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?
People are afraid that AI will take our jobs. I don’t think that AI will take our jobs, but I do think it will change how we operate and function within the music industry. Right now a large bulk of AI is unregulated and that is what scares people. That’s where this “predatory use” warning comes from; artists, musicians, writers, music houses and the like are worried about AI exploitation in regards to creative intellectual properties. There is a lot of conversation happening now about copyright protection and where/how to draw the line as it pertains to content creation (including music and sound creation). If creators choose to use AI platforms as a part of their creative processes, they should also carefully review the terms of services within those platforms as those can vary significantly from one platform to another and, as most currently stand, likely are not properly protected. Right now, AI is data-scraping; it is developed and trained based on already existing materials and sounds. So, how do we prevent unauthorized uses of existing music to train AI models? Honestly, we can’t. Not yet anyhow.
One day, I do think AI will be able to teach itself, but we aren’t there yet. Presently, AI still needs to be trained by a human, with references and proper prompts. What we can do right now is protect ourselves. As it stands, we as a company do not allow a human creator to incorporate any artistic AI elements to a generated work and/or piece of music. We don’t know how that AI platform was programmed or trained and therefore we are not comfortable representing a body of work with AI incorporated into it. We also have a duty to protect our clients and ourselves from copyright infringement. We have always stood strong in avoiding any “soundalike” materials and often hire musicologists for formal confirmation as such. Human authorship should be emphasized in order to ensure the maximum scope of protection.
As well, I find it impossible with current AI models to invoke any sense of real emotion within their processed music. There is so much emotion and passion attached to music and, at least for the time being, robots cannot manipulate or mimic that. In October of 2023 a group of music publishing companies filed a lawsuit against an AI platform, alleging that its model infringes their copyrighted song lyrics. We have seen a slew of lawsuits filed against AI platforms by visual artists and book authors, however this was the first legal action targeting AI technology filed by a music publisher. We will continue to pay attention to the outcome of this lawsuit and where copyright infringement issues are headed in relation to music and AI. On a more positive note, I do think at some point composers can work smarter vs harder. If we can teach an AI tool to write a prompted drum section while we focus on the horns section and then we tweak the drum section and mix the track together, it could end up saving us a lot of time. We’re just not there yet. To that effect, I do believe that there are unforeseen creative potentials that will stem from AI; electronic music became its own art form instead of just a shortcut.
How do new technologies, markets and platforms figure in your creative/business plans. For example, with NFTs gaining momentum, do you foresee related music and sound work resulting? Same for VR/AR? Will increased content spurred on by the emergence of additional streaming platforms open up music and sound opportunities for you? Any growth prospects in the advertising and/or entertainment industry?
We have to pay attention to emerging technologies, markets and platforms. As a business it is imperative to know where the industry is headed, what are the latest trends, etc. in order to stay relevant. However, paying attention to these advancements does not necessarily mean that we have to follow suit. In some cases it just means that we want to stay “in the know” so we can make informed decisions as a company to what will serve us, our clients, and our business the best. I think NFTs hit the music landscape largely on a celebrity scale, but we have not come across them affecting our position as a company or being any sort of necessity or value within the spaces that we touch. Not yet anyhow. However, we do see music and sound work resulting sooner and more significantly from AR and VR. As a company we service brands. We are helping to create sonic identities for brands through mnemonics, earwormy original compositions, existing artist licenses, etc. We are also a music and audio partner for TV, film, trailers, promos, video games, etc. Brands of all kinds have been pushing further into the AR and VR spaces. Whether it’s a commercial product that you find on the shelf in a grocery store, a marketing campaign for a new movie, or a new version of a video game, we are seeing our partners push deeper into servicing these new platforms. What that means for us is adapting to these new spaces and welcoming in more work. We have done a ton of work in the immersive sound bath space with experiential projects and I see us moving deeper into those spaces along with AR and VR as brands and marketing teams use these different technologies to continue to reach their audiences in new ways. Increased content spurred on by the emergence of additional streaming platforms has already opened up unique music and sound opportunities for us. Plus, adding more deliverables to a campaign often allows us to expand our bids. One track could ultimately land on an infinite campaign and allow a wealth of rearrangments, renewals, or additional usages providing exceptional growth opportunities.
