News - 24/11/2016

BPI drops report about Artificial Intelligence and its impact on music and the music industry

BPI drops report about Artificial Intelligence and its impact on music and the music industry

UK record labels’ association, the BPI, just shared a new report exploring the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the potential this fast-emerging technology has to transform the composition, distribution and marketing of music. 

The document is called "Music’s Smart Future: How will Artificial Intelligence impact the music industry?" and it was written by music industry analysts Music Ally. It was first shared on November 23 with industry executives attending the latest in the BPI’s series of "Insight Sessions", the music industry forum which explores how emerging technologies are reshaping the music ecosystem. 

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE (PDF FORMAT)

2016 has witnessed a swell of investment and experimentation around AI and machine learning, with a big upswing in new tech-start-ups eager to redefine how we live our lives. The report explores how AI is touching every facet of the music industry through four main areas:

The evolution of AI in music

  • The backdrop to AI’s increasing penetration of music is set out, including a look at some of its early RnD and first British AI start-ups, such as Jukedeck and Melodrive.
  • The emergence of bots that take requests on Twitter; WaveNet – technology generating speech that mimics any human voice; and Baidu AI Composer image-recognition software and neural networking that enables an image to be converted into a song. 
  • Developments in AI-driven music composition on Flow Machines software; AI being used to create a music video for Brian Eno’s song The Ship; and Symphonologie, which uses AI to help create a symphony to be played by a human orchestra. 
  • How record label A&R and marketing teams are using ‘big data’ analytics to predict consumer reactions and shape campaigns.  
  • Gut instinct, passion for the music and human experience remain fundamental qualities in A&R and marketing, but the music sector should not ignore new tools that allow it to reach fans in exciting, new ways. 

Humans and algorithms fuel smarter music recommendations

  • As streaming services grow, we are moving into a world of hyper-personalisation, in which consumers expect services tailored to their own tastes and preferences.  The power of ‘big data’ can be employed to better understand human behaviours and provide a more individualised experience. 
  • Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer all use AI to analyse users’ behaviour and to understand the relationship between songs so as to mix in new relevant tracks among a user’s favourites.  
  • A new strain of AI technology has emerged that can take account of contextual data: Google Play now mixes signals like location and the weather with machine learning about a user’s music listening to offer the right song at the right time. 
  • DJ apps which put traditional DJ decks onto touch-screen devices are on the rise: Pacemaker and Serato. 

Chatbots find a place in the music industry

  • Messaging apps have become an essential part of our mobile lives, and chatbots are A hot new communications tool – and again, music companies are already experimenting with them. 
  • Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and other services are not new – the first chatbots were developed in the 1960s and 1970s, with the first music chatbot of note introduced by Radiohead and Capitol Records in 2001.  However, their sophistication has now increased markedly. 
  • They have become more important after Facebook opened up its Messenger platform to third-party chatbots in 2016. They are not just messaging apps, but platforms with hundreds of millions of users that developers can build on.  Written bots will in time be supplanted by voice interactions. 
  • Labels and artists are embracing AI to engage fanbases. Bastille and their label Virgin EMI used a Facebook’s Messenger chatbot in a campaign to promote the release of their new album Wild World, while Robbie Williams with the ‘Robbot’ and Olly Murs have created their own chatbots to engage fans.  
  • Media platform MTV used chatbots to engage with European Music Awards viewers, while tickets service Ticketmaster uses the technology to recommend upcoming concerts to fans.  

Smart voice assistants from the big tech titans 

  • The human-computer interface is also developing quickly, with AI powering a new generation of ‘smart assistants’.

  • These include Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Assistant – which understand human commands and make it easier and more intuitive for consumers to access music online.

  • These smart assistants are likely to evolve into our de facto musical concierges around the home and in the car.

© 2024 All rights reserved. Rockol.com S.r.l. Website image policy

Rockol

  • Rockol only uses images and photos made available for promotional purposes (“for press use”) by record companies, artist managements and p.r. agencies.
  • Said images are used to exert a right to report and a finality of the criticism, in a degraded mode compliant to copyright laws, and exclusively inclosed in our own informative content.
  • Only non-exclusive images addressed to newspaper use and, in general, copyright-free are accepted.
  • Live photos are published when licensed by photographers whose copyright is quoted.
  • Rockol is available to pay the right holder a fair fee should a published image’s author be unknown at the time of publishing.

Feedback

Please immediately report the presence of images possibly not compliant with the above cases so as to quickly verify an improper use: where confirmed, we would immediately proceed to their removal.