listening platforms do a similar thing, but they’re not nearly as fun or engaging for the audience as games. For the audience, they’re basically a radio station with a chatroom.
This is what TheWaveVR is changing, by giving the audience visual ways to interact with each other and the DJ. And this is what makes me finallyĀ ‘get it’ when it comes to VR: as aĀ media format for social platforms it makes so much sense.
People are skeptical whether virtual reality is ‘the next big thing’ for music. And they’re right: there are many obstacles. But it’s not important. The people pondering such questions are not the target audience for these experiences in the next few years.
Online subcultures are the target audience for VR experiences, and particularly the ones connected to gamer subculture. Gamers are going to be the ones to first embrace this medium, and while the world’s figuring out whether to take it seriously and what to do with it, it’s gamers that will define the soundtrack for the medium: just like they’ve done with YouTube.
What a week. I spent it atĀ Midem – one of the most well-known music business conferences organised every year in Cannes. Before I’m off to SonĆ”r+D this week, I thought I’d type up a little update.
About 10 months ago, Midem‘s conferenceĀ manager got in touch with me to see if we could put a panel together. We landed on the topic of chatbots and Messenger apps, because I think the trend signifies an important shift to a new generation of user interfaces (especially considering voice-activated UI, which will quickly beĀ permeating our daily lives).
It was so great to finally be able to have all these people in the same room, and talk about what they’re doing, get their thoughts out, get them discussing with each other. And the line-up was awesome.
Panel: Messaging Apps, Bots, AI & Music: A New Frontier of Fan Engagement
A quick look at the line-up:
Ricardo Chamberlain, Digital Marketing Manager, Sony Music Entertainment (USA)
Runs a very interesting label bot, which includes messages from artists such as Enrique Iglesias. He also worked on the CNCO campaign with Landmrk, which I’m a big fan of.
Luke Ferrar, Head of Digital, Polydor (UK) Launched the first chatbot with Bastille.
Gustavo Goldschmidt, CEO & Co-Founder, SuperPlayer (Brazil) Runs Brazil’s biggest streaming service which not only recommends music through a chatbot, but also builds chatbots for artists, which then drives fansĀ to their service when they want to stream something.
Syd Lawrence, CEO & Co-Founder, The Bot PlatformĀ (UK) Launched the Hardwell bot, which is probably the most well-known example of chatbots being used in music.
Tim Heineke, Founder, POP (Netherlands) Used to run a cool startup named Shuffler.fm which turned blogs into radio stations and became a kind of StumbleUpon for music discovery, and also co-founded FUGA.
Nikoo Sadr, Interactive Marketing Manager, The Orchard (UK) One of the most brilliant minds in digital marketing, in general. Previously with Music Ally.
A few weeks ago, I was asked if I could also moderated the RTJ marketing panel — which would have been a no-brainer anyway, but having a personal connection to this, made me so excited to do it that I forgot to even introduce myself during the panel.
My first real music business job was with a startup called official.fm. As a student, I listened to a lot of underground and indie hiphop, which made me a big fan of the Definitive Jux label, which put out music by Aesop Rock, Mr. Lif, RJD2, and El-P (also one of the founders). The other founder was Amaechi Uzoigwe, who now manages Run The Jewels. I remember feeling a little starstruck at the time. Now, years later, it was so good to catch up with Amaechi and the inspiring success he’s created for RTJ and himself.
Also on the panel was Zena White, who’s MD of The Other Hand, and does great things for RTJ, Stones Throw, Ghostly, BadBadNotGood, DJ Shadow and more.
