Apple buys UK AI Music

[ElmerJFudd]

"a startup founded to build systems for generating music using artificial intelligence, and adapting existing tracks into new forms."

 

https://musically.com/2022/02/08/apple-buys-startup-ai-music-so-what-might-its-plans-be/

 

What are Apple's intentions, to include in a Logic update?

In Final Cut Pro for generating royalty free music?

To incorporate in Apple Music somehow?  Generating remixes?   Or taking your playlists and generating alternate styles, versions of your favorite songs?

 

[Anderton]

8 hours ago, ElmerJFudd said:

What are Apple's intentions...?

 

To do what they always do: take something that already exists, Applefy it, dominate the market. and make a lot of money

 

But as to what form that will take in this instance, it's hard to say. There are plenty of potential AI applications at the content creation end of things, like the kind of stuff I've talked about in keynote addresses and seminars and such. That would all be "behind the curtain," and I would see its main goal as convincing musicians/filmmakers/etc. to sign up with the Apple ecosystem. Who wouldn't want tools that would cut the time required to do boring tasks, like noise reduction, or choosing comps that fit certain criteria? The Studio computer is already an overture to the content creation people, and it's the only thing Apple has done in years that makes me want a new Mac.

 

Although some might argue with this, after initially dominating in content creation, Microsoft sort of stumbled into getting a bigger chunk of the action by making more powerful, and easily upgradeable, machines at a lower price. I'm not sure if it was due to a conscious push to embrace the content creation community, or a happy accident. Apple's latest moves seem both targeted and deliberate toward reclaiming that market. 

 

However, at the consumer end of things, the crystal ball gets murkier. It may be more like the way Chuck Surack used to hire people at Sweetwater - he'd hire people if he thought they were smart and had skills, and then figure out what their optimum role would be in the company. Apple might be thinking "we know this is good for something, and we want to be the ones to figure out what that is."

 

My biggest fear is that the music we hear in supermarkets will all be AI-generated, and designed by psychologists to get us to buy targeted items

[ElmerJFudd]

“What is creativity?  Is it an expression of the soul or a set of rules we don’t yet understand?” 

[spokenward]

It looks like the thing closest to commercializing is tech for custom production music beds for ads, podcasts, etc..

 

They spent some time in the Abbey Road Incubator as well. https://www.abbeyroad.com/the-incubator

 

 

Some linkage:

 

[RABid]

7 hours ago, Anderton said:

Although some might argue with this, after initially dominating in content creation, Microsoft sort of stumbled into getting bigger chunk of the action by making more powerful, and easily upgradeable, machines at a lower price. I'm not sure if it was due to a conscious push to embrace the content creation community, or a happy accident.

As an ex-CIO who was responsible for payroll, accounts payable, medical billing and medical records I can tell you that it will be a long time before Apple can hope to push into those areas. Apple has a tendency to move fast and leave anyone behind that does not want to change with them. Microsoft works hard to insure compatibility with every upgrade. CIO's are not going to trust their payroll, AP, medical records, billing, etc... to a company with Apple's history. The business place will continue to be dominated by Microsoft until Apple changes and has long proven those changes.

[RABid]

On the music part of this discussion, I can see Apple releasing various iPhone and iPad apps making use of AI generated music. I would buy an app that combines visuals with music generation, easily created with a touch interface. Something I can start on the phone, finish on the iPad, and then transfer to the Apple TV.

[Anderton]

6 hours ago, spokenward said:

It looks like the thing closest to commercializing is tech for custom production music beds for ads, podcasts, etc..

 

It's the perfect fit for those who think that people "consume" music, as opposed to "listen" to it.

[Anderton]

39 minutes ago, RABid said:

As an ex-CIO who was responsible for payroll, accounts payable, medical billing and medical records I can tell you that it will be a long time before Apple can hope to push into those areas.

 

No question that Microsoft will continue to dominate for business, but if Apple really decides to put a concerted effort to audio, video, and graphics arts content creators, as of now they wouldn't really meet any opposition. Consider that Core Audio has been happening on the Mac for over a decade, and Windows still works best with ASIO, which they didn't even develop. Windows is on the path to native drivers that can meet or possibly even exceed what the Mac offers, but it's not there yet. And, I believe the Mac still handles colors more accurately.

 

Then again, my Windows machine totally kicks ass, and I could afford it

[spokenward]

45 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

It's the perfect fit for those who think that people "consume" music, as opposed to "listen" to it.

Ha! I like to think that they consume "content" - music is just one of the colors or part of the furniture...

 

As I thought about it during the day, I think that we all remember the Sonic Foundry / Sony idea of Loops as a harmless element of production bed utility. I don't know if this is that much different in spirit. It could be thought of as an update for music supervision as a service for low value targets.

[RABid]

One big issue will be...

