Steve Collins and Sarah Keith delivered a session titled Music and AI: Creativity, Control, and Copyright at this week’s Centre for Media History conference at Macquarie University’s Sydney city campus.

In their paper they explored the idea that there is no longer a single music industry but “many music industries.”

Similar to the history of radio, where manufacturers and retailers of radio sets needed content to encourage people to buy their products, so to, music technology companies need content to sell their products. This is reflected in the current trend of supplying music making technology cheaply or free to creators on the internet, but making them pay to extract their musical creations once they have used the software. In the past you bought the software or hardware, but this old business model is changing for music production tech companies.

“The IT sector is now entwined in the music industry… there is decentralisation of production… AI is transforming how music is created, shared and enjoyed,” said Collins and Keith.

AI tools can also analyse the millions of songs that have been hits around the world over time and determine the characteristics of a hit in different markets, languages and cultures. Once that analysis is done “AI can analyse a new song to determine if it will be a hit.”

Other issues discussed by the pair include whether AI used in song creation will infringe copyright and who owns AI generated music works. While there are current legal positions on both these questions, new technology may force a rethink of copyright law over time.

In relation to the business model of music streaming companies, Collins and Keith commented that Spotify “pays 70% of its revenue to rights holders,” so over time  “there may be a strong financial incentive” for Spotify to produced its own AI generated music and prioritise it in its playlists, or to acquire the rights to musicians’ back catalogues to create new hits in their voice if they die or are no longer able to sing.

The pair mentioned an amusing example of how AI and voice cloning technology, Johnny Cash singing his version of the novelty song Barbie Girl in his traditional country style, but long after his death.

The pair recently published an exploration of AI in the music industry, in a book titled Slave to the ‘Rithm , The AI Turn in the Music Industries.