Artificial Intelligence, Generation Z, and the End of Radio

Music is about to undergo a major transformation. Other. While artificial intelligence (AI) makes it possible to create tons of tailored songs with just a click of a mouse, younger music lovers prefer to remix popular songs rather than listen to them over and over again. One wonders what place will remain for radio…

It’s the Wall Street Journal Which broke the news a few days ago: Spotify is considering adding mixing tools to its music player that would allow its subscribers to take control, like a DJ. Access to some of these tools will be paid, but they will allow you to change the tempo of the song, mix tracks together and sequence – adjusting the timbre, intensity of the music, or adding special sound effects.

At Spotify, we hope to ride the wave of homemade remixes, which are growing in popularity on the internet in general and on TikTok in particular. The Chinese-origin social network estimates that more than a third (38%) of songs shared on its platform in 2023 had a different tempo or timbre to the original version, up from 25% in 2022.

Spotify is reportedly in discussions with several studios to secure royalties For artists whose songs will be modified by their subscribers. Some artists saw remixed versions of their songs become more popular than their own version on TikTok or elsewhere on the web, and they couldn’t make any money from it. There are remixes that have received tens of millions of plays on digital platforms.

Suno and Udio: Unlimited music

Music streaming services suffer from the same discoverability problem as any other digital service today. How does a music lover discover, among the nearly 50 million songs displayed on these platforms, a new song, a new artist that suits his tastes?

In another era, the role of radio stations was to present a mix of popular and lesser-known songs, often within a specific niche: pop, rock, classical, indie, and so on.

Music lovers who need new music will not need to worry anymore. The AI can create tailored songs for them, one by one, based on a simple request: for example, “Make a country song about life on a farm.”

On sites like Suno AI and Udio, this will generate one song, then another, and eventually, an infinite number of variations on the same — otherwise very popular — country music theme in just a minute.

Suno AI and Udio are generative AI whose creators have been fed thousands of royalty-free songs and snippets, from which they compose songs of all genres faster than it takes to listen to them, inspired by almost all styles – including Quebec music.

You can ask a Céline Dion imitator to sing about Sainte-Flanelle’s past (very, very past) glory, and you’ll get it. In French and/or English. In response to a request for a song in the style of “French Canadian rock,” Suno AI produced a track that Vincent Vallière would not deny.

Unless provided by the user, Suno AI, in addition to creating the music, writes (and sings) its own lyrics. They don’t always make a lot of sense, but that’s not too bad. Anyone who has ever translated the words sung by Kurt Cobain into a Nirvana microphone, or read the professional press’s praise of the “deep, enigmatic and mysterious” lyrics sung by rock bands CEGEP in the 1990s, has already heard worse.

radio Infinity

No need to ask the AI what the next part will look like. On the one hand, Internet users want to create their own versions of their favorite songs. On the other hand, AI tools allow you to create a lot of songs from a piece of text. The result: endless computer-generated playlists.

This is the advent of tailor-made music radio stations. Think of the most diverse musical styles you know, and ask the producing AI to create songs that combine these two styles: K-pop bluegrass, Mandarin western, polka punk… anything is possible.

This is what many sites already offer. Some do it for free, others sell their services. Suno AI recently added an exploration function to its site (accessible in beta), where an internet user only has to point to a musical style, no matter how strange, and a playlist will be generated instantly.

Fancy some Russian ska? Celtic metal? You have to ask…