🔵 Finding calm amid the AI insanity
Why this might not prove as bad as people think...
News in the (recorded) music industry is in quite a strange phase right now. If you subtracted AI as a topic, what is left barely warrants mentioning for the most part. It almost feels like a stagnation is continuing, though it is unclear precisely why.
The irony, of course, is that if ever we needed an explosion of culture and progress, it was surely now. That being said, with so much going on in the world, one might also understand why nobody is keen to explore new spaces. I would understand anyone telling me that the market conditions simply are not right.
Previously in Network Notes, I would compile various news stories and include them below this opening editorial, along with a few comments. I stopped doing that in the new year, largely because the time constraints in running Motive Unknown as we grow past 30 people on the team meant that I simply did not have the bandwidth.
However as time has become more available, I’ve reviewed the news and… there’s really not much to comment on.
Except AI.
Read the headlines and you’d think we’re headed for the end of days in this space at present. Perhaps we are, but I am increasingly forming a view that whatever you think AI might do, the reality may well prove somewhat different.
(Sidenote: I am also loving the degree to which it is polarising everyone. I had someone block me on Bluesky the other day because I posted an AI-generated image of the actor Brian Blessed as an 80s rapper. I mean… really?!)
I think one way to balance the debates around AI is to just replace the term with “computers”. One cannot state that “computers are bad”. There’s nuance galore in the use of computers, and whilst they have wrought many negatives on the world, they’ve also delivered a ridiculous amount of positives too - one tiny example of which is the medium through which you’re reading this very newsletter.
So it is with AI: as coverage gets more blanket and broadly negative - because nothing sells clicks quite like horror and doomsaying - one might well conclude that this new emerging tech is going to pull the rug on the music industry and ruin us all.
The reality, I suspect, will be somewhat different, and the reason remains the same as it often does when discussing technology: people forget about humanity, and our need to feel that connection with other humans.
AI might well spit out a track that sounds like The Beatles, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that any successful artist or group are far, far more than the sum of one song, or even many. There is a depth to culture that AI simply won’t get to, as it is not really best-placed to deliver a narrative, a personality, a real-life experience of seeing that live and so on. It might pull off one or two of those, but not the full sweep. Put simply: AI cannot replace culture. It can try, and it can learn from what has gone before, but it cannot replace it outright.
I mentioned last week that we’re finding many uses for AI here at Motive Unknown. All of them relate to efficiency; think “replacing the abacus with a spreadsheet”. We are not using AI to replace staff, nor are we using our skills to train up some kind of “complete marketing solution in a box”. Why? Because we place fundamental value on the human elements of what we do.
“Human” remains the operative term here. Culture at its very core relates to how humans celebrate the very things that make them human. Computers have become assimilated into that - think how DAWs have accelerated music production for example - but it has never replaced it outright.
I feel the same will ultimately happen with AI. As an example, I’m loving all the ways in which AI has made certain things easier in the music production process, but they all rely on a human at both ends of the task being executed. It is the human that feeds a sound or idea in, and it is a human at the other end that decides “that sounds great” or “that sounds awful”.
Unquestionably, it is disappointing to see the UK government (among others) looking to throw copyright under the bus. It is particularly galling when one sees that the prime beneficiaries would be US Big Tech companies, not British ones, making the decision all the more perplexing (and even more so as Trump’s government makes it clear it wishes to be an isolationist nation). Equally we have entities like the Blair Institute arguing that AI will be a force for good, but where one was expecting a reasoned argument, we instead get a biased one, influenced in no small part by said Institute receiving millions in funding from Larry Ellison, the right-wing, dystopian tech billionaire who is best mates with Donald Trump.
Even in the face of this all, I remain of the view that the hunger for arts and culture will never diminish. Indeed, if AI and tech forces its way into every last corner of our lives, I can well imagine that only pouring more fuel on the fire for the next generations to be raving, offline, in fields (perhaps in the highlands of Scotland, like this lot) and generally ensuring that whatever that “thing” is, it belongs to them, and not to Google, or Open AI, or whomever else. The more something pushes to own those priceless aspects of human interaction, the more humanity will push back. That’s how it has always been.
So AI can continue its march, and the stories will doubtless continue in the same fear-mongering manner as at present, but I feel we have to hold on to this notion that music is art, and art has never been wholly subsumed by anything, ever. Things might change, and change drastically, but change is not all bad and the people that survive and prosper are the ones who embrace that change.
Maybe, just maybe, it won’t be anywhere near as bad as certain entities wants you to think.
Have a great evening,
D.
🎶 Listening to “I’ve Already Called” by Oscar Farrell. For reasons I’m not 100% clear on, the first track on this EP almost seeks to throw you off, sounding nothing like what then follows. From Running Free onwards though, this is a stellar EP that should appeal to fans of Bicep, among others. Recommended! (Disclosure: this one’s on DH2, and Dirty Hit are a Motive Unknown client)
📺 Watching “Ichiko Aoba - Luciférine (Live at Showa Women’s University Hitomi Memorial Hall)” on YouTube. I had the pleasure of witnessing Ichiko (disclosure: a Motive Unknown client) live at the Barbican last week, and it was nothing short of spellbinding. Aoba almost presents as an ethereal being, and the gentle, wondrous nature of her music makes for a concert experience like no other. If you can, be sure to check see her live as she’s like a living antidote to the insane, often oppressive pace of modern life.
🤖 Playing with randomised clip launching in Bitwig. This is niche within niche even for music producers, LOL: taking a 16 track drum machine, outputting each channel to separate tracks, then recording multiple one-bar loops, all with slightly differing drum sounds and rhythm variations. Do that three or four times and you wind up with a drum track that never sounds the same for more than one bar, and has about 65,000 variations. No, seriously. This video explains it all, but it works insanely well.
Notes & followups in dispatches:
Tomorrow I am opening the Games & Music event at Tileyard, chatting with my buddy , games journalist Will Freeman. I’m super excited about this one, feeling as I do that there’s so much more the games and music industries could be doing to foster general collaboration. If you’re headed down, come and say hi!
We are hiring (again)! We’re on the hunt for another Junior Paid Media Executive. The ideal candidate will be keenly immersed in online culture and have experience with managing paid media bookings and best practices across key paid channels. They would have an understanding of digital media strategies and tools. Interested? Full details and application info here.
I’ve enjoyed a couple of Tom Truitt’s “Smartest People In The Room” live podcasts before now, but next week he has Dick Huey and Michael Pelczynski in conversation, and I think this will be eminently worth catching. Full details here. Attendance is free.
I’m still posting over on Bluesky too, so if you want hot takes on stories as they break etc, follow me over there. 🦋
PS just to bring some levity, here’s the Brian Blessed photo that someone took umbrage at:
You’re welcome!
In doing research for my book (about music & AI, published next year by Routledge). I'm struck by how often societies have been in the same place we are now with AI (the camera rendering painting obsolete is my favorite). AI is just a new technology; how we use it is up to us. Maybe I'm an optimist but I see artists & the industry managing it much better than we did during file sharing.
Enjoyed this piece.
I think the reason so many people are skeptical of AI is because we've seen this movie before, most recently with smartphones. They were touted as a panacea, but there are all sorts of knock-on effects that came from their ubiquity that we've been having to deal with. The tech folks talk AI up like it's going to be the best thing ever, but there are a lot of easy-to-see problems associated with it that are already starting to take shape, because corporations and governments can always be counted on to use tech irresponsibly.
As far as it replacing culture, the speed at which AI can, and already is, out-producing human artists is worrysome. I think it was Brian Merchant who wrote a piece on here about how original Indian chintz material was prized and expensive, but eventually so many knockoffs sprung up that people associated chintz not with the original creations, but with the cheaply done knockoffs. I don't think it will replace culture so much as it will influence and devalue some of it.