✘ Enter the world of the MUSIC x writer collective

Tristra, Mark Redito, Sorrel Salb, Yotam Mann & Sarah Rothberg, Cherie Hu & Yung Spielburg, Stefana Fratila; Prarthana Sen & Vishruti Bindal, Max Tiel & Joost de Boo

Hi all, ever since Bas took a break - and then flickered back into newsletter-writing mode - I’ve had the idea to share the stage of MUSIC x with others. There’s so many great minds around music and tech. Perhaps not all of them want to write a weekly newsletter, but they sure have cool ideas in their brains - often working hard to make them reality. I’m stoked that quite a few of them got their quills out (okay, they all typed) and wrote some fantastic pieces. Since most of you are already going into a holiday-filled eating and drinking frenzy, I thought it would be nice to highlight all of them. Just in case you need an escape, a moment to settle your mind on something that has nothing to do with everything else around you. See it as a way to understand music and tech in 2023. Dig. Back. In.

〰️ What happens when music is no longer static? (Tristra)

First up was Tristra’s first piece of the year on the premise that listening isn’t the end product anymore.

“Music isn’t just flowing; it’s flowing into something bigger. We’re entering an era when one medium will no longer be firmly separate and distinct from another—and may seep determinedly into lived experience. This is the age of synesthesia, the age of evolving, but firm ties between the experiences of the senses, powerful new associations that will transform how we imagine the world—in beautiful ways. Like psychedelic medicines impact neuroplasticity, these experiences could unlock new connections in our minds, and the power of immersive tech could help them find a home in our bodies.”

🌿 An expansion of possibilities: generative AI from a musician’s perspective (Mark Redito)

This is the call to action I feel a lot of artists should heed. Look at new technologies and figure out how you can harness them to evolve creativity.

“As an eternal optimist, I propose this thesis: Generative AI is revolutionizing the music industry by expanding creative possibilities, democratizing the art, and making advanced tools more accessible to musicians. Rather than predicting the future, I seek to explore the vast array of possibilities that lie on the horizon.”

🍴 AI Will Eat Itself... And That's Okay (Tristra)

One of my favourite pastimes this year was thinking about model collapse - the idea that large data models start learning on their own output and then begin to fail. Tristra came back on board for a wonderful take on the dangers people see around AI - and actual solutions for tackling those.

“Dataset cooperatives: There’s no reason artists, especially self-releasing artists, can’t create cooperative datasets of their work, including stems, finished tracks, live recordings, outtakes, you name it. The dataset would likely need as few as 20,000 tracks, or perhaps far fewer.”

🛝 Next tech era: play and deeply human experiences (Sorrel Salb)

Through a collaboration with MUTEK Festival and Forum the next four guest contributors came through with some stunning insights. The first was this meditation on play by Sorrel, based on active examples she engaged with. It reminded me that technologies emanating from outside of music - like gaming - will help transform so many aspects of music: creation, storytelling, performance, celebrity.

“I predict that gaming aesthetics will permeate different cultural spheres even more strongly in the future. We’ve seen growing trends of people acting like NPCs (non-playable characters) on our feeds with the likes of Pinkydoll really bringing the content style to mainstream awareness. MSCHF’s red boots and other aesthetics reminiscent of gaming on recent catwalks show that similar ideas are big and growing in fashion right now too.”

🎧 Listening to A.I. Music (Yotam Mann & Sarah Rothberg)

So much of the narrative around AI this year has been about the creator and the rightsholders. Yotam and Sarah helped bring the listener into the equation - a vital element in any discussion around music.

“Imagine a song you love – one that's really important to you. Imagine why you listened to that song, what it means to you. It's probably more than just the sounds in the song – but the associations you have with it: maybe you love the artist, where and when you first heard it, what the sounds remind you of. Maybe it's a song that helps you process a feeling, or that shapes your identity.”

🎨 Three design tenets for music's "Midjourney moment" (Cherie Hu & Yung Spielberg)

So much research and knowledge coalesced in this piece focusing on what a large music model will need. While reading this again now, I’m struck though by the importance of mistakes and serendipity and how that will play into the creative mode around all of these models.

“Based on our research and on-the-ground conversations at Water & Music, we’ve identified three clear tenets driving momentum and excitement for today’s music AI builders and creators — each of which has direct implications for music AI’s future tech stacks, user experiences, and business models.

In short: Music’s “Midjourney moment” will be OPEN, EXPRESSIVE, and PARTICIPATORY.”

🌌 Radical agency and science-fictive exploration in sound (Stefana Fratila)

The last in the MUSIC x MUTEK series, I absolutely loved this one. There’s always two ways of looking: 1. this is defined by its limitations; 2. this is defined by its possibilities. What Stefana does, and encourages through her work, is to take that second approach and I definitely in turn encourage all of you to listen to her work.

“A sound artist’s conceptual fantasy carries similar meaning to an atmospheric scientist’s hypothesis: both work spatially, trying to understand speculative frequencies, tracking in registers that might not be perceivable at first– manifesting different imaginary spaces through descriptive circumstances and senses. But human senses are affected by the circumstances of the body. Notably, acoustic perception plays a major role in the way we relate to space; in matters of being, belonging and orienting oneself. Through my conversations with NASA scientists, I began to imagine the planets as sonic chambers I could exist within.”

🎯 Neon's overview of the Indian Music ecosystem (Prarthana Sen & Vishruti Bindal)

I often refer to India in conversations about how many different music industries exist, and that we don’t have a singular music industry. This overview by the incredible Neon Culture founders Prarthana and Vishruti will hopefully mean I will be joined by many others. Music is music, and copyright is copyright, but definitely also very different in India then the loud and ever-present West.

“Where it gets really interesting for us is how ancient culture and music traditions interact with modern media - artists are unearthing ancient folk songs, producing them in formats that are very current and perhaps bringing back compositions and songs that could have died out otherwise. An important layer in this is the language of expression, as a lot of indie artists are comfortable writing in their regional language (or mother-tongue as we refer to it) and English as well, and Indian audiences outside of this country are receptive listeners and consumers of this music too.”

📎 Open Culture Tech: the latest technology for every artist (Max Tiel & Joost de Boo)

Doing things with emerging tech is often expensive. We can’t all be Ariana Grande or Lil Nas X and get budgets to do something cool in Fortnite or Roblox. What do we need to get this tech into the hands of independent artists, emerging artists, etc. That’s what Max and Joost are figuring out and they allow everyone to look into their lab.

“Each artist introduced a unique research question that could be answered by applying new technology. Questions such as: “I’ve put my heart and soul into creating an EP that’s 15 minutes long. I want to perform this new work live on stage, but I need at least 30 minutes of music to create a full show.” Or questions like: “how can I enhance the interaction between me and the audience, when I play guitar on stage?”.”

🚨 Straight to You: Will 2024 be the year of the direct mindset? (Tristra)

In true MUSIC x weltanschauung, Tristra third piece this year went into what you can and need to do as an artist to make it. Not just right now, but also in 2024. It’s all about going direct, hitting those DMs, and striking up conversations. Sure, that will never scale to Taylor Swift heights, but only very few of us really need that.

“[The] fragsolidation of the creative realms. I’ve long dreamed of coining a word even uglier than “glocalization” (one of this year’s music biz buzzwords for sure) and I think I’ve succeeded. There is a point to the ridiculous coinage, beyond sheer awfulness, however. As tech democratizes creation and access to the market, the market increases dramatically in supply and fragmentation, what ultimately results is consolidation, which puts a damper on that very democratization spreading to other aspects of media production/consumption. Voila, fragsolidation.”