AI and Music

This is a recent post from Ted Gioia on the invasion of AI generated music. My comment below.

The Number of Songs in the World Doubled Yesterday.

I guess I’m disappointed at how this AI revolution is playing out. We were promised a new AI-constructed Bach with better music. But all we’re getting is more music.

The dam broke on the levee, and the AI songs are pouring out in torrents, threatening to wash away everything else.

Now, I can’t claim to have listened to all 100 million of these songs. But I’ve heard enough AI music to realize how lousy it is.


My Comment:

By the not-so-iron law of supply and demand, when the supply doubles the price falls approximately in half. But there is a zero bound to price and the price of creative digital content is approaching that fast. This merely means we have to stop focusing on transaction value of creative content. Instead, the value is realized in monetizing the audience reach – or peer networks in tech speak.

This post is mostly about the quality of AI generated art. No one is going to listen to a million new AI songs to find that subjective artistic quality – so how is the AI industry going to find their audience? Through AI generated recommendation engines. But just like AI can’t create music, it also can’t judge its quality. This is always going to be the “human” advantage in the digital content world.

At our digital content platform start-up, tukaGlobal, we have long recognized this reality. All this machine learning and AI cannot deliver to us the music we like. Humans, through direct human interactions do that. That’s how we all got introduced to new music in high school and college. In the digital world these connections can happen through social media dynamics. P2P networks represent the leveraging power of the human. Web3.0 will eventually deliver that world to us in a decentralized manner with blockchain. Harnessing social media dynamics will solve the search, discovery, and promotional functions of the digitized art world. Think of it this way – the most powerful algorithm in discriminating and promoting creativity is the human network. These networks are also the solution to monetization.