In the digital era, technology has become a major part of the music industry. Endel, a Berlin-based audio-technology company working to revolutionize the music industry, recently collaborated with musician James Blake on his latest album, Wind Down. Using Endel’s technology, Blake created a personalized “soundscape” with the help of individual “stem” tracks such as drumbeats and melodies. This type of music, known as “functional music,” is becoming increasingly popular, earning 10 billion streams a month, double what it was last year. With more than two million monthly listeners, Endel’s technology has garnered much attention and has even been featured on a playlist partnership with Amazon.
This kind of machine-generated music is becoming increasingly commonplace, causing record labels to worry about the potential impact of ChatGPT or similar platforms. Although AI-assisted music and tools are not yet able to generate complete songs, they can already create song snippets in different genres and imitate the styles of individual lyricists and vocalists. These tools and capabilities led Universal Music Group to ask streaming platforms to crack down on AI services scraping artists’ back catalogs in an effort to protect their streaming model.
However, iconic pop stars are likely the least threatened by this disruption, as their music is continuously sought after. Universal Music Group is even working with Deezer SA to create a more “artist-centric” payment model for the music streaming industry, which is expected to increase the popularity of music by top artists.
For those who are vulnerable to the disruption of AI-assisted music, there needs to be more regulation. Music company Believe SA, who sees AI as a tool to help emerging artists, is worried about the lack of equality and diversity that could arise from music curation algorithms in the global music market. It is important, then, not only to stop AI disruption but also to find fairer ways to distribute streaming profits, if we are to keep new human artists emerging.
Endel is the audio-technology company working to revolutionize the music industry which recently collaborated with musician James Blake on his album Wind Down. Endel works with music streaming platforms to create personalized soundscapes for different audiences and uses AI-powered technology to adjust the music according to externalities such as time of day or temperature. Oleg Stavitsky, the co-founder of Endel, conceptualized the idea for Endel after taking inspiration from Brian Eno’s generative music. Endel is currently expanding its services to allow music labels to tap into the back catalogue of popular artists, with an aim to reinforce the success of existing artists.
