The arrival of an AI in the music industry made us chat at the agency’s coffee breaks. A little more particularly with Stéphane Néraud, experienced AI account manager and assertive musician.
In the space of a few days, the first virtual rapper FN Meka achieved 2 world premieres:
👉 He is the 1st artificial intelligence to have signed a real contract with a famous record company.
👉 He is the 1st artificial intelligence to have been really thanked by a famous record company.
Beyond the legitimate controversies, we thought that we could contribute our stone to the debate by sharing our exchanges. No hasty conclusion, just the desire to participate in this reflection which seems fascinating and decisive to us.
Stéphane, what did you think of the announcement of the signing of an artificial intelligence with a renowned music label?
My first reflection is centered on the use case. Technically, there’s nothing new under the sun: artificial intelligence fed with massive volumes of audience-generated data (Spotify, Deezer, Youtube, etc.) to identify profiles and patterns, and provide appropriate content.
If this news has something to smile about, it raises a lot of questions around:
- On the authorship of “works”…
- Art and creativity which in my opinion can only be deeply human.
- Audience and its relationship to music (or marketing?)
- From the music industry more generally, which for nearly 4 decades has been forging people’s listening, no longer by offering quality but formatted. There was a time when the audience made stars emerge, now labels create stars.
Are you surprised or did it have to happen, is it the logical next step?
In my opinion, there is nothing surprising. It seems to me that the music industry has always been strongly and very quickly impacted by new technologies: MP3, Peer-to-peer, audio streaming platform… If to this, we add the influence of marketing on this industry from the 80s with the advent of music videos and MTV… So, we can speak of a logical continuation.
After all, a few years ago, an artificial intelligence got into painting, why not music?!
The human or the marketing team no longer needs to analyze data to format/create music or an artist, it only takes a few clicks for a technology that can learn by itself and swallow inhuman volumes of data produces a profitable product.
Good or bad for music?
It all depends on the appetite and what you are looking for in the music. As a music enthusiast, and a musician myself, I think that like some productions that have been a hit despite their extreme musical poverty, an AI that composes music is what fast food is to gastronomy…
A good or bad for musical creation?
Musical creation will simply vegetate, go into hibernation. We are talking here about creating music based on what already exists, on what has pleased the greatest number (already formatted by this industry).
But the machine does not invent, it calculates, it makes statistics and proposes a result.
So, we will no longer look forward, but backward to compose, I deduce that innovation or the emergence of new styles will simply be impossible.
Moreover, musical creation is a matter of sensitivity and emotions. When Beethoven composes his symphonies despite his handicap, I think his objective is to transcribe his emotions and provoke those of the audience, I am not convinced that one day an AI will be able to do the same. We will therefore remain on analysis and probabilities…
For now, FN Meka does not perform its tracks (the AI does not have vocal cords), so the AI still needs a human? No full autonomy?
Technically, if it is not possible today (?), I think that a machine could very well recover sounds (RSE (Realistic Sound Engine) banks), words taken from existing songs to create a “repository” and shape a piece. From then on, the machine would become autonomous.
The engineers are working on the possibility of having him interpret his songs, is this possible or are we reaching the limits of AI?
Above all, I think that we are reaching the limits of music as an art here. As I said, I think it is quite possible. AI just needs soundbanks. But remember that the word art (and by extension artist), derives its root from the Latin ars which means “skill, technical knowledge…”
In conclusion, music requires musical education and technical knowledge that artificial intelligence does not have (like many “streaming champions” for that matter…)
Is this the end of human lyricists, composers, musicians?
Absolutely not. There will always be enthusiasts who will need to look further than what is excessively publicized, to look for quality, creativity… Talent!
Concretely, it’s been a long time since the media has been interested in the cream of musicians or the most creative artists… however, that doesn’t prevent them from existing, from filling halls or stadiums, from releasing albums regularly in physical or digital form, and to encourage vocations.
Is AI a threat to human work/jobs?
In this context, I don’t think so. Today, the most streamed French “artists” are often one man bands, men who do everything, from the choice of samples, to recording, through mixing and mastering… technology has a lot to do with it.
Somehow it’s positive because it allows “young” artists/trainings to self-produce because the coup of a studio and a sound engineer remains prohibitive, when you start… Nevertheless, it there is nothing better than a specialist and his sensitivity, which is why even today, despite the technological innovations that we know, a good number of French bands choose to have their works mixed and mastered by big names in the United States.
What is the goal for such a big label to sign an AI?
The same as the label that signs a mole that sings, or a toddler that tells us about the complexity of a baby’s life… a marketing stunt.
It is clear that it is a successful bet since we are talking about it!
Who owns the copyright and all revenue generated by this AI?
I would tend to think that recipes and royalties are for the person who is at the origin of the concept, or even who has configured, or helped to train the AI (selection of games/data sources).
So we’re talking about music, but do you know of any other work in progress where AI is penetrating the real sphere?
The experimentation around AI is only in its infancy or at best in its infancy, today we have artificial intelligence that is getting into politics in Denmark, in France, it detects cancers or replaces Psys, she writes articles… We can also cite the case of autonomous cars, industry 4.0 and the IoT coupled with intelligent maintenance, or more basically, after-sales service and advisers. sale replaced by intelligent conversational agents… There is no shortage of use cases.
