AI is Taking Over the Music Industry
Do you care? Should you?
Ric Edelman: On today's show, stardom AI style. I think all of us, at some time of our lives, we were just little kids. Maybe even right now, you have or you once had a fantasy of being a star. Fans adoring you. You being rich and famous. Most of us have long ago given up on that fantasy. But if you or your kids or your clients still aspire to that, let's remember that being a star is a lot of hard work. Look at the lifestyle, the schedules that these people have. Recording artists, they're on grueling tours for years at a time. They bounce from hotel to hotel, living out of suitcases. Imagine being somebody famous and trying to get to eat in a restaurant with everybody taking your picture all the time and asking for selfies and autographs, countless interviews to promote your newest project, a TV show or a movie, or your latest record. If you're on Broadway, you're performing eight shows a week. No time off for breaks or vacations. Not only because the show must go on, but because you never know if you're ever going to work again. You need the paycheck.
But now consider ABBA. They're doing a concert series and none of the band members are working hard. In fact, they're not working at all. The entire show is being performed by virtual avatars generated by AI. A million people a year are seeing this show. It's earning $2 million a week. That's great news for ABBA. They're not the only ones. Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Michael Jackson, Johnny Cash, they're all on tour this year and they're all dead. Go see the Beatles in Vegas. Two of them are dead and neither of the other two are playing there. And in fact, Paul just released a new song not long ago, was written by John and performed by him too. Again, thanks to AI. I bet you'd love to see Prince or Freddie Mercury perform. I bet you'd be willing to pay, even though you know it's just their computer-generated avatar. But at what point will you be willing to see a great talent perform or listen to great music, or watch a great show, or read a great book from someone you've never heard of simply because it's great talent? How long will it be before AI invents that person? In the 1960s, the music industry invented The Monkees, so why can't they invent the next rock star? Someone who's guaranteed not to use drugs or sexually harass staff, or punch out a girlfriend, or demand a big cut of the profits? What do today's stars have to say about all this?
Today's talent, the real human stars, they're scared to death over all this technological innovation. This is why the Hollywood actors and the writers all went on strike last year. Their unions are hiring lawyers. They're donating to politicians to protect themselves and their careers. I think long term, most of them are going to lose. Spotify adds 100,000 new songs every day, and a lot of them are already being made by AI. In 2017, six years ago, 90% of the music streamed on Spotify was created by real artists who had recording contracts. Today, it's not 90%, it's only 75%, and that percentage is going to keep falling. The rest is being produced by people who are amateurs or outright AI. Right now, the threats to those recording artists are amateurs. Anybody with a guitar and a voice can upload a song, but soon AI is going to get good enough that you'll choose to listen to that. And you won't know, you won't even care how it was produced any more than you care who produced the video you watch on TikTok or Instagram.
Robots are now writing books. Last year, 40 of the top 100 young adult romance books on Kindle were written by AI. Haven't you noticed how fast biographies come out when somebody famous dies? All of this is just being done by technology. And so it's not just stars who are being transformed, even perhaps to the point of extinction. The business of advertising is also being transformed. In the old days, you would pay an ad agency millions of dollars to create a campaign, and you would hire a celebrity spokesperson. Or maybe you'd hire an out of work actor and turn them into a celebrity. Just think of Progressive's Flo or the mayhem guy for Allstate.
Today, instead of doing all that, just ask an AI chatbot for a few ideas and pick one. And then ask the AI to generate a spokesperson who's got the physical features you want. Do you think this is crazy? Then you've never heard of the Geico Gecko or Ronald McDonald? Animated spokespeople never call in sick. They never drive drunk. You'll never have a PR problem with the Budweiser Clydesdales. The future…anyone will be able to become famous, but it just might not matter very much.
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On tomorrow's show, big news for women suffering with endometriosis.
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Link from today's show:
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