Tune in Saturday April 22nd to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

You got a lot right here. It’s just sad that the gimmicky sound-a-likes is what people’s first impression of AI is. A few examples of tech’s disruption in music:

1. Beatles/Abbey road and the 8-track, and then mellotron (first sampler IMO)
2. Herbie Hancock breaking the rules and using synths in jazz mid 70s with the Jupiter 8
3. Drum machines early 80s putting drummers out and people panicking.
4. CDs mid 80s and changing the feel from vinyl
5. Late 80s sampling which so many people called “not artistic”
6. 90s computer tracking replacing tape which echo’d a lot of above
7. Autotune in the 2000s and its implications
8. Plug ins and minimal prices (or subscription) that mimic any instrument to the common.
9. 2010’s Distribution available to all that allows anyone to get their art to the world
10. 2020’s Bandlab and iphone apps that bringing competitive recording to everyone with a smart phone.

Hard to see anytime people reverted back with the exception of the vinyl boom. Sure it’s fun to occasionally record on tape or other. Personally I think we’ll have another creative boom when technology advances and you can record into a computer (or other) without needing a screen (combo of voice commands and AI) which will unlock all perceived screen/grid oriented boundaries.

Embrace tech, enjoy the disruption, even a little chaos, and get ready for the next boom and creative breakthroughs that makes the music industry the best industry.

Mike Caren

__________________________________________

Like when the Mellotron first appeared. The musician’s union tried to ban it, thinking that orchestras would be put out-of-business. Which would have never given us “In the Court of the Crimson King”.

Rich Nisbet

__________________________________________

Preach Bob! You are absolutely right in this analysis. When Lucien demanded the DSP’s remove AI tracks a few weeks ago, I laughed out loud. This is tantamount to standing in the middle of a rainstorm yelling at the sky for the sun to come out. The genie is out of the bottle and we can’t put it back. I hope the industry reacts the way you describe- embrace it, leverage it, license it. I remain dubious.

Tom Truitt

__________________________________________

Re AI music, Seen this?

Very interesting article in the Guardian…….

“We got bored waiting for Oasis to re-form’: AIsis, the band fronted by an AI Liam Gallagher”: https://bit.ly/41O98LB

It sounds great, but now I can go and see an artificial ABBA, listen to an artificial OASIS……

I dunno man……..

Should I be excited or scared??

I Really don’t know……

Alan Pell

__________________________________________

You’ll like this:

“Liam Gallagher says AI version of himself sounds ‘mega’

“We’ve heard a lot of stories about artists and labels complaining about AI-generated music recently. It’s about time we had some good news AI stories. Well, while Drake might not like hearing himself re-voicing tracks by other artists, Liam Gallagher thinks he sounds “mega” on a new – and entirely fake – Oasis album purporting to be a lost recording from the late 90s.

“Billed as being by AIsis, ‘The Lost Tapes Vol 1’ is the creation of musician Bobby Geraghty. It’s actually a collection of songs written and recorded by his former band Breezer. He then trained an AI on Liam Gallagher’s voice and replaced his own vocals with new ones created by the AI technology. Aside from the fact that it often sounds like Gallagher is singing with a mouth full of wool, it’s pretty convincing.

“Asked for his opinion of the album by a fan on Twitter, Gallagher replied: ‘Mad as f*ck. I sound mega’.

He told another that ‘it’s better than allthe other snizzle out there’.

So, it seems there’s one big name artist sold on the AI revolution. He’ll no doubt be glad to hear that there’s a second volume of AIsis tracks ready to go.

Listen to ‘The Lost Tapes Vol 1’ here: https://bit.ly/3KU5x7U

 

Jake Gold

__________________________________________

I think I sent you this link from Steve Blank before, but here it is again.  The entertainment leaders never get tired of claiming that new technology will hurt the industry.

An excerpt of the article from 2012 follows:

Why The Movie Industry Can’t Innovate and the Result is SOPA

The Movie Industry and Technology Progress

The music and movie business has been consistently wrong in its claims that new platforms and channels would be the end of its businesses. In each case, the new technology produced a new market far larger than the impact it had on the existing market.

1920’s – the record business complained about radio. The argument was because radio is free, you can’t compete with free. No one was ever going to buy music again.

