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Warner Music Signs Record Deal With an Algorithm (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Last week, a press release went out to tech and music reporters claiming that little-known startup Endel had become the "first-ever algorithm to sign [a] major label deal" with Warner Music. The news was covered widely, with commentators tossing around phrases like "the end is nigh" while hand-wringing over the idea of coders coming for musicians' label contracts. But the press release wasn't exactly right, and questions about the future of music are even bigger than anyone thought. Endel is an app that generates reactive, personalized "soundscapes" to promote things like focus or relaxation. It takes in data like your location, time, and the weather to create these soundscapes, and the result is not quite "musical" in the traditional sense. It's ambient, layering in things like washed-out white noise and long string notes. It's the type of stuff that's exploded on streaming platforms in recent years under newly invented genre names like "sleep."
Although Endel signed a deal with Warner, the deal is crucially not for "an algorithm," and Warner is not in control of Endel's product. The label approached Endel with a distribution deal and Endel used its algorithm to create 600 short tracks on 20 albums that were then put on streaming services, returning a 50 / 50 royalty split to Endel. Unlike a typical major label record deal, Endel didn't get any advance money paid upfront, and it retained ownership of the master recordings. Even if Endel had signed over the masters, the company could easily just make more: Dmitry Evgrafov, Endel's composer and head of sound design, says all 600 tracks were made "with a click of a button." There was minimal human involvement outside of chopping up the audio and mastering it for streaming. Endel even hired a third-party company to write the track titles. Five Endel albums have already been released, and 15 more are coming this year — all of which will be generated by code. In the future, Endel will be able to make infinite ambient tracks.
Although Endel signed a deal with Warner, the deal is crucially not for "an algorithm," and Warner is not in control of Endel's product. The label approached Endel with a distribution deal and Endel used its algorithm to create 600 short tracks on 20 albums that were then put on streaming services, returning a 50 / 50 royalty split to Endel. Unlike a typical major label record deal, Endel didn't get any advance money paid upfront, and it retained ownership of the master recordings. Even if Endel had signed over the masters, the company could easily just make more: Dmitry Evgrafov, Endel's composer and head of sound design, says all 600 tracks were made "with a click of a button." There was minimal human involvement outside of chopping up the audio and mastering it for streaming. Endel even hired a third-party company to write the track titles. Five Endel albums have already been released, and 15 more are coming this year — all of which will be generated by code. In the future, Endel will be able to make infinite ambient tracks.
https://sp.wmg.jp/mikusymphony...
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Finally I can be a rockstar!
On a more serious note, only simple and repetitive music can be replaced by algorithms within any reasonable timeframe. In programming terms, if (map {/Oh baby baby/} @song > 50), chances are you can automate it, because it didn't take any brainpower to generate in the first place. Good luck getting an algorithm to create Mozart's Reqiuem or even Paggliaci. High quality music will remain purely in the domain of human ingenuity for the foreseeable future.
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My Roomba will appreciate it, thank you.
Every track sounds identical. White noise background and long synthesizer cords. Sounds better than the Bladerunner 2049 soundtrack though!
why are there not more mathematicians famous musicians?
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
If two algorithms come up with similar tracks can one sue the other for similarities? If math is the influence can an algorithm claim rights to sound and other distinct elements?
On the original site, a comment points out how this is probably a bad deal for the creator/owner of the music, considering there's no advance paid out. With that royalty split arrangement, he stands to make a lot less profit than he would have by just cranking out music "with the click of a button" ease and putting it on streaming sites himself. Why get signed to a label at all?
This is more a publicity stunt than a lucrative deal for the artist OR for Warner Music, really (since this stuff isn't getting downloaded more than in the "hundreds of times" to maybe 1000 or so downloads, tops).
There have been plenty of computer programs that try to write their own music, with varying levels of success. But in most cases, they at least provide a "skeleton" framework of a song idea that someone can massage into a listenable, original tune. I think we're still far from the point where AI can make a song that the masses find "catchy" enough so it makes big sales numbers and becomes a true hit.
Well, that was about as successful as his 2020 campaign will be.
This seems like the reimagining of Echoes from the 80s-90s
I bet it sounds like it too, except maybe for the Enya tracks back then. And they did turn me on to space music, electronica, and trance. Pretty sure my MiniDisc player was loafing through these tracks...
Oh, yeah, that's where I've heard this before. Trance.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Considering that all music kinda sounds the same by now anyway, why not let mainstream music be created by algorithm and let musicians concentrate on making music?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Last week, a press release went out to tech and music reporters claiming that little-known startup Endel had become the "first-ever algorithm to sign [a] major label deal" with Warner Music.
