I’m a big fan of Rick Beato (one of his 4 million subscribers!). He is a passionate, intellectual YouTuber who dissects and explains much of the music that I love.
He recently created a video called The Real Reason Music is Getting Worse, and as I listened to his reasoning, I felt as though he was talking directly to me as a marketer in the AI Age. If you haven’t discovered Rick and you’re a music lover, I hope you’ll check him out. But in the meantime, let’s see what he says about making music in the AI Age and discover if this speaks to you, too …
Music, and Marketing Content is getting worse
Here are the notes I took from Rick’s video:
Technology makes the act of making music too easy. It’s difficult to play an instrument, and it’s really hard to record it well and produce a record. Rick received this note from a fan: “I wrote this song using AI, and I think it’s pretty good, but I literally know nothing about music.” Music has been commoditized.
Technology allows you to save a lot of money and take shortcuts, but the artistry and soul are stripped from the music. He compared an original recording of John Bonham drumming to a loop of the drumming, and it’s a hygienic version.
A creative dependency on technology limits the ability of people to innovate because they don’t know the craft.
When everyone relies on the same tools, you create a homogenized sound and a lack of diversity in the music. Music today is formulaic because people follow trends of certain types of sounds that are in style in the moment.
Ease of production speeds up the process, creating an oversaturation of music and making exceptional work harder to find. AI songs will make the level of saturation even worse as record labels produce their own AI songs instead of using original artists. One new song is added to the streaming catalog every second.
Finally, he explained why human creativity is undervalued. In the golden age of music, you would have to have a job to make money to buy a record album. You had to expend energy to find, buy, and consume the content. There is no sweat equity needed to enjoy music today. You can pay $10.99 per month and have access to any song ever published. So music becomes value-less or at least under-valued for many people.
A record bought for your collection became part of your identity, part of your history. A record was something shared among friends. We would read the album cover and learn about who made and produced the music. The creator and creative team had value.
Lessons for the AI Era
See, I told you he was speaking to marketers. This is EXACTLY the problem we face when AI churns out content at lightning speed. We risk drowning in a sea of mediocrity. The craft of marketing — the human touch, the unexpected twist, the soul — is in danger of being automated away.
AI presents many existential issues, but here is the one that haunts me the most: When we eliminate all the entry-level jobs, how will young people learn their craft? And if they don’t learn a craft, all we’ll have is “auto-tuned” perfect content, stripped of artistry and soul.
Like artists, will we become so dependent on the same technological tools that everything becomes homogenized?
Here’s what will drive AI adoption: cutting costs. Sorry, that’s the way of the world. So it seems inevitable that we’ll experience an AI pandemic of dull as every possible task moves to a machine.
The other day, I picked up my car from the shop and the technician had tuned my radio to a pop station. I don’t normally listen to current pop music, so I listened for a few days. The music today is truly awful, and I’m a person who embraces new musical ideas.
But here’s what excites me. True artistry still breaks through. I recently saw Jon Batiste in concert and no AI on earth will hold that man down.
As a marketer, you’ll have to be that Jon-Batiste level outlier to swat back the AI. Create work that no AI could dream up. Be so good they can’t ignore you.
There is still room for the crazy ones who push boundaries—there always will be. Start pushing, my friends.
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