✘ Dive into a world of virtual humans & other beings
✘ Dive into a world of virtual humans & other beings
And: A complete guide on royalties; Going viral sucks; Grimes on living forever; Diversity in electronic music?; Finding your community wedge
There’s a danger that we fall into a common trap of what I’ll call short-memory history. The boom in AI tools since late 2022 and early 2023 have meant that these have also hit the mainstream. You see ChatGPT-generated texts everywhere. Most of the images I now use myself in this newsletter are AI-generated. Coupled with this rise in popularity is a trend of forgetfulness. It often seems as if nothing happened prior to the launch of DALL·E 2 or ChatGPT, even if those models have grown out of previous iterations themselves. There’s two great sources that work against the hype and build on broader institutional knowledge.
First, let’s focus on music and the work of Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst. The former started sampling her voice years ago, and those experiments have now evolved into Holly+. They are both two of the most thoughtful people when it comes to AI, and its impact on music, and creativity more generally. Moreover, they also think and ideate about how to deal with the rights structures around the use of AI to complement and add to musical creativity. Check out this video from Freethink where they go into this long history from sampling to AI models.
Second, we’ve had punctuations - especially in the western world - of virtual humans and influencers. In countries like China, South Korea, and Japan, these are already more normalized. But, in places like Europe and North America these often still feel new. In the virtualhumans.org database, there’s a wealth of information about many of these virtual influencers and humans. They, in the words of the database’s founder Christopher Travers:
“represent the ongoing merger of humanity and the internet. Virtual influencers enhance and humanize the world’s relationship with digital experiences.”
I urge all of you to continue to consider this longer history and take the existing institutional knowledge around these subjects into account when you work with virtual humans, or even just talk about them with your friends and family.
LINKS
💵 Show me the money: A complete guide on royalties (Inês Ferreira)
“Overall, music royalties are a complex topic full of twists and turns, regional specificities, and exceptions. We hope this guide could be useful for artists, performers, and other music rightsholders.”
✘ The above is the concluding paragraph and it continues to be true. It will probably always be true that copyright is complex, too complex. As such, we can never have enough of these guides explaining the basics and this one has a specific angle towards UGC content.
😫 Going viral sucks (even more) now (Kate Lindsay)
“I am just one person, and Redman is just one person, but the more apps prioritize strangers over followers, the worse time we’ll all be having, and more and more people will find themselves less inclined to post on them. When successfully using an app means it becomes borderline traumatizing to use, it’s the app, not us, that is doing something wrong.”
✘ I won’t share the Billboard article about the depressed music industry execs complaining about not being able to break artists anymore so instead I’ll share this one about how going viral utterly sucks for the person behind the viral post. I dare you to scroll until the end of your feed now.
🪦 Grimes on Living Forever, Dying on Mars, and Giving Elon Musk Ideas for His Best (Worst) Tweets (Steven Levy)
“There’s some good stuff. Two in particular were very, very good. They’re so in line with what my new album might be like that it was sort of disturbing. It’s like, “Who am I, and what am I here for?” On the other hand, it’s like, “Oh, sick, I might get to live forever.” I’m into self-replication. I don’t know if you’ve read much about self-replicating AI, like robots or anything.”
Grimes, or c, or Claire
✘ It’s a cute interview with Grimes, who also sees more people becoming responsible again, which is an optimism I’d love to share. I reckon if we pull away from massive open networks it could feel that way.
🏳️🌈 Suspect Desires for Diversity in Electronic Music: Progress or a Tool to Hide White Ethnocentrism? (Jaymie Silk)
“Do I expect structural change in an individualistic world driven by the need for profitability as an indicator of relevance? Not really. Is that a reason for me or other artists to abandon their quest for the impossible and stop shining in a world where they are constantly told they don't belong? I don't think so. That brings us back to the reason we make music: for whom? There is still evidence that things can change, even if it's very slow and takes a lot of effort. There have been some developments in the last few years as well, like the focus on sexism and safe spaces, or real discussions about safer spaces for drug use, although there is still work to be done to make that a norm, both with the public and with those in these scenes.”
✘ This is a great companion read to last week’s link about the Museumification of Techno. Change is hard though, especially if you’re looked at as both the outsider and the change-driver. It really is time to work on systemic change when it comes to topics like diversity. It’s not just line-ups, it’s not just rosters, it’s opportunities - and that starts early.
🧀 How to Find your Community Wedge (David Spinks)
“In my experience, there are five wedges you can use to insert your community into an already busy market:
Size - Because when the other communities go big, you go small (or vice versa)
Benefits - Because the other communities can’t be good at everything
Flavor - Because ain’t nobody got your specific style and voice
Identity - Because every identity has infinite sub-identities
Format - Because people get tired of Yet Another Zoom Call (YAZC™)
Look at the communities that are out there and figure out which of these wedges you can use to create something novel and exciting.”
✘ As someone who tries to build communities and as a serial community hopper, this resonates. A really important thing to note, is to decide when your community is ‘succecssful’ or to set goals, or anti-goals, around what you want and don’t want to achieve.
MUSIC
There’s musicians that seem to disappear for a while and then come back really strong. The album Dagger Paths by Forest Swords is one of my favourites of the previous decade. I didn’t hear much from him since, but kept going back to that records. Turns out, he was composing and scoring a lot of music, but now he’s back with a single that feels like it’s been pulled from the mud in a deep, dark forest. It bristles its electronic leaves and finds extra power in a Neneh Cherry vocal. Enjoy