KUT’s Miles Bloxson and Elizabeth McQueen discover how Austin musicians are adapting to AI and the altering music business.
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Austin, Texas is called the reside music capital of the world. And the podcast Pause/Play from member station KUT explores the town’s reside music scene. Its newest season appears to be like at Austin’s music future and the way musicians are adapting to our altering world. The pod’s hosts, Miles Bloxson and Elizabeth McQueen, are with me right this moment. Hello, to each of you.
MILES BLOXSON, BYLINE: Hello there.
ELIZABETH MCQUEEN, BYLINE: Hey, thanks for having us.
PFEIFFER: You launched your podcast in 2020, when COVID was nonetheless wreaking havoc on reside occasions. Now that we’re previous that shutdown stage, what sort of future points are you taking a look at?
BLOXSON: Effectively, proper now, nobody actually is aware of what the longer term holds. A lot is altering so quick, and superior musicians are dealing with uncertainty round AI and frustration with streaming platforms. And these are points which are related to musicians in every single place.
MCQUEEN: Yeah, I imply, proper now, there are music era platforms like Suno and Udio the place you’ll be able to create songs utilizing written prompts. And Udio – they signed a take care of Common Music Group to launch an AI music era and streaming platform. So now an AI music firm is partnering with the most important report label on the planet.
BLOXSON: And we wished to understand how Austin musicians had been feeling concerning the rise of AI. Had been they for it or in opposition to it?
MCQUEEN: I imply, most individuals are within the center, like Zeale. He is an Austin-based musician and an interdisciplinary artist.
ZEALE: I actually wished to have a transparent understanding of what’s this doing? What’s it impacting? How are artists utilizing this of their workflows to, you understand, get from level A to level B? And I do this as a result of I wish to perceive my – I do not wish to say enemy, however I wish to perceive this new, very impactful expertise as a lot as potential.
BLOXSON: Though he makes use of it, he is aware of, like, it additionally poses