How do new technologies, markets and platforms figure in your creative/business plans. For example, with NFTs gaining momentum, do you foresee related music and sound work resulting? Same for VR/AR? Will increased content spurred on by the emergence of additional streaming platforms open up music and sound opportunities for you? Any growth prospects in the advertising and/or entertainment industry?
Our company has continued to evolve as the industry evolves. Our mission will always be to service our clients and their needs to the best of our ability. In recent years that has continued to shift. We went entirely remote for a few years because of COVID and that shifted our entire business model. All supervised sessions were attended over Zoom instead of being in person. Once the world started to open up there was a general understanding in our particular sector of the industry that you can accomplish the same level of work from anywhere. Again, we evolved further. Now supervised sessions are all over the place: some are still fully remote, some fall in between where half of the team is in person and the rest is remote, and some are now 100% in person again. We learned how to utilize the existing tools we have access to in completely different ways, but we also had to explore new programs as well as a new means of internal company and external client communication to keep up with efficient production models. What I like about this evolution is the idea that you can do anything from anywhere and I am very proud of us for learning how to adapt to this model. What I don’t like is that we lose the human connectivity when we handle things entirely from a computer screen vs face to face.
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.
Remote ADR sessions! For this project, the spot was shot like a music video. The music track was created prior to the shoot so it could be used on set. The music drove the whole spot, and the actors were cast based on the creative and the lyrical themes of the track. Post shoot, our client team decided on a different creative direction for the vocal deliveries and thus our task to re-cast and re-record all characters began. This is noteworthy because ADR is really hard for many reasons, but in this particular case it was challenging because… a) The newly casted VO/vocalist talent was a different person than the talent we saw on screen so they were not mimicking their own lips (hard in and of itself), and on top of that they still had to make sure that they sounded as if they were the on-camera talent, no easy task… b) All the complications that come with a remote session, like fidelity issues, screen share, etc. Not quite the same as making sure the VO fits within the :30 seconds, but quite literally making sure that the new VO/vocalist talent is singing at the exact same moment as the on-screen talent and that their inflections match. If the on-screen talent takes a “gulp” our off screen VO talent needs to take a “gulp”, etc. It was extremely gratifying to be able to successfully accomplish such a hard task. The spot looks and sounds great. And ultimately we agreed that the VO/vocalist talent that we later cast worked better overall than the on-camera deliveries. What we did right was bake costs into our existing bid from the beginning to ensure that if, for some reason, we ended up doing something like this, the costs associated would be covered. Great lesson for producers: Bake in additional costs from the beginning. It’s a lot easier to reference costs on an approved bid than to negotiate overage costs.
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?
I am incredibly proud of our recent work with Instacart. We have been doing a rearrangement of the commercially famous Das Racist track “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” and we have just finalized our third iteration! We have “Combination Football Game and Grocery Store”, “Combination Nail Salon and Grocery Store”, and our third combination will be released very soon. Our clients loved the first iteration so much and it did so well in the market that they came back for a second and now a third. It’s very exciting because the possibilities are endless! With Instacart you can be anywhere and at the grocery store at the same time. And the public response has been incredibly positive: I have a colleague that literally uses Instacart now because the tune got stuck in their head. The earwormy-ness of a commercial jingle can do wonders for a brand and we have seen this campaign soar to unimaginable heights. We are thrilled to be a part of the campaign success and honored by the Instacart team for trusting us with this work. I have had the tune stuck in my head for many months.
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?
Creatively I think this presents the other artists and songwriters that are attached to the label or entity that bought the catalog with a very exciting opportunity to sample, remix, etc. some very popular tunes that could then boost their own artistry. This could be huge for A-List talent and for up-and-coming artists alike. It also gives them a potential insight into songwriting patterns from popular music and perhaps a lesson on why those songs have made it so big; a good learning opportunity. The ripple effect of this on music from a business standpoint relative to the advertising, film, TV, and streaming platforms is the access to these catalogs for sync. With easier access to these superstar catalogs, music supervisors know exactly where to find these tracks. One down side may be the expensive costs associated with label or publisher ownership. Either way though, as a music professional and content junkie, I can confidently say that it is extremely exciting to have greater access to incredible music for licensing opportunities.
