AI-Powered Artistry
And: NFTs are collectibles, Internet making old bands famous, touring after Brexit
Most of you will have come across the news that Virtual, AI-based rapper FN Meka got ‘signed’ by Capitol Records. We actually mentioned the rise of Avatar-powered artists in a previous newsletter:
The idea of Avatars-based groups or artists is nothing new, of course, we all remember Gorillaz, for instance: what changed is their use in the metaverse.
Artists can connect to their fanbases in a unique way, empowering their virtual brand and providing an alternate source of revenue to real-life activities. This is true both in the case of made-up avatars and a digital version of an actual human.
Low-cost virtual touring, making it possible to sell tickets for shows in the metaverse, reaching a much wider fanbase than an even a world tour ever could. (something like this, but also something like this).
FN Meka is somewhat different though, by being created using thousands of datapoints collected from social media and present trends. Music Business Worldwide explains:
“Technically speaking FN Meka is voiced by a human. But everything else about him – from his lyrics to the chords and tempo underpinning his music – is based on AI.”
And adds:
In an interview with MBW last year, Martini told us that the company “developed proprietary AI technology that analyzes certain popular songs of a specified genre and generates recommendations for the various elements of song construction: lyrical content, chords, melody, tempo, sounds, etc. We then combine these elements to create the song”.
He added: “As of now, a human voice performs the vocals, but we are working towards the ability to have a computer come up with and perform its own words – and even collaborate with other computers as ‘co-writers’.”
Ultimately, there are still humans involved in the project, and the project still has to create an audience for itself, as it is the case for all human/organic creatives (we really need to make this distinction eh?).
FN Meka worked because first, the music it’s actually fairly good, people like it, and second, because there was good marketing behind it.
What do you all think? I am eager to know, please leave a comment below, I’ll share them with the community in next week’s newsletter!
The Truth On NFTs
If - like me - you have struggled with understanding where exactly NFTs take their value from, and why we should buy what is essentially a glorified receipt, you’ll benefit from reading The Milk Road, a newsletter focused on cryptocurrencies, Web 3.0 and everything in between. I caught an interesting topic last week, which I’ll share with you all:
Today, a lot of NFTs trade like random casino tokens. People just buy an NFT and pray it goes up.
They aren’t in it for the art or utility. They are in it for NGU (‘number goes up’). In fact, 99% of the time someone says they bought an NFT because they “love the community” just remember that their “community” is a group of people all praying their picture of llamas becomes the next Bored Apes.
BUT - I side with the counterargument.
Today - NFTs are digital collectibles. If you think NFTs are dumb, you probably wouldn’t buy a Rolex for $80,000 when the metals it’s made of are only ~$500. You wouldn’t pay millions of dollars for a picture of LeBron James on a piece of cardboard … but people do.
People collect cards, watches, art, and much much more. Collectibles are a $300B+ market.
‘We didn’t even know they were there’: the little-known bands finding fans years later - The Guardian
Apparently, someone got famous on the back of a 20-year-old demo casually discovered on the internet.
“In 2016, someone found Panchiko’s 2000 CD, titled D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, at a thrift store in the UK, but was unable to track down any information about them online. They posted to 4chan asking for help. From there, the songs and the search for their provenance spread online, “on Reddit forums, Discord channels, private chats and YouTube”, according to a Vice article on the global effort to find Panchiko. It took four years before Davies, Wright and Shaun Ferreday, 40, who plays bass in the band, finally learned a dedicated group of internet sleuths were desperately searching for them.
Shocked that they suddenly had fans wanting to hear their old band, the members of Panchiko gradually began to put more songs on Bandcamp, then Spotify, and then later on cassettes, vinyl and, of course, CDs. They started with D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L and then began adding more. Davies had been keeping much of their music on CDs and minidiscs carefully tucked away in wallets for years (despite no longer owning a CD player), but there were some songs they had recorded that none of the band members even had any more – they had to ask around to see if any friends had them. “We had all this stuff and then there was an audience,” Davies says. “And then we weren’t having to make the stuff, we were just sort of finding things and presenting it to them: ‘Here you go, here’s something we did 20 years ago.’”
Brexit stage left: British band tells of farcical barriers encountered on EU tour - The Guardian
“Live performances can account for 90%-95% of a band’s income, according to Help Musicians, but Brexit has cut into one of their most important revenue streams, restricting them to £1,000 worth of merchandise before they get into a higher taxable bracket. For Walt Disco this is not good, equating to just 50 vinyl records at £20 each, a fraction of what they would hope to sell after a performance to a typical 500-strong crowd. “Genuinely we were getting to the stage where you’re thinking, ‘Is it worth going to that place to play at the moment?’” said Fingland. “This is about careers. It’s not about a selling a box of spanners into the EU. It’s about whether careers in music can be sustained for 10, 20, 40 years.” Walt Disco’s experience was typical for small bands trying to forge their careers with EU tours in 2022, said James Ainscough, the chief executive of Help Musicians, which established a £250,000 fund this spring to help young musicians deal with Brexit.”
Industry News
💡 How Artists Are Exploiting Lax Metadata Protections By Streaming Services - MBW
“But what if tagging the wrong artist pages was not just a headache to resolve but also a money-making scheme? What if obscure artists were profiting by purposely tagging big-name artists as primary collaborators, thus reaching said artists’ fanbases via algorithmic music delivery systems like Spotify’s Release Radar?”
🗳 Energy price rises are an ‘existential emergency’ for venues - MusicAlly
“There is an energy crisis afoot in the UK, with prices that have already risen expected to balloon again later this year. While much of the coverage of this has focused on consumers, it’s also presenting challenges to already-battered live music venues. Now the UK’s Music Venue Trust has joined forces with other hospitality-sector bodies to give the government a piece of their mind on the challenge.”