1940’s – movie studios had to divest their distribution channel – they owned over 50% of the movie theaters in the U.S. “It’s all over,” complained the studios. In fact, the number of screens went from 17,000 in 1948 to 38,000 today.

1950’s – broadcast television was free; the threat was cable television. Studios argued that their free TV content couldn’t compete with paid.

1970’s – Video Cassette Recorders (VCR’s) were going to be the end of the movie business. The movie businesses and its lobbying arm MPAA fought it with “end of the world” hyperbole. The reality? After the VCR was introduced, studio revenues took off like a rocket.  With a new channel of distribution, home movie rentals surpassed movie theater tickets.

1998 – the MPAA got congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), making it illegal for you to make a digital copy of a DVD that you actually purchased.

2000 – Digital Video Recorders (DVR) like TiVo allowing consumer to skip commercials was going to be the end of the TV business. DVR’s reignite interest in TV.

2006 – broadcasters sued Cablevision (and lost) to prevent the launch of a cloud-based DVR to its customers.

Today it’s the Internet that’s going to put the studios out of business. 

Sound familiar?

Why was the movie industry consistently wrong? And why do they continue to fight new technology?

Regards,

John Swetye

P.S. Lessons Learned

Studios are run by financial managers who lack the skills to exploit disruptive innovation
Studio anti-piracy/copyright lawyers trump their technologists
Studios have no concern about collateral damage as long as it optimizes their revenue
Studios $110M/year lobbying and political donations trump consumer objections
Politicians votes will follow the money unless it will cost them an election

__________________________________________

You’re so right Bob.  But like Napster before it, one of the REAL issues here is lack of control.  You remember that in the final negotiations, the Majors who were offered $1B and they STILL said no – for no other reason than it would totally usurp their control.

Ritch Esra

__________________________________________

I have been a computer programmer for almost 55 years, and change is constant, and not always in the areas you expect.

Ultimately we will transition to cyborgs (computer embedded technology – some people have the beginnings of it already). Then finally uploaded to the cloud.

Isaac Asimov wrote a story about this where finally all humans uploaded and merged with the master computer with the final task to reverse entropy.

And in Asimov fashion, the computer finally came up with the solution and ended the story with “Let there be light”.

Regards,
Dave Machanick

__________________________________________

Jackson Pollock famously said, “I deny the accident.”  In other words, the work he did that may have looked random to others was anything but.  The creative impulse originating in his brain and ending up on the canvas, was a culmination of thousands of moments, gestures, memories, visions – like throwing a lasso over and over until there ARE no accidents.  That is the humanity in the work.  AI might imitate a Pollock with imitative or random choices, store information about every square inch of every painting Pollock ever painted.

But AI will never paint a Pollock, and we all know it.

Liz Dean

__________________________________________

Nearly everybody is missing the bigger opportunity for creators with AI – applying the tools to our own content instead of relying on public web content. Imagine the power for a musician to upload all their work, released or not, to a proprietary database that they control. Then AI tools can help them to generate more music from their own existing work!

I did that with my writing. I created a database with nineteen years of blog content, over 1,500 individual posts plus six of my books and I use a closed ChatGPT interface. I can create new posts from my own work, summarize my own ideas, craft email responses based on my words, and much more. The future of AI is using it with our own stuff.

Where’s the Bob Bot? I can help you make it!

David Meerman Scott

__________________________________________

Great topic Bob! I signed up for ChatGPT and it is a great tool. However, that’s it. It’s tool! It will be up to all of us as to how to incorporate AI into our music creation processes. AI won’t replace us!

People have told me that I’m good at math. That is laughable! I am terrible at math, but really good at using Excel!

Cheers!

Sarra J-G

__________________________________________

Are you sure about that? Chat GPT 4 can already write AI Lob Befsetz exponentially better than it could a week ago. Give it a month and it will have you down pat. It’s going faster than we are able to catch up to.

Please listen to this from the people who created the social dilemma.:

The jaw dropping part here is that when polled 50% of AI programmers say there is a 10% chance that AI will destroy humanity. They ask, would you fly in a plane that 50% of engineers of the plane said there was a 10% chance of crashing?

