Music and The Metaverse
Welcome to vol.2.
I believe remembering to send a newsletter two weeks in a row now puts me in the top 5% of all newsletters on substack, probably.
I’m Nick and I’ve spent the last 15 years working in different parts of the music industry such as management, sync, live, instore and labels etc. This is an attempt to put a bit more of a strategic voice into our weird niche.
The big themes this week seem to be mostly around music and tech. Unsurprisingly a lack of willingness to adapt, as well as useless innovations are the main themes.
Soundtracking Your Journey - Bentley
AI replacing humans is an all too common fear that has spilled over from sci-fi to industry, mostly pushed by Mckinsey et al to sell million-dollar consulting contracts. I’ve been hearing about the impending AI musician in serious conversations for at least five years but it’s companies like Musiio that seem to be gaining the most traction, and with process improvement, rather than audio creation.
Perhaps if there is an area worth following closely it is the slow burn of companies, including AI Music and Loudly, that are looking to replace human-created catalogues and composition, specifically for brands, with AI.
How much of this is smoke and mirrors and how much is truly machine learning generated original music is yet to be seen but production music is an area that could be ripe for disruption. There are many complex questions still to answer including what happens to the copyright of the tracks you train your algorithm on?
The less exciting AI music news this week was Lifescore partnering with Bentley to make their soundtracks adapt to your journey to “enhance the emotional experience”. At this point, it feels a bit like blockchain, where people are so desperate for use cases that they create something that no one wants or cares about. If I ever manage to sit in a Bentley I’ll let you know.
https://businesscloud.co.uk/adaptive-music-startup-lifescore-partners-with-bentley/
Music & The Metaverse (s)
The title of this segment is an underhand dig at those who seem to really want to get involved in this exciting new space but have no clue about what it is or what it means. I won’t bore you with the details (Matthew Ball can do that here) but safe to say there can only be one metaverse and it's not Fortnite or Roblox.
Fortnite or Roblox not being the Metaverse doesn’t make them any less interesting as new opportunities to explore and test possible new ways for fans and brands to engage with music.
With the announcement of a venue inside the game, 02 and Fortnite can work on the in-game experience by building on what they’ve learned already and improving it with every show, rather than having to go bespoke for every artist or brand that wants to engage with them. The exclusive, synchronous experience that these music events provide seems to be a great first step for brands to collaborate on.
After all that positivity of course I have to bring it back to the fact that the music industry has to really work hard to enable this incredible new opportunity. It didn’t invent streaming from piracy, it got dragged kicking and screaming into it. This time around there is an opportunity not just to insist they are paid fairly, which is, of course, important, but also to really unlock this potential that could grow the digital revenues and fandom to new heights.
https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/o2-opens-its-doors-fortnite-live-gig/1720023
https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/its-time-brands-embrace-metaverse/1720171
Copyright Infringement Alibi
The last bit of news to mention is not in the context of the horrendous act which took place (I’m sure there are people that can cover that in a much more thorough and insightful way) but more the ridiculousness that music rights can lead to. A policeman attempting to get a video blocked by YouTube by playing unlicensed music is perhaps the most unusual use of copyright infringement I’ve heard of.
There is an old Marc Andresson quote about the internet being built on an advertising business model because the commerce technology didn’t exist, which is slowly being fixed, but that seems like a laughably long way off for the music industry.
https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/police-taylor-swift-copyright-youtube-blm-1235010756/