AI and the Future of Music: A Conversation with Drew Thurlow

“I have a friend who’s a library film composer and produces podcasts, and I was talking to him, I was giving him the kind of same thesis I talked about today. And he’s like, ‘yeah, I get it. But like, I’m the one who’s going to lose the job.’ Cause what he, this very specific, specified job he has [is] of composing kind of anonymous music for podcasts. And he’s successful, he wrote the theme of Serial, and he’s done a lot of big podcasts in New York Times and NPR and, uh, and he’s like, that’s probably the functional music which employed a lot of composers is probably not going to be needed as much.” – Drew Thurlow

 

This episode is the second half of my conversation with founder of Opening Ceremony Media and author of Machine Music: How AI is Transforming Music’s Next Act Drew Thurlow as we discuss the surprising musical trend Drew foresees as AI becomes more commonplace, the one lesson he always shares with music students when it comes to the future of AI, and the ripple effects that generated audio content and voice clones have already started to have across the music industry.

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(0:00:00) - Future of AI in Creative Aesthetics

We pick up the conversation as Drew offers his prediction of how AI music, over time, might become as retro and nostalgic as lofi music today. “I have this theory that with all these AI hallucinations that are happening,” he explains, “that’s going to become its own creative aesthetic, and you’re going to start to see the AI vocal models, you know, the early AI vocal models [return].” He shares his observations as a guest lecturer and why he’s optimistic about the next generation’s relationship with AI, and the lesson he always shares with students. “I’d encourage students to have curiosity be your superpower,” he says. “And community is also really, really important. It was really important for me when I was starting out twenty, twenty-five years ago. It’s even more important now, with so much more noise out there and so many more distractions and so much more music and people doing it.”

(0:04:43) - Trends in Music Tech Startups

Drew talks about how the industry is evolving as digital media becomes the norm, and the opportunities for AI to increase revenue. “Streaming growth is slowing down,” he tells us. “You know, we’re running out of subscribers in the West and North America, western Europe and North America, and so labels and rights holders and artists are kind of in the mood to count their pennies.” He notes some of the less obvious ways that AI is increasing revenue, such as black box royalty collections and anti-piracy safeguards, and the versatile uses of generated audio content. “Adaptive audio companies [are] using machine learning and generative AI for health,” he says, “also in the gaming environments, which is a big business, where personalized music can adapt to you and your environment. It kind of reads your environment. So those are...