Howie Singer specializes in data analytics, innovation and digital distribution in music. He served as Senior Vice President and Strategic T...
Howie Singer specializes in data analytics, innovation and digital distribution in music. He served as Senior Vice President and Strategic Technologist at Warner Music Group, analyzing new business models and services. He spent the early part of his career at Bell Labs and AT&T; He also founded a2b music, one of the early digital music startups. He currently teaches Data Analysis in the Music Industry at New York University (NYU).
Bill Rosenblatt is an expert on media and copyright-related technologies in the digital age. As President of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies, which he founded in 2000, he advises leading media and technology companies and public policy institutions around the world. Bill teaches Data Analysis in the Music Industry at New York University (NYU) and is a trustee of the Copyright Society and Princeton Broadcasting Service, Inc.
What does the '6C' concept mentioned in your book mean? Can you explain it briefly?
When we started to think about the history of technology in the music industry, we saw a consistent pattern: New formats emerge from the combination of several different innovations rather than advances in a single technology. Once this new format is mass adopted, it spills over into other aspects of the music industry. We considered how recorded music has occurred throughout history and divided these changes into six categories: copyright law, artists' creative processes, interactions with fans, distribution channels and business models (cutting edge technology, channels of distribution, creators, consumers, cash, copyright). We call this the "6C Framework". The 6Cs Framework gives us a way to examine each era of the industry in a coherent way. We use it to explain each of the technological disruptions in the music industry, starting with the invention of the phonograph to the current era of smart devices and the use of artificial intelligence.
How has technology affected our ability to own music, especially after the advent of digital music?
Digital downloads were initially offered as an alternative to physical products such as CDs or vinyl records. You could buy it online and listen to it immediately; They also wouldn't take up space in your home, car or bag. But most digital music in the 2000s didn't sound as good as CDs or vinyl, and restrictions imposed by digital rights management (DRM) made it difficult or impossible to do some things with digital files that you could do with physical music products, like resell or lend them or lend them to large amounts of music. like playing across a range of devices. Additionally, digital products had no tangible qualities whatsoever. Therefore, digital music fell short in several aspects in terms of ownership.
Later, in the late 2000s, smartphones and mobile broadband made streaming popular. When you use a digital music platform, you know that you don't own any of the music you're listening to. Digital music platforms have brought into stark relief the lack of true ownership of downloads; vinyl records began to make a comeback and digital music began to lose popularity. Although major record companies agreed to allow DRM-free downloads to be sold starting in 2009, it did not help download sales.
Digital music sales continued to decline in the 2010s, while vinyl sales grew. Vinyl revenue surpassed digital downloads in 2020. Today, vinyl is the music industry's largest source of revenue after digital music. In other words, today's music market essentially has two components: digital music (non-ownership) and physical music (ownership).
More recently, NFTs have claimed to bring “true” ownership to digital content. In our opinion, NFTs do not provide true ownership; They're just a little better than digital downloads from the 2000s in this sense. After a period of massive popularity that lasted several years, NFT sales are still less than 10% of vinyl sales, and very few NFTs have significant resale value. However, it is still early days to speak for NFTs, many artists continue to release their NFTs and as time goes on we will see fans comparing them to records.
Can you talk about the role and impact of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the music industry?
The music industry has been closely interested in the effects of artificial intelligence on the sector for years. As music lovers, we expect several features that come with this technology. When we interact with a smart speaker and ask for a specific song or playlist featuring a specific artist, determining what music to play in response is based on algorithms that improve its performance over time by learning our speech patterns and accents. It learns based on whether we listen or rephrase our command. Music services like Spotify and Apple Music create playlists based on each user's tastes and the preferences of others with similar interests. The basis of all these features is based on R&D studies in the field of artificial intelligence.
Music companies are building models using vast amounts of data on fan interactions on digital music services and social networks to predict artists' future performance and identify people who might be worth a record deal. The success and failure of these predictions, as well as changes in the platforms' popularity, are fed back into these models to improve decision-making accuracy. Such machine learning techniques also take their origins from R&D studies in the field of artificial intelligence.
Applying AI models to make better decisions or create playlists is certainly an interesting topic, but the topic of greatest interest to the creative community – writers, actors, artists, and of course musicians and songwriters – is what Generative AI represents. its opportunities and threats. Generative AI models are trained on existing content – sounds, lyrics, instrumentation – and then used to “generate” new songs, compositions and performances. Models can be a useful tool for artists, but there are debates over copyright holders' consent and creators' earnings. Licensing negotiations to cover these uses are under way between major record labels and some AI companies, and the music industry is pushing to enforce broader rights that include the artist's voice. supports regulatory and legal efforts.
What new technologies do you believe will continue to shape the future of music?
In our book, we talk about two types of technologies that can be considered “emerging”: generative AI and blockchain-related technologies.
It's too early to talk about how generative AI will impact the music industry. We believe its impact will be profound, but we can't really see how that impact will happen at the moment. However, what we can say is that we expect the relevant technologies to accelerate the supply of newly recorded music even more than today. Digital music services (DSPs) around the world—where the vast majority of music is consumed—receive more than 100,000 new tracks from record labels and independent artists every day. This may change when generative AI is fully integrated into the music industry, and music platforms can change what music they choose. The way they decide which to accept and which not to accept can have major implications for each of the 6Cs we mentioned above.
We think the potential impact of blockchain technology on the music industry has yet to be determined. The cycle of interest, backlash, and slow mainstream adoption that is typical for disruptive technologies also applies to blockchain, and we expect this cycle to be the same. To date, most discussions on blockchain have revolved around NFTs.
We are both involved in a standards initiative called the "Open Music Initiative", which aims to use blockchain technology for copyright management. There have been many challenges in scaling rights and copyrights in the digital music era. The most important of these problems is that each music platform has to put great effort into processing copyrights on a massive scale. Blockchain technologies have the potential to take over many functions of rights management, which can greatly reduce this effort, while also increasing transparency and accountability. To be used in this way, blockchain technology must overcome significant technical limitations, and the industry will have to make dramatic changes to how it processes data to achieve this. We believe that the potential exists and that the industry will adapt to this, albeit slowly and timidly, in the coming year.
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