This is society level changes at speeds we cannot deal with, by capitalists racing to just “see where it goes”

Sherry Kondor

__________________________________________

Imagine. Artificial Intelligence studies thousands of hours (within 12 hours) of Robin Williams or Richard Pryor or Joan Rivers, the passed-on comedians. Their characterizing-speech, intonation, jokes, laughter and timing etc, what could happen ? Their ‘characters’ could be brought back to ‘life’ with new jokes (initially just audio),  as AI would learn from a database of thousands of jokes which would be a Robin or a Richard or a Joan style joke. Those characters, all three, Williams, Pryor and Rivers would have been gleeful at their ‘return’, if they knew then what we know now !!!

On the music side, this is only the beginning of the unfathomable intelligence range that AI will accumulate. We, as a species, are on the cusp of having ‘forever’ artists and the first in the queue to join that will be the female artist called Madonna. She will absolutely LOVE having new songs she has written being released by her AI ‘artist’ in her classic style, impersonating her as a 25 year old artist when she is 80 !!

I can totally see that happening, very soon, with new contract clauses being added to include the AI ‘formatted’ artist catalogue as part of the ownership of the major label, if it hasn’t been written already. You being a lawyer may know that more than most…

There needs to be an alternative universe for the new music era other than the Big Three because they’ll just embrace anything that returns a profit for their shareholders, irrespective of the need for creative musical growth for the next generation. The Beatles or Prince didn’t start off being brilliant, they grew into those shoes, I Wanna Be Your Lover to Purple Rain took some learning time as did I Wanna Hold Your Hand to Let It Be. Really no company should be allowed to own music for life. Melody is, after all, our first communicative language globally. Think about that – how you were communicated with as a one day old baby until a year old. Loving tone (melody). Whether you were Chinese, French, Indian, African, American, Italian and whatever religion…

Also, hold onto your record collection folks, that’s where the real stuff will still sound amazing. Will there be a Bob Lefsetz AI newsletter arriving in our emails in the future? I have hundreds stored, no doubt others have too. Could your Intelligence be Artificially created too Bob !!  Who knows….

Eddie Gordon

__________________________________________

Hey Bob, hope you’re well. Couldn’t agree with you more.

Please check out this article on a song that is the talk of the country in Israel, showing how a great song combined with cutting edge AI, is making such a difference.

https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/all-news/article-739367

Video: https://youtu.be/7ND1Pw6QD_0

MICHAEL MICHEL

__________________________________________

It’s not Napster redux, but it’s an effective opening line. You say lots of accurate things and some that miss the point. Copping people’s voices without their approval or compensation is just plain wrong, against copyright and right of publicity precedent. Laws upon which m living depends.

Can we stop the technology? Nope, and we’re not trying. As you say, it’s never worked, and never will. I get it. Can AI be of help to creatives? Of course.

But should a streaming service be able to post something that is not what it says it is, whether it is created by AI or by real people using old school real techniques? I don’t think so.

And is the stuff that AI is creating right now actually pretty bad? Pretty much, everything I’ve heard. Low common denominator brown food product, devoid of flavor, ultimately unsatisfying. Might not always be that way.

Your licensing concept makes a certain sense on paper, co-opt it, don’t try to kill it. But, when it’s a voice or a likeness, what if the AI entity says something in a way the scraped artist doesn’t like, libelous, slanderous, or simply unbecoming? Or is it in violation of an exclusive contract? Don’t  they have some say in what goes out under their name? Especially when they had eff-all to do with its creation other than to exist?

Can I make a fake Lefsetz Letter, pass it off as you (not as a cop or a parody or satire) and say a ton of really bad inhuman off-the-charts uglyuglyugly baaaaad stuff? But, hey man, it burnishes your brand, you’re worthy of being imitated, people really like you. Sorry, buddy, it’s wrong, and if I did it, I would deserve to be sued by you, and shut down. Hard.

Should labels have AI departments? Of course. Does AI music have a place in the market? See my brown food product statement above. Will these end runs keep happening. Or course. We’re looking at the wild west until some true actionable guidelines are laid down by the USCO, or the CRB, or some other detested government agency.

But back in the earliest days of sampling, sampled songs and records weren’t being credited or compensated. Now they are. The same thing applies here. Get permission, get a license, give credit, and PAY US.

