Artificial intelligence in music
The impact of AI on the music industry is undeniable. We've gotten inspired by a ton of new usecases recently, which were too good not to share, and we're excited about the wide open space that still exists in AI x live music x tour finances.
Our passion and the reason for the existence of The Pack is the intersection of live music and technology.
We’ve seen the impact of technology on the wider music industry over the years, from music creation to distribution to consumption, in many waves.
And we’ve got a firm belief that there are great rewards to be reaped from making smart data analysis, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence a part of touring life - as we’ve written about before.
So we're always on the lookout for inspiration about where machine learning and AI impact the industry, and to catch a glimpse of what's coming.
That is why we were delighted to be invited to an event called “MusicUp x AI”, focused specifically on the question "what is the impact of AI on the music industry".
Our personal highlight of this event was a 20 minute presentation by producer/dj/product director/techie mastermind Edu Duque, who presented an overview of some of the most interesting places where AI and music intersect.
The 3 big categories he picked out were:
AI for Music production
AI used to improve mastering (e.g. smart equalizers by sonible) and for the creation of plug-ins, as well as for the separation of stems.
Separating stems got us very excited - imagine a horror scenario where the original stems of a track are lost; this opens up a whole new world of re-mixing-possibilities.
A specific honorable (weird?) mention in this category: Solaria has created an “English native AI vocalist that provides a professional quality singer for your projects at any time”.
AI for Music analysis and recommendations
Where AI is used to categorize and tag music, as well as for the good old “what is this song” question. 2 things piqued our interest in the first category:
First up, there are a ton of music tagging companies out there (cyanite, aims,...), helping to tag catalogs with genres, keywords, emotions and much more. Given that an estimated 100.000 songs are published each day, this investment in "organization" probably makes sense...
Secondly, check out Sonoteller.ai. Sonoteller is a neat - free to use - app in alpha version, that analyzes songs based on a youtube link. It analyzes both lyrics and the music, and will give you interesting details like the moods, instruments, themes discussed, BPM and key.
AI for music creation and composition
Basically, tools that create music from scratch through AI.
It’s interesting to see how some of these focus on very specific subgenres; for example a tool called hoopr.ai is focused specifically on AI music generation for “Indian music”, while aibeatz focuses on "generating, pimping and arranging beats".
There’s also mention of some cool work Google is doing around generating music from text discussed on this page - it includes using AI to generate music based on images of famous artworks.
It’s worth mentioning that almost all of these tools focus on creating “background music” for lack of a better word; royalty-free music to be used in ads, videos, podcasts,...
... and much more!
If you're as fascinated by the intersection of music and technology as we are, then you'll want to check out this incredible list of AI and audio startups; from mental health applications, to improving hearing, to generating AI voices in different languages, there's literally no limit to what’s being explored at the moment.
And if you're interested in seeing the full presentation of the event, you can find it here. It's in Spanish, but there's a ton of logos and links :)
2 Conclusions
First, it's a fascinating field, that attracts tons of talent with a passion for music and technology, and we're excited to see more use cases emerge.
Second, there is a wide open space where live music, concert tour budgets and AI intersect. We are currently deeply exploring how machine learning and artificial intelligence can make tour budgeting better and easier, and we haven't really encountered anyone who's playing in this field yet...
And so, every tour that is planned on The Pack Tour helps us understand the possibilities a little bit better, and every piece of feedback that our users share makes us move in the right direction.
We would love to hear your thoughts; any particularly exciting AI music tech startups that we should look into? Any particular usecases of AI in the live music industry that we should share with our users?
Drop us a line and let's talk!