The Fight to Control Your Work is Just Beginning
For decades, artists have had to battle for control of their work. With the rise of artificial intelligence in music, that might become a losing battle.
Since 2019, Taylor Swift has been embroiled in a battle to control her music. The crux of the battle was due to the fact that when she signed her first recording contract at the age of 15, she owned the publishing rights to whatever she wrote, but her label Big Machine Records retained ownership of the master recordings. In other words, Swift owned the songs but the label owned her specific recordings of the songs.
Swift - now much more powerful than when she signed her first record deal - sought to purchase the recordings from the label. The deal never materialized and Big Machine sold the recordings to music executive Scooter Braun, whom Swift described as an “incessant, manipulative bully”. In an act of protest, Swift announced that she was going to re-record all of the albums that Braun acquired.
As of this newsletter, Swift has released three album re-recordings with a fourth on the way. She has also run a successful public relations campaign telling people that they should listen to those new recordings and not the old ones. Like many artists before her, Taylor Swift is trying to control her work. My concern is that in the age of artificial intelligence, maintaining artistic control will become harder and harder.
Artificial Intelligence & Artistic Control
A few weeks ago, I was watching clips of Ricky Nelson on YouTube. Along with Elvis Presley and Pat Boone, Nelson was one of the biggest stars of the 1950s. His career faltered during the 1960s, but many of his songs stand up well all these decades later. Anyway, while I was clicking around, I came across a version of Nelson’s somber dirge “Lonesome Town”.
If you’re familiar with “Lonesome Town”, you’ll notice that this recording is slightly different. Primarily, light rain plays in the background throughout the entire song. Secondly, whoever uploaded this video slowed it down and added some reverb. These edits are an example of a much larger trend that we’ve discussed periodically in this newsletter.
Because you can get cheap recording and editing software on any phone or computer, artists now have to deal with the fact that they might not have the final say on their own songs. That power may belong to a random kid using a laptop in their parents' basement to add more reverb to your song than any professional would advise.
Artists have noticed that manipulated versions of their songs are becoming popular. Because of that, some will put out their own “slowed + reverb” or “sped up” versions of their songs. I don’t think artists getting involved with this trend is that interesting, though. What’s interesting is that artists don’t have the final say on their work. If artificial intelligence comes to affect music in the way people are expecting, I think it will be nearly impossible for them to have true control. Here’s how.
A few months ago, a duet between Drake and The Weeknd called “Heart on My Sleeve” began growing in popularity online. The catch? Neither Drake nor The Weeknd was involved in the song.
The creator managed to simulate the voices of the two pop stars using artificial intelligence. It’s worth noting that there was still a ton of human intervention needed to create this song, but it suggests an odd future, a future where Drake could license his voice, sail off into the sunset, and let others make “his” songs for him, a future where The Weeknd could continue “making” music decades after his death, a future where artists are merely bots for anyone to create a song with.
There are certain scenarios where an artist might want to embrace this idea. In fact, the artist Grimes has explicitly told fans they could make songs with A.I. simulations of her voice as long as they split the royalties with her. But my concerns are twofold.
If an artist didn’t want something like this to happen to their voice or likeness, I think they would have a hard time preventing it. In fact, though Drake and The Weeknd’s label Universal Music Group issued takedown requests for “Heart on My Sleeve”, it is still readily available online.
If Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra and Tupac and Kurt Cobain can now release new music from beyond the grave, it will make it even harder for young artists to break through.
Art is most powerful when it challenges you, when it forces you to engage with an idea that doesn’t initially make sense. In a world where we can iterate on a song until it perfectly suits our tastes, where we can have our favorite singer perform any song without their consent, our art is dulled.
I say this as someone who has enjoyed manipulated songs that already exist. In fact, you could argue that those pieces have as much artistic legitimacy as the original pieces that they are built from. But as with last week, I am being an alarmist not because I am a luddite but because I want to make sure music continues to both unite and challenge us. I want to make sure that as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful that it enhances, not diminishes our music.
A New One
"Consistency" by Jason Tyler
2023 - Alternative Emo
“Consistency” is the debut solo single from Jason Tyler, the lead guitar player from the band Belmont. It’s by far the heaviest song that’s been featured in this newsletter. But if you’re not a fan of hard rock, don’t let that turn you off. If you look past the machine gun kick drum, you’ll find some gorgeous melodies hidden in this instrumental.
An Old One
"17 Days" by Prince
1983/2018 - Blues
Just a few moments ago, I fretted about how artificial intelligence could make it possible to release music from beyond the grave. This is really just a new twist on an old issue. The estates of dead artists have been releasing posthumous music for decades. Most of these releases aren’t very good. That’s not a shock. In most cases, if it was any good the artist would have released it during their lifetime. But the posthumous Prince album release Piano and a Microphone 1983 released in 2018 is an exception to that rule.
Recorded when he was 25, this album is really just Prince noodling on the piano for 35 minutes. And it is captivating. Not only do you get to hear how rich Prince’s compositions are when they are stripped down to their bones, but you also get to hear how his piano skills might have rivaled his guitar skills. And that’s really saying something. Few before or since have matched his skills on the six-string.
Want to know why I think you should stop listening to music? Check out my latest post for eCoustics.
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I hate to be annoying (really) but this has been the case for decades with artists and their work because they function within the music industry or publishing and they don’t have editorial control. They never did. This is nothing to do with A I and is giving credence to something that has all the hall marks of a moral panic.
I'm gonna say what I always say about the "dead artists coming back with AI" thing:
Once the novelty wears off (+/- 6 months; by 2023 standards), listeners will only hear the hands of the profiteers who pump out the ghoulish drivel those bits of "content" will be. They, after all, or their flat-rate contractors will be writing the compositions, and they will not stand up to the live artist's original works qualitatively at all.
Remember, music is *made*; manure is "produced". The profiteers will ruin AI as a viable music generator (except for limited use-cases) within a couple years; through either saturation of low-effort low-quality "product", or competitive sabotage of each other's data models. When that goes down, you can still go see Taylor Swift, or Molchat Doma, or Trombone Shorty, or come have a few beers with any of my bands. Those experiences cannot be stolen or duplicated by any wanna-be Turing or Yetnikoff, however hard they try.