Is AI the future of music?

Guess what I've spent the day doing? I've been poring over various plans for my music studio business, trying to work out where we want to be in five years time. I last did this in 2019. At the time, we were planning to double our studio capacity and open completely new, groundbreaking facilities for musicians and artists in London. We had worked out the costs, and were working to raise finance. This ground to a halt in 2020. Covid effectively destroyed our finances. We have effectively been simply trying to get through the next month and balance the books for five years now. Whereas we were a profitable business in 2019, our turnover has not recovered to those levels yet, whilst our costs have risen by nearly 30%.

A year ago, I was seriously questioning whether the business had a future. It was clear that if we didn't look at what we were doing and work out ways to boost our turnover, I might as well hang up my boots. The first thing we did was update our website. We had last done this in 2013, so it was long overdue. We also overhauled our social media. Once we were happy that we'd got this area of the business right, we looked at some other aspects of what we are doing. The majority of our costs are fixed. This does not mean we can be complacent, but there is limited scope for savings. 

One of the advantages of our business model is we talk to our customers. Some rehearsal studios do not actually have staff on site. I have no idea how they actually get business intelligence, or work our trends (other than read my blogs), but that is their problem. What has alarmed me for the last two years is the fact that it is getting ever harder for artists to get paying gigs. I am not talking about novices, I am talking about working bands that have supported musicians lifestyles. These are the lifeblood of Londons music scene. Artists create all the wealth, but it is gobbled up by streaming companies and ticketing companies. TCompanies like Spotify generate billions for their owners, but artists see a tiny fraction of this. The big ticketing organisations seemingly have a virtual monopoly on the live music industry. They do dealwith the venues and control what goes on there. The mega gigs, this year it is Oasis, generate billions. None of this gets funnelled back into grassroots venues. 

Being in a band that plays the grassroots circuit, I see this at the coalface. I see amazing bands, that have small loyal followings, but the industry gate keepers ensure they stay in their box. In some ways, the music scene is more democratic. My band, The False Dots, have had hundreds of radio plays. These are almost all on online stations, with smallish listenerships (compared to the likes of Radio 1, Capital, etc). The music gets a great reception, but again it is kept in its niche box.  For a music studio, such as ours, to be successful, we need a constant stream of artists breaking through. In actual fact, we've done alright, with studio customers such as Raye and Flo breaking through in recent years. What we are not seeing at all is any interest in guitar based indie/rock style bands. 

So what does this mean for a music business such as ours? The industry has always been subjects to the winds of public taste. When Oasis and Blur were slugging it out, we saw dozens of indie bands coming through. Now we see girls doing R&B as the flavour of choice. A studio cannot dictate tastes. We simply supply facilities. But....

We do also collect a lot of information as to what is happing in London's music scene. This means that not only can we adapt our services, it means we can also inform our customers. We can share this intelligence with them and it gives us a unique USP that the unmanned studios simply don't have. It is interesting to see that they spend a lot of money on social media, but it seems this is cobbled together by people who are social media consultants rather than people who actually talk to musicians.

An element of this has started to fascinate me. Last week, I had an interesting conversation in the pub with some mates about the rise of AI in business. More and more businesses are relying on AI for business intelligence. For some things, this is a very sensible thing, but AI can only work on the data available. When we chat with bands and they tell us about things happening at venues, this information simply never makes it online. In short, AI doesn't do gossip. I was talking to one customer, in a band, who is also an AI consultant. I asked him what he thinks is the biggest limitation of AI. His response was fascinating. He said "AI does not have the ability to get bored". Humans are at their most creative when we get bored and our minds start wandering. 

This was brought home to me chatting to another customer last Friday. They had booked a long session, but half way through came out for a chat and a cup of tea. He was saying that he was "having trouble motivating myself today". Sometimes all of effort in the world cannot spark inspiration. As we were chatting another customer came in, to buy some strings and plectrums. We all started chatting and next thing, the customer buying strings had been dragged in to "try something out", not emerging for a couple of hours and with a new collaboration started. By the time the artists emerged, they were both excited and energised. The customer buying strings joked as he left that he'd only come down for strings because he was bored. Boredom is a very powerful secret weapon.

Which brings us back to the five year plan for the studio. I had my fingers nearly burned to the bone by the pandemic. I learned that five year plans can go up in smoke. Is there any point even trying? In a world where everyone seems to think AI will be doing everything within ten years, will we even have musicians? Or will it simply be AI churning out music to order, whilst we all sit like zombies soaking it up, with all human musicians a thing of the past? The real question is in a digital world, is there still space for analogue music? This question has troubled me for a couple of years. If the answer is no, then I have no business and I should put my feet up and retire. But I go to a lot of gigs, watch a lot of people play music and a lot more have a great night doing it.

When it comes down to it, I have always believed in music, I always will. You have to believe in something. I believe in live music. Sometimes you have to make a choice. So our five year plan is to make sure our studio are the best studios for the customers that want to. This can no longer simply mean opening the door to a studio so they can rehearse and record. It means collaborating with other organisations that care about musicians (grassroots venues, online radio stations, influencers, etc) to get the message out there that real music will let you see something unique. When you watch a live show, it is a unique event. It will only happen once in the lifetime of the Universe. You are in a special moment. We cannot afford just to sit in our studios and wait for customers. We have to help them get channels to play, channels to be heard and the means to develop. I passionately believe that public service broadcasters such as the BBC must do much more to promote grassroots arts, but we cannot simply wait for them to be enlightened.

Which brings us to the question, is AI the future of music and is there really any hope for musicians. Am I just a deluded dinosaur in not seeing this. Well, actually, I see AI in a very different way to most people who don't really understand its strengths and weaknesses. AI is a tool and it is one that will, hopefully be useful for musicians. Some of the applications for it are actually mind boggling,  For example, AI was used to help mix and master the most recent version of Free as a bird by the Beatles. This allowed John Lennons vocals to be properly heard. AI simply made the creative genius of Lennon and McCartney be heard properly on the track.  I believe that truly interesting musicians will use AI as a tool to make great music. Not so good ones will use AI to churn out bland rubbish and wonder why no one is interested.  If it allows skint musiciansm with great talents to make better music when there is not the money to pay for a symphony orchestra to add strings etc, then musicians will use it and that is just a fact of life. If, however, we stop going to the Proms, then the problem is us, because that is not an experience you can get on your mobile phone.

As musicians, it is up to us to get the message out, that going to see live music and buying the tracks real musicians make, is a great way to make your life a whole lot better. In short, it is time to get off our backsides and work together to spread the message that the UK music scene is here to stay and if you don't get on board, you will miss out on some very best things in life. Expect to read a lot more here as we develop our plans with our partners. There is a whole wide world out there beyond our phones, ipads and laptops. You might want to start enjoying it!

Why not start by listening to this

and putting this date in your diary!