Drake and The Weeknd, or Eminen, they had no say in their voices being scraped, and that ain’t right. There was no disclaimer, no “in the style of”, just the letters “AI” in parentheses. And the reason people are doing it is because they can. Or they might profit from the use of something someone else owns. Not right.

What if there was a technology that allowed me to copy your house key just by pointing a beam at your front door. What if I just wanted to see if could do it, give copies to my friends, be a big shot. And what if one of my friends actually used it. That one is easy, right? There’s no reason why this one should be hard.

We’re not going to kill the tech, we don’t want to. I ain’t afraid of the future, we’ve had this conversation before. It wouldn’t work anyway. But I will fight for the rights of artists to not allow their work to be copied, deployed and monetized without permission and compensation. To fight for free speech while prohibiting screaming “fire” in a crowded theatre.

Responsible, actionable guidelines. Not the wild west. That’s what I believe

Dan Navarro

__________________________________________

For the last 40 years I’ve been asking for a ‘computer program’ that you feed 1000 number one songs into and see what it comes up with

Chris Stein

__________________________________________

At the risk of sounding snarky, I mean no disrespect to these artists, but AI easily generated credible copies of them because their music is already computer generated. Computer beats, computer sounding voices, little or no melodic structure or chord changes. Mumbled lyrics.

Let’s hear a credible AI-generated Beatles song.

Steve Schalchlin

__________________________________________

For years, artists have used technology (autotune etc) to sound robotic.
For robots to use technology now to sound like the artists is just fair game.

Aloha
Steve London

Sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell front Larkin Poe, a blues-based rock band that will knock your socks off. This is their story from home-schooling in Georgia to touring with their sister Jessica in the acoustic act the Lovell Sisters, to ultimately forging a new sound and backing Elvis Costello, Bright Eyes and more as they slowly gained traction on their own. My favorite part of the conversation is when the Lovell Sisters break up and Rebecca and Megan are struggling. Struggle is the essence of making it.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/larkin-poe/id1316200737?i=1000609786607

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/87381933-59c7-4244-989f-3b96db743650/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-larkin-poe

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/larkin-poe-302269115

Spotify: search on “Lefsetz”

It’s Napster redux.

Universal telling DSPs not to host AI music… What could be better! Think about it, you’re an act that’s so popular, so desirable, that the audience wants even more of your music!

Can we stop trying to hold back the future? It has never ever worked, why should it now? Furthermore, we’ve seen this movie already. What looks scary at first ends up adding to as opposed to taking away.

Let’s talk Napster vs. CDs. There’s no debate that file-trading put a dent in recorded music revenues. But forgetting the evolution, the intermediary steps like iTunes, streaming is better for the music business. Not only have recorded music revenues rebounded, they’re still growing and…

Live music, the touring business, is through the roof.

Think about this. If everybody couldn’t hear the music for free on YouTube or for a de minimis cost on a streaming service like Spotify, et al, would they all be going to the show?

There are acts with little or no radio airplay that are selling thousands of tickets, they wouldn’t have been able to do this in the pre-internet era. First, they can record the music for a very low cost using computer equipment in their house and they can distribute it for almost nothing. And if people want to listen to it…

We still haven’t scraped away the detritus of the past, all those who won in the old world who aren’t doing so well in the new. In a closed market if they got signed by a label they were one of the few and were the beneficiary of all that marketing and promotion. So now they say their streaming royalties are low… But all these people bitching can still work on the road. Think of the old paradigm, physical and retail. Only old fans would be aware of their tunes and as far as new fans… There’s a good chance most retail outlets wouldn’t even be stocking their records!

And as far as progress goes, something is always lost in the march to the future. Like vent windows. Pretty cool, but seen as unnecessary when all automobiles came with air conditioning.

So someone uses a platform to create a new song based on what you’ve done previously. What we’ve learned in the past twenty-odd years is you don’t try to eradicate it, you license it! At the software level, like they used to tax blank cassettes, or at the distribution level, or both. You want to host AI music, you have to pay for it! And the underlying artist gets most of the money.

We lived through this with sampling. The music was stolen, and once you needed a license…many rightsholders refused to grant one, and as a result we now have beats created by newbies. If we’d had a clearinghouse to license samples…

And if we don’t license AI songs built on old songs, do you know what is going to happen? There are going to be new AI songs not based on the work of any preexisting artist and the rightsholders will lose out. You embrace the future, it pays.

