On April 1, more than 200 music notables (including Billie Eilish, Stevie Wonder, 3 Balvin and Jon Bon Jovi) of the Artists Rights Alliance issued an open letter warning against the “predatory use of AI” in the music industry. The letter cites AI’s capability to steal professional artists’ voices and likenesses, violate creators’ rights and “destroy the music ecosystem.” The letter further calls on tech companies, AI developers and digital music services to pledge that they won’t develop or use AI-powered technology the undermines songwriters and artists or prevents them from earning compensation for their art. What are your views and/or concerns relative to artificial intelligence and its impact on music and sound?
Let it try and create its own unique sounds, styles. Yes, it can listen to other music to influence the output, like a human does. But make it unique like a human composer has to, or…buy the rights to arrange or perform it your own way. Better yet, let humans create creative art and let computers help them like they have. Use AI to solve other problems that human brains are either not good at or are in short supply. Like how to get more people to vote, for example.
How has your role–or that of your business or company–evolved in recent years? What do you like most about that evolution? What do you like least?
What I appreciate most is what I’ve learned from others, mistakes made earlier, and learning now from my staff. It’s an ever-evolving industry which is both exciting and daunting. The competitive landscape has intensified since COVID, but we’ve also expanded into podcasts, experience design collaborations and other compelling creative areas. It’s rewarding to see people prosper over the years and I hope to build on that. I also love being the business guy in a creative company that gets to do creative things behind the scenes.
What was the biggest creative challenge posed to you by a recent project? Tell us about that project, why the challenge was particularly noteworthy or gratifying to overcome, or what valuable lesson you learned from it.
A current project (that has to go unnamed for now) came into being, without a firm creative brief, and had to be turned around faster than it takes to collect a cousin at the airport. We had the right team and ideas to win on this one, despite the constraints, in fact, more as a result of the constraints. We set up a call with our creative team to hone in on the music brief, worked over the weekend and presented tracks that the client immediately fell in love with. It’s probably not ‘the way’ to work every day, but it worked for this one.
What recent work are you most proud of and why? Or what recent work (advertising or entertainment)–your own or that of others–has struck a responsive chord with you?
We had half of our 12-person roster mixing Super Bowl work this year. So, I’m very proud of the skills of our talent and producers at Sonic Union, and the caliber of work that came our way. I always admire any work that steps outside of the expected imagery and musical genre and takes us to new places.
A growing number of superstar artists and songwriters have been selling their music rights/catalogs in megabuck deals. What will be the ripple effect of this on music creatively and from a business standpoint relative to the advertising, film, TV and streaming platform markets?
I guess a track could be more easily brought to light for sync, negating some original music? Imagine there were no rights at all and anyone could sync any song to a commercial: Would found music be used 90% of the time, just because it exists? Or because it is ‘right’. Or would there still be, say, half of spots leveraging original music scored for the cut and the brand. Original composition is created to complement the spot; whereas a mega track by a superstar can be a dominant force that leads the creative. Both have their place.
