Will AI Be the Death of the Music Recording Artist?

 

Prologue: As told to a communications class in the year 2050

A long time ago, before AI and before peer-to-peer computer networks, there was a time when a group of right brain dominant people, called artists, walked the planet in large numbers, generating original creative works in a variety of media.  These artists supported themselves and even thrived from their labors.  Some artists spent years attending school to perfect their craft, while others seemed to be born with innate skills that allowed them to express themselves and their views of the world, through unique works of art.  They accomplished this through a variety of media, such as painting and illustration, paper and pen, and music, and their talents were valued by society because of the emotional and cathartic effect they had on audiences. Their work even carried great commercial value spurring industries which initially supported their efforts.

We Feel the Pain of Artists, But We Love Our Music Technology

In the previous paragraph, I envisioned a time in the not so distant future, when human artists were lost to the world, because of several technological evolutions in mass communications.  I am lamenting this loss, while at the same time I am considering the words that I will use in my text prompt to generate a good image for this blog, using Adobe Firefly, an AI text to image generator.  And yes, while listening to a favorite play list on the iHeart radio app on my smart phone.  Yes, I suppose I am a technologically tethered hypocrite! So much of mass communications has changed over the past 30 years and the speed of technology change has only increased year by year.  The impact has been a boon to consumers and companies who effectively monetized the technology.  However, it has been largely at the expense of the artists, the creators, and nowhere is that effect more evident than in the field of music.

The training of generative AI using our artists' music....begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.
Letter to Streaming Music Services from the Universal Music Group in April of 2023

How Music Royalties Supported Recording Artists in the Past

The analog and digital recording technologies that evolved in the early and late 20^th century, created an industry that, though imperfect, rewarded successful recording artists with lucrative contracts and royalties.  Both performers and songwriters received separate payments through synchronization and publishing royalties.  Monetization was through the sale of recordings to the general public, through royalties paid by radio stations, and from commercial entities who licensed songs for advertisements and other uses.  In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, large retail stores like Tower Records and Sam Goodies thrived on the sales of LPs, 45s and later digital CD’s.  Successful recording artists, lyricists and composers also benefited from this business structure, living well in retirement from their royalties. 

 "You Pay For Music?"  How Napster Changed the Music World and Robbed Recording Artists

The year 1999 brought about a pivotal change in the music industry with the launch of Napster, a peer-to-peer network sharing platform, in which users could share all the music that was on their computer with everyone on the network, and download music for free from anyone else’s computer, that was on the network.  “You pay for music?” was a question that users would often ask their unconnected friends. Napster launched in 1999 and by 2001 had an estimated 80 million users, who were sharing copyrighted music with each other for free, effectively stealing from their favorite musicians, songwriters and record labels, who owned this creative property (Creager, 2019).  Napster was eventually buried in a slew of lawsuits which largely ended the open sharing of copyrighted recordings, but the idea of downloading music was something that consumers craved, and Appl eagerly eyed this new market.

 iTunes and the iPod Legitimize Music Downloads

In 2001, Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, introduced Apple ITunes, calling it the most important software that Apple ever released, outside of its operating system.  They launched itunes in 2003 with 200,000 songs available at a download price of $.99 cents per song and in the first week, a million songs were sold (Mc Elhearn, 2023). That same year, Apple launched the iPod and by 2007 over a 100 million iPods had been sold, paving the way for the introduction of the iPhone.  The success of the iPod and iTunes, once again guaranteed a royalty for both the creative artists and the record labels and consumer’s embraced the platform which suddenly made Apple the most important entity in the music business. 

The Rise of Music Streaming and the Fall of Music Royalties

As Apple secured its place in the music industry, other services began to appear that offered streaming music as opposed to downloadable music.  In 2011, one of these services, Spotify, was launched in the United States and quickly became the dominant force in music streaming. In 2021, Spotify captured 31% of the 523 million global streaming music subscribers (Mulligan, 2022). Once again, the music industry was catapulted into an upheaval from this new technology and shifting consumer demands.  And once again, the vast majority of recording artists were treated unfairly.  Spotify initiated a royalty structure that guaranteed their share of profits, and guaranteed their largest shareholders, the major record labels, their profits, but created an unfair royalty distribution system that is easily manipulated by unscrupulous artists.

Does AI Poses the Biggest the Music Industry?

The AI Effect: A New Era in Music and its Unintended Consequences - Rick Beato

So where does this leave us with today’s encroaching AI technology?  In April 2024, over 200 recording artists submitted an open letter to the Artist Rights Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group for artists, calling on AI developers to stop using AI to “infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists” (Aswad, 2024).  The recording artists also noted that “AI poses enormous threats to our ability to protect our privacy, our identities, our music and our livelihoods” and that that “the assault on human creativity must be stopped” (Aswad, 2024).   Specifically, they called out the use of musical works to train AI systems without the artist’s permission, and the use of AI to create sound alike songs, in order to evade royalty payments.

Will AI be the Death of Human Artistry?

So once again, artists are under attack and at this point, no one knows how all this will shake out.  Will consumers once again follow their own desires and forsake the rights of artists, supporting whatever AI technologies may serve them in the future?  Or will they band together with artists and take a stand, supporting a different wave of technology which supports human artistry?  Stay tuned!

What are your thoughts on the evolution of music technology and challenges faced by artists?

Additional Resources:

Inside the Multi-Billion Dollar Battle over Music-Streaming Royalties

An Open Letter to the Artist and Songwriter Community, Why We Must Call Time Out on TikTok