 

A: A way to make sure the AI didn't generate something that is already on record and copywrited.

B: What happens if someone copywrites something the AI came up with.

[spokenward]

I was washing dishes and I remembered this bit of prior art from 2004. "Soundtrack - Be a professional musician. Or just sound like one."

 

 

[KuruPrionz]

3 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

And, I believe the Mac still handles colors more accurately.

 

This may be bigger than it sounds. Men are far more likely to exhibit some form of colorblindness than women are. 

https://enchroma.com/blogs/beyond-color/can-women-be-color-blind

 

Women are also far more likely to have "super color vision" - the 4th cone. This enables them to see many more colors than those of us who have only 3 color cone systems which may have defects to a varying degree.

https://www.healthline.com/health/tetrachromacy

 

Long ago and far away I worked in film based photography labs as a printer. I transitioned into working as a graphic designer and product printer. 

I do have some color-blindness and I learned 2 things quickly.

1. If you want to know what color something is, ask a woman. 

2. If you are not severely colorblind you can learn which colors you can see with reasonable accuracy and if your luck holds out, there will be some of those colors in the image or graphic that you are designing/printing so you can get good color. I used to get good skin tones on portraits by focusing on the color of the teeth. It worked pretty well for me. 

 

Better color management on the computer screen is as complex in it's own way as getting a good sound for your studio monitors in your bedroom. It can be done, there are hoops to jump through. 

Depending on the type of work they do on the computer, women would be more likely to prefer using an Apple computer system. That could be a fairly significant percentage of Mac users, women who prefer more accurate color. The facts would indicate that but I don't know it to be true, just tossing it out there. 

 

As far as this whole "AI for Music" thing, if nobody knows the difference then who cares?

One aspect of music that will always matter is the performer. Do we want to watch an AI projection - essentially a computer generated cartoon (granted it could be "3D", doing what it has been programmed to do, or do we want to see an actual human playing music?

 

I suspect the latter and it will be a long time if ever for AI to replace musicians. That said, AI that shows some musical "talent" may very well be good for all sorts of things - including getting a mix together on a studio system. So maybe Apple does want it for Logic Pro. 

 

I guess we'll find out eventually. 

 

 

[Anderton]

12 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

As far as this whole "AI for Music" thing, if nobody knows the difference then who cares?

 

Well, if it produces a glut of music that's not particularly compelling, then we have a "Gresham's Law" situation that drags down the overall level of content. 

[KuruPrionz]

42 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

Well, if it produces a glut of music that's not particularly compelling, then we have a "Gresham's Law" situation that drags down the overall level of content. 

True, and it is good to be optimistic in the face of an onslaught of mediocrity. Perhaps a bit futile but still good! 

I've sought out the good stuff for decades, one must wade through a never ending ocean of audio sewage to get there. 
I treasure friends who have great taste in music. My brother took me from a diet of Cream and Canned Heat into the realms of field recordings of international musics, and classic jazz by artists like Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane. That was when I was 14-16 years old, or 50 years ago. 

 

I will concede that some of the stuff I listened to happened to be brilliant as well, Cream certainly had some great tunes. So did Bob Dylan, the Beatles, The Band (The Band by The Band remains a favorite record of mine). Still, it was a narrow path and my brother broadened it. Certainly some of his choices were unlistenable as well, that's how it goes. Mom had good taste up to a point as well, she took her 4 kids to hear Artur Rubenstein, Carlos Montoya, Joan Baez and much later - Willie Nelson with his Family Band (Grady Martin on guitar!!!!). She was a huge Roger Miller fan, those songs hold up pretty well in my mind. I consider myself lucky in that regard. 

 

There has always been a glut of mediocre music and there always will be. People buy it one way or the other and it won't go away. 

The best we can do is seek better and ignore the barrage. Or go to karaoke and slaughter some crappy songs with abominable vocals and stage manners, that's fun too!!!!

[ElmerJFudd]

If a wave of AI created music becomes popular, commercialized, used in corporate settings, it’s inevitable that the next generation of human youths will find it severely uncool.  
 

I predict due to the cyclical nature of trends in fashion, music, art, etc. there will be a shift at some point to human developed music - acoustic and live most likely.  Since that  would be the furthest thing from music entirely generated by machine.  
 

Eventually we’re bound to see a generation of kids that entirely eschew computers, digital instruments, synths, DAWs, plugins, quantization, autotune, AI, etc. 

[Anderton]

In a way, the kind of live jamming with boxes that Rabid is into is already partway there. But as we all know, the next big thing will be AI-generated Finnish death-metal whaling songs. You heard it here first.

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, Anderton said:

In a way, the kind of live jamming with boxes that Rabid is into is already partway there. But as we all know, the next big thing will be AI-generated Finnish death-metal whaling songs. You heard it here first.

Whaling or wailing? Whales do wail, I've heard them. 😃