AI to Play More Roles in Music Industry; Startups advised to create a One-Stop Platform for Copyrights Collection

“Pa Ted” Yuthana Bun-om, a veteran of the music industry with over three decades of experience, recently shared his vision about “The Future of Music’ at the mini stage of the Creative Talk Conference 2019, that the music trends within this year is likely to see the artificial intelligence (AI) coming up to compose the entire melody of a song. Such the capability of AI has been seen for a while but it was only partially.

Furthermore, the coming up of digital media plus a variety of media channels will help singers and musicians become famous much faster and easier as they can choose the media that can directly reach their audiences. This is different from the past with required huge budget to promote a song. However, last year, there were more and more singers who released 1-minute songs and promote through Instagram.

Music style normally changes according to the people’ lifestyle in each era. The changes are driven by two main factors, “place” and “media”. For example, classical music was caused by the music played in the church. At that time, an 8-minute song played in the church would have echo sound, so it paved the way for organ instrument to become popular as it could make the delightful melodic sound. Meanwhile, jazz music like Louis Armstrong took place in pubs as musicians had to play musical instruments that are “loud” enough to compete with the atmosphere in the pub.  Nowadays, music is rather played at the sports stadium, therefore, a song must have a hook that is easy to remember so that a lot of people can sing together in the stadium

When it came to the age of the media that used the record, music was quite long as there was enough space to record. In the era of CDs, music is not very long as the music would be promoted via radio. If the song was too long, audiences would turn to other channels instead. During the era when “ringtone” and “calling melody” services became popular, it also changed the way music was created. The creation of the song with lyrics, composers must spare about half a minute for making ringtones.

Today, it is the era of streaming. Music thus comes in various forms; short and long songs, albums, playlists and other types as to promote to the audiences. It can be promoted via YouTube, JOOX, Spotify and many other websites that collect live music from players.

Yuthana believes that this year will likely to see the rising trend of concerts with the higher ticket prices. So does the return of “collection of old memories” that will make the record and tape in the old era come back again

The music industry veteran  also viewed that the startup industry should develop innovations that will solve the long-lasting painpoint of the industry that will allow copyright owners to collect royalty fees more easily, Meanwhile, restaurants, entertainment venues, or commercial copyright users can also check who are the copyright owners of music, so that they can make payment more easily. In foreign countries, there is only one agency that collects the copyright works, allowing the copyright owner to collect royalty fee and obtain income fully.

Marketing of music is becoming more challenging nowadays. Although there are many more media channels for singers and musicians, but “choosing” the right communication channels and do the marketing is not quite easy as there are too many channels. Meanwhile, there is also a huge age gap in the music industry as well. The older generation producers should try to keep pace with the modern technologies and adjust their mindset in working with new generations too.