And can we stop being afraid of AI?

So AI can write a term paper. Well, pocket calculators came along fifty years ago, did they eliminate math? If anything, they made calculation easier and more precise. Just think about it, when you go to Venmo the cost of your lunch to your buddy… It’s the software in the phone that splits the bill for you. Where’s the loss here?

I’d be more worried about the opposite. That there would be new AI songs based on underlying works/artists that no one wanted to listen to. That’s the crisis in the internet world today, you can make it, but no one can find it, never mind listen, play or experience it.

As for replacement of the underlying artist… Give me a break. I’ve been sent AI versions of my newsletter. Sure, I’m in there somewhere, but it’s not even a reasonable facsimile. Don’t forget, AI works based on data that is scraped from the internet. As far as coming up with new ideas… They say that’s going to happen, but so far nothing has come close, and I’m not worried. Because machines have no humanity.

Steve Jobs and Apple are the classic example here. Steve made decisions based on his gut. He did no research, because research will tell you where you’ve been, but not where you’re going.

Innovation, disruption, how often does it come from the established company? Almost never. Tesla broke the electric car. GM was even there first and didn’t know how to do it. Furthermore, to this day none of the traditional companies has realized that the key to Tesla’s success is software, and that the body/electronics are nearly fungible. It’s a computer on wheels. That’s not what GM delivered. And VW still can’t get the software right. If you’re waiting for change from the established outfits, keep waiting, because they don’t believe it’s in their interest, they want to maintain the status quo, they abhor disruption.

Lucian Grainge should be starting an AI division of Universal Music. We still don’t know where AI music is going. Maybe it starts off sounding like Drake but the end result isn’t human at all. Go along for the ride or be left behind. You must disrupt yourself to survive.

So back to me. Let’s say the internet is flooded with fake Lefsetz Letters. Man, if the demand is there, think how big I’ll be! As far as the authentic me… Come on, you know whether you’re buying a fake Rolex, but somehow you’re not going to be able to tell whether the screed was written by me?

As for “Business Insider” and other outlets firing people and employing AI instead… Have you read any of the articles? Almost all of what is already online is clickbait, unreadable. Google anything. Go to the Apple News. Writers who can’t write trying to hook readers who can’t read. Are we losing anything if this crap is written by machines? Maybe the humans who used to do the work can get more productive jobs. This stuff, both human and AI, is so boring, usually just a recitation of facts that you already know underneath a deceptive headline. This is what we’re trying to keep alive?

And should we throw over the entire industrial revolution while we’re at it, never mind the computer revolution? The machines make our jobs easier. What, do you want to wash your clothes on a rock?

And I find it hilarious that all these acts employing technology to make their records want to draw a line. Come on, endless software, plug-ins, Autotune… They can use it but nobody else can?

And then there’s the theory that posits all these negative articles about AI are spread by those behind AI, to get the word out.

And we’ve been hearing about AI for decades, and it’s finally arrived. Remind you of anything? Digital photography. Was going to kill film and it never happened, and then overnight it did. Now we all have high-end cameras in our pockets.

So film companies are history. Kodak is unknown to the younger generation. But think of all the benefits. Come on, you shoot the pillar showing the location you parked at before you enter the venue. Forget all the little things, you can share photos with your friends and families… So, old wave camera companies bit the dust. Is that enough to hold back digital photography?

You cannot replace humanity. Absolutely impossible. Inject humanity into what you are doing, be honest and real, and not only can the machine not replicate this, your work will resonate with the public even more.

Got a problem with electronic instruments? Go acoustic. Stop comping the vocals, leave the mistakes in recordings. Sure, you can tell AI to put in mistakes, but where, and of what character? Art is about the surprise. And to be honest, that’s not where music is at right now, AI could help push the envelope. Like synthesizers. Or the drum machine. They’re additive, not subtractive.

Stop being scared. Do we need to work out rights and distribution? Of course. But let’s start down that path instead of trying to shut things down. God, it took forever for record companies to realize this. You license and reap the rewards, you don’t litigate and try to kill that which can never be buried.

Man, I’d love a new Beatles song. Do I think AI can generate a good one? No. But if AI does, and people want to listen to it and the Beatles get paid…what is wrong with that?

Nothing!