Canadian Music Week tackles artificial intelligence

One year ago, Music Canada chief executive Patrick Rogers opened the annual Canadian Music Week summit in Toronto with a state-of-the-industry speech that addressed the robot in the room. The artificially created track Heart on My Sleeve, featuring the fake voices of Drake and the Weeknd, had just gone viral and rattled the record business.

“When it comes to AI-generative deep fakes we cannot let the wow factor of the technology distract us from the fact that it was created through theft,” Rogers said, referring to copyright and licensing infringements.

Artificial intelligence (and its inherent copyright issues) is still a hot-button topic. This year’s Canadian Music Week (June 1 to 8) devotes two seminars to AI, in addition to a third session that looks at the history of transformative technologies in the industry. Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt, New York-based authors of last year’s book Key Changes, will discuss lessons learned from more than a century of game-changing innovations.

The book devotes chapters to technological advances, from cylinders and discs played on early phonographs to radio, LPs, tapes, CDs, television, digital downloads and streaming. But while those innovations were disruptive, AI seems positively dystopic in comparison.

Or not, according to the authors. “Every time one of these enabling technologies came out, there was an uptick in music releases,” said Rosenblatt, who spoke to The Globe and Mail along with his co-author by video conference. “AI is another one of these tools that can be a tool for creators.”

Look no further than the case of Randy Travis, the country crooner who largely lost his ability to speak or sing after suffering a stroke in 2013. The country star’s voice was recreated using AI for his new hit single Where That Came From.

“Think of what this kind of technology can do for the careers of deceased artists,” Singer said. “For me, the scary part is the legal battles.”

Indeed, actor Scarlett Johansson just lawyered up in her fight with the company OpenAI, which, she alleges, copied her voice for ChatGPT without her permission. If history and the book Key Changes tell us anything, it is that the AI disruption will not be settled anytime soon.

“There are a lot of court cases going on,” Rosenblatt said. “We can expect a 10-year process, and we’re in year one or two, more or less.”

A couple of trends emerge in Key Changes when it comes to the pattern of disruptions. One is that the music industry is historically resistant to change. For example, at Billboard magazine’s first Video Music Conference in 1979, in Los Angeles, MTV creator John Lack gave a presentation during a panel titled Video Music: Tomorrow Is Here Today. There he stated his intention to start the 24-hour video music network.

After which, Sidney Sheinberg, the influential president of MCA Records (which later became part of Universal Music Group), stood up and bluntly declared he would not be giving Lack any MCA music for his channel. The short-sighted Sheinberg could not see the promotional value of music videos that every label would soon be chasing.

“It’s not just the music industry,” Rosenblatt said. “Every successful business is reluctant to move to the next big thing.”

The other constant when it comes to innovations is that convenience is king. Prerecorded cassettes, for example, were handier than vinyl LPs, and blank cassettes could be used to home-tape music. More recently, streaming platforms are a boon to music lovers when it comes to access to music – a cheap, colossal jukebox at one fingertips.

What could AI bring? The possibilities seem endless: “Siri, write me a Gordon Lightfoot song, as sung by Drake.”

The copyright and licensing issues pertaining to permission and compensation also seem endless. Silicon Valley traditionally seeks forgiveness later rather than asking permission in advance. AI, like music sampling, is just another example. Ten years from now, we can expect the current industry earthquake to be settled, with another disruption to replace it.

There is one thing for certain, according to Rosenblatt. “AI is a lifetime guaranteed employment for copyright lawyers.”

Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt present Days of Future Passed: Disruptive Technologies and the Music Industry on Monday at Canadian Music Week, Westin Harbour Castle, Toronto.