Bill Werde provides much-needed context on the recent music industry hysteria around AI-generated music.
A version of this essay was first published in Bill Werde’s free weekly magazine. Full rate No upper limit email. Werde is a former Billboard editorial director and director of his The Bandier Program for Music and the Entertainment Industries at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
Last week, the world took notice of the potential and immediacy of AI. As any FRNC reader will know, anonymous producer Ghostwriter977 created solid beats, wrote pop culture-savvy lyrics, and used AI to create the track “Heart on my sleeve.” The Weekend.
Opinions about the track quickly flew. Some thought it was a smash, or a great rough draft, while others weren’t sure. What sets this track apart from the thousands of AI-voiced remixes out there to date is that it uses the original beat rather than an existing track and uploads it to a streaming service rather than just letting it out on social media.
According to Billboard, “Heart on My Sleeve” has generated more than two million global streams and is “worth close to $9,400.” The track was then removed not because Drake or The Weeknd’s vocals were used, but because an unlicensed sample was used. Of course, the song is still easy to find on social media. T.
His entire case has spawned countless headlines, endless debates, and corner-cutting—and some of what I call lazy and misleading context. I’ll write more about this on Cap LinkedIn — can you please Can we stop calling this week a “Napster moment”?
What is Napster Moment?
The Napster moment is 1999. At a time when the only way to listen to hits at home was for him to pay $20 for his CDs, a service has emerged that offers bootleg versions of literally every song, even anything you’d want to type into a search bar. bottom. , free and without limits. It’s easy to say that Napster came along and suddenly gave fans everything they were paying for for free. But for the music business, it was actually much worse than that. Napster is actually a fan significantly improved This was true in two important ways, besides being free of course. Napster unbundled the album, allowing fans to play only the songs they wanted on demand. Napster had everything from bootlegs and his B-sides to rare remixes and international versions. in short, all. All for free. And it all happened at the same time that home internet speeds and high-capacity iPods started to become popular.
Circled is the exact time when Napster became popular. Here’s what his Napster moment looks like in action.
Napster was a gigantic plug pulled down the drain of the music business, and its gigantic suck had lost half of the business’s revenue in a decade of steep decline. Napster’s moment was the proposition that you could take all the experiences you loved from listening to music and stop paying for it if you wanted to. Those of us in the business at the time didn’t know exactly what the Napster moment meant. It meant disaster. Decimation. This AI Moment is something fundamentally different.
At the time, the record industry had no way of making money trading files. Today, the record business leaves behind many AI/deepfake tracks and collects royalties. At the time, the record industry infamously began suing fans. It was a PR disaster stemming from the reality that hundreds of millions, if not billions, of songs were illegally downloaded every day, and the record industry had no way of stopping it. Today there is no such pressure or panic.
This time, existing copyright laws and, in some cases, artists’ publicity rights create a very different environment. That is, an environment that does not pose an immediate threat to the core business of music, but which in fact may offer many potential advantages. At the time, labels inadvertently created their own file trading problem, spreading billions of unprotected files (aka CDs) onto the market. Today, all major labels are investing in AI technology and companies in myriad ways.
There are still many questions in the music business and many potential risks.
Two big legal questions we still don’t have answers for: First, would an AI trained on existing music be obligated to pay the rights holders of that music any royalties? Will Drake be given the distinct ability to issue takedowns if someone decides to release a hit song in his “voice”. analyzes all the legal issues raised by “Heart on My Sleeve”.) But now, today? There may be uncertainty, but there is no obvious and immediate existential threat created by generative music.
gray album
If you’re looking for a better historical reference than Napster, I recommend pulling the Gray Album from the same era. The album was released by his then-unknown producer in 2004 and is a mashup and remix of Jay Z’s Black His album and The Beatles’ White His album. (I think the link is for subscribers only, gray album for new york times In the early days of the mass internet and social media, and when home studio tools began to become increasingly affordable, the critically acclaimed shots heard around the world for remix culture were shocking. All of a sudden, artists could interact with their music and create it in a completely different way than before, fans could hear it, labels could file lawsuits, but nothing really stopped it. I couldn’t. Is there still something familiar like this?
Jay-Z, The Beatles, and the rest of the record industry somehow survived. Remix culture has proven to be a new creative approach to music that is artistically challenging and ultimately beneficial. And that unknown producer? A kid called Danger Mouse played The Gray Album’s calling card to the top of the business.
