How Technology is Changing the Music Industry

The music industry is a multi-taloned, multi-dimensional universe spinning through space all on its own, but its orbital shifts and planetary collisions affect us all. It is constantly expanding while at the same time contracting and reshaping itself. Technology innovations have always been a core element of the music industry. It is an industry of technology. Changes have come not only in music trends but also in industry infrastructure and the technology that fuels it. From the very first instruments to the current explorations in AI-generated music.

With each innovation comes freedoms and barriers. For example, the invention of the piano greatly expanded freedoms for musical expression, which raised the level of what was considered great music. But built barriers for others who didn’t have access to a piano. In the long view, technological innovations have mostly delivered very positive results for musical expression and musical enjoyment but not always for music creators’ ability to sustain a comfortable living.

We have these two words: music and industry. The first is right brain function, and the second is left brain function. Few can traverse the two successfully and that is why both have co-existed (for better or worse) for so long. The very beginning of what we now call the music industry, where business profits were derived from musical inspiration, was in publishing during the reign of King Henry VIII. He required copies of all printed matter to be sent to him and offered protection to printers in the form of licenses, primarily to produce a new source of revenue for the king. It wasn’t until after his death in 1547 that publishing (the printing of sheet music) rights were given to businesses, albeit to a select few companies which then held monopolies in their territories. These monopolies were later successfully challenged, and the industry began to grow with healthy competition.

A publisher would secure the publishing rights to a piece of music with the hope that many would want to play it and thus buy copies of the printed notation, otherwise known as sheet music. The companies that generated the most profit from sheet music sales did so by developing ways of promoting the music they owned the rights to. The more a piece of music seemed popular, the more popular it became. So, promotion became the name of the game to drive sales. There were those who wisely secured the right to publish already established and popular music.

So, it was basically a situation of someone with a business, profit-based perspective finding creative people and developing ways to profit from their work. The industry has seen many bad deals signed by many unaware creators. However, this creator/business relationship has been the catalyst for building many successful careers and an industry infrastructure from which many creators profit. Over the last 600 years, recognition of the need for protective copyright legislation has been responsible for passing numerous laws, building many societies, and signing international accords and treaties. Which installed clearer guidelines for “fair” business practices. But we still have more to do, especially as new technological innovations, as we have seen with audio streaming, raise new questions about best practices for long-term sustainability.

Some companies have risen high above the rest; we call them the majors: Universal, Sony, and Warner. The majors have grown to the level they are through clear management, an organized approach, and the hustle of being the first to find and then sign the next big thing continuously. Now we are seeing the rise of the independent artist becoming a viral, new big thing. When this happens, we see a scrambling of offers with very large signing advances. With the many technological advances of recent years, we see smaller companies being able to compete with and sometimes surpass the might of the majors. This rise of a small company is usually followed by one of the majors buying the company, essentially removing the competition and benefiting from the hard work already done. This is the same growth strategy companies in other industries follow, especially in tech-based sectors.

The question that arises is regarding the health of the industry for long-term sustainability. As many have pointed out, there is no industry without the creatives. That hypothesis is currently being tested with AI-generated music. Will the public care if a human made the music or a computer algorithm made it? This big question has deep implications for music used in film, TV, video games, and advertising. When a scene calls for soothing, romantic music, does the production company hire a composer or just have it AI-generated? Will the watching audience be able to tell or care as long as the emotional leverage of the music is effective?

We are now seeing highly funded AI music initiatives developing in the market. Laws already exist that protect the copyright owners of music that an AI music generator was trained on. Under current copyright law, anything output through AI is owned jointly by the writers and labels whose work the AI was trained on. AI is just a new way to sample or interpolate music. And we all know that samples have to be licensed, or they are infringements. The problem is that the AI programmers don’t know this and thus don’t ensure the metadata of the music going in is logged and attached to the music generated so they have a record of the copyright owners. Or that they then have to obtain licenses from all those owners of both the recordings and the compositions.

With every down, there is an up. If AI-generated music becomes generic and obvious, without human communication, then honest, authentic music creation becomes more valuable. This is an interesting shift from trying to write a hit by following the current trends (AI can do that) to writing and producing unique narratives and honestly inspired music that stands out as true.

In the music industry, it is never business as usual. It is consistently changing as usual.