Captain Pedantic here. I know what they meant but an algorithm cannot sign a deal of any sort. Only people can sign deals. The owner of the algorithm can sign a deal but the algorithm cannot legally, physically, or logically sign any contract except under human supervision. Warner signed a deal with the developers/owners of said algorithm, not the algorithm itself.
+1 funny
1. Generates 100,000,000 tracks of "music"
2. Put them inside some music repository that nobody f*cking going to listen
3. Use algorithm and find EVERY other new song/music that contains part of the tempo that turn popular
4. Sued the artist for profit.
Heaven forbid you read the thing before you post it. "Warner Music Signs Record Deal With an Algorithm" --> "the deal is crucially not for "an algorithm,"
I think signing a record deal with an algorithm is actually a good idea, and potentially the future.
Imagine if you will, that someday you could purchase access to competing algorithms that generate music. Such a thing could be downloaded locally, or streamed from the cloud, and you could tailor what music it made for you - like asking it to generate a song like something Zero7 would make, or to generate an ambient ever changing stream of music, that tried to keep your heart rate in a certain range and would adjust the beat dynamically to try and affect your mood.
So signing for access to an algorithm seems like a good idea and something that will become more common over time... eventually all things become code.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
LOL, no. Don Corleone 2020; if we're going to have a criminal as POTUS, let's at least have an intelligent criminal, not a fucktard with Tourette's like we've been subjected to lately.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Law without mercy is not justice.
The gym I go to uses satellite radio for the music they play over the house speakers. Half the time it's a classic rock channel, which of course is fine. The rest of the time it's some 'pop' channel that plays what could loosely be defined as 'dance music'. Ever hear this shit that uses a shitty gimmick that sounds like a record skipping, but that is also being spun faster and faster? Makes me want to throw things, this cheap-ass music-substitute has no redeeming qualities whatsoever and overall induces a mental form of vomiting in me if you know what I mean; makes me wish I'd bring earplugs to the gym.
That's about what I'd expect from 'music' (term being used as loosely as possible in this context) generated by an 'algorithm' or (even worse) the half-assed, inappropriately termed 'AI' they keep trotting out these days: competely lacking in any creativity (because computers are not capable of true creativity, 'randomness' is not 'creative'), artistry, emotional content, or any other redeeming quality that comprises actual music worth listening to; no better than the 'dance music' I described above, and in fact probably worse.
Is this what our civilization is coming to? 'Art' and 'music' (LOL) being generated by some shitty computer program, all in the name of saving money and making more profit? If so perhaps we don't deserve to survive as a species after all. Color me disgusted.
" It takes in data like your location, time, and the weather to create these soundscapes, and the result is not quite "musical" in the traditional sense"
Douglas Adams has prior art circa 1987:
https://dirkgently.fandom.com/wiki/Richard_MacDuff_(Adams)
After leaving Cambridge, he was poor for three years. During that time he had a number of different jobs, one of which was a road sweeper; at night on his own time, he worked on his computer.[1]
Richard then became a programmer at Gordon Way's WayForward Technologies. Gordon assigned him to write an accounting program for the Apple Macintosh. This became Anthem, which on top of its accouning functions could turn the spreadsheet numbers into music pieces.[1]
He wrote an article titled "Music and Fractal Landscapes", which was published in Fathom.[1]
âoeEndel even hired a third-party company to write the track titlesâ
What about album covers, Something like this?
https://www.genolve.com/design/socialmedia/albumcover
Anything programmatically generated was supposed to be uncopyrightable, except if it could be shown that the majority of the work was by human creativity/labor, not the result of the algorithm itself. In this Brave New World however, anything can be copyrighted or patented, as long as it is by a corporation or wealthy individual and not by a pleb.
Maybe it is time to generate an open source algorithmic generator with values a human has to input, then crowdsource the 'clearcutting of the intellectual commons' by brute forcing every currently non-copyrighted song variation so the 'professionals' can't use them commercially (cc by nc)
It is the only way to starve out these creativity trolls.
I'm a little surprised its taken this long before this has happened. Math is ideal for computer computations. Music is math. Relationships between notes and chords is all math. Tempo is math. Meter is math. Change up the tempo and instruments and you go from trance to rock.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
That is Not what this says. Millennials, just go away. No one is taking you seriously, even your peers. SlashDot editors: WTF has happened to this site?