🔵 "When everyone is super, no one will be"

The rush to layer AI onto everything is underway... and it's exhausting

Any business involved in recorded music undoubtedly uses a wealth of third-party services that could cover anything from data insight to catalogue management to fan management (just as examples).

As AI continues to develop at a dizzying rate, it is interesting watching any tech platform announcing that they are layering AI onto the service in order to provide more functionality to you, the end user. Where data insight used to be a process of logging in and looking at static graphs, you now have AI chatbots explaining everything to you to save you thinking for yourself. Equally, within fan management, you are now getting AI systems to manage communications and reporting for you. In the space of CRM, AI is being layered on to add anything from general insights to management of advertising or more.

On paper, some, if not all of this, may appear interesting. However, this is the thin end of a wedge that I feel is taking us down a worrying path where AI is concerned.

In short, everyone wants to use AI to expand everything they do, to swallow as much of their competitor’s business as they humanly can.

You might be reading this thinking, “But that’s competition, and that is good.” In principle, you are correct, but competition was previously limited by human capability and the costs of employing and deploying that resource through business. Now, with AI, the costs are being essentially reduced to their lowest possible point, and that is enabling everybody to fight for the same space.

A perverse irony, especially where technical platforms are concerned, is that ultimately AI will swallow the platform itself. If you follow AI’s evolutionary path, the end result may well be the death of mass usage platforms, on the basis that everyone will simply be able to create a solution for whatever problem they are currently facing. Most technical platforms exist because somebody has built something to a level that you are not capable of building yourself. What AI brings as a shift is a complete removal of those barriers altogether.

Let’s take CRM as an example. For now, people may use anything from OpenStage to Laylo to Mailchimp or any of the multitude of solutions out there. I’ve no doubt these platforms will soon be incorporating AI if they haven’t already, and they will be expanding their offering to try and chip into the various other spaces and services that businesses are paying for.

Ultimately though, it seems entirely plausible, if not inevitable, that one will be able to create your own equivalent of any of these platforms, such that these platforms themselves are no longer required.

In the meantime, this also presents two problems for businesses in the recorded music space. First is simply staying across this all. As all these companies layer on AI, they will be keen to tell you and try to secure your business. But everywhere I look, we are seeing increasing evidence that AI is not actually making life easier but is making things much, much harder for businesses, thanks to the time being allocated to keeping up with this all. This video perfectly illustrates the situation.

The second issue is strategically deciding which platforms are best to invest into. Historically, businesses have remained in quite niche spaces. A CRM provider, for example, is unlikely to expand into broad-level fan data insight. Now though, as connecting these processes up gets easier and easier, we are hitting a point where, in time, every business is going to have an almost absurdly wide range of capability.

Of course, that also leads to a subsequent point, which is that when everybody is building these things using the same two or three AI platforms, they will become homogenous. Hence the quote titling this piece (taken from Disney’s Incredibles film of all places): “when everyone is super, no one will be”.

Against all of this, I am concerned that the music industry is buying in to the notion of AI as the only path to improving or fixing the current state of affairs. Taking social media as a case in point, we are seeing more and more AI tools emerge to enable creation of content, management of posting etc. The sales pitch is that you will be able to increase your frequency of posting and therefore be more present and visible on social media. However, if everybody is playing to this same strategy, all that’s really happening is the signal to noise ratio becomes ever more imbalanced, and everything is just awash with low quality slop.

For that reason, then, I think it is incredibly important that we are pausing to consider the much wider strategic implications of how we all engage with AI in the context of the services we buy into for our day-to-day operations.

I have to be clear on this: I am absolutely of a view that AI has a multitude of potential uses within our working lives. What I am less convinced of is this idea that AI is the answer to every problem out there. In fact, I would take that one step further by suggesting that arts and culture are collectively on a fool’s errand if they believe technology is the sole solution to whatever problems they face at present - but that’s an article for another day.

I would take a bet that by the end of the working day in which you are reading this, you will almost certainly have received an outreach email from a company announcing that it has integrated AI and can now offer you so much more through its platform. It is increasingly important that the music industry stops to ask where this is all going, whether these things align with a broader strategy and how much time and money it is prepared to invest into those spaces in the meantime. Right now is a tipping point in which everyone wants you to buy into this narrative of AI as the great fixer. Should we collectively do that, we are once again relying on big tech all the more to guide and steer the way arts and culture evolves (or not) and reaches audiences in our lifetime. Is that the future we want?

Have a great day,

D.

🎶 Listening to “Struck Off” by The Solid Doctor. If like me you are of a certain vintage, then The Solid Doctor should be an artist’s name with which you are familiar. His track “Lights on the Vibe” was a permanent presence on my stereo for coming down after a hard night’s clubbing at 4 am in Brighton. Even now, I’d swear it has an immediate effect on my parasympathetic nervous system. Ergo, when I was made aware of a new album, I jumped in, and I’m glad I did, because it is absolutely fantastic. Go take a listen, grab a copy and thank me later.

📺 Watching “Kasso” on YouTube. This one is an easy pitch: Ninja Warrior, but on skateboards. This Japanese TV show sees various skaters completing obstacle-like courses in order to win cash prizes. It’s every bit as compelling as it sounds. Dive in!

🤖 Playing with Claude Cowork. Per my comments above, the entire AI space is getting absolutely exhausting. If there is one area I would suggest spending some time in, however, it is Claude’s Cowork system. At the very least, this can allow you to undertake tasks that were normally boring and repetitive with alarming speed. As you learn and grow from there, the sky’s the limit. In general, though, if you want to keep up with the most important things going on in AI, I would suggest that Cowork is probably the best place to start.

---

Gleefully accepting music recommendations!

I do really enjoy getting suggestions for either existing music or forthcoming releases to check out. So, if there’s something you think I might like, do feel free to get in touch. Always keen to hear the weird and wonderful things going on out there. And, with 6000+ subscribers, I’m happy to spread word on things I’m loving too.

---

Job Hunting?

Our friends at Blue Raincoat Music are looking for an Audience Development Manager. Responsibilities include:

• delivering integrated digital marketing campaigns

• working with marketing managers and the product team

• generally ensuring campaigns are insight-led, audience-focused and culturally relevant

• maintaining strong relationships with digital media agencies

Full details on the website here. If you’re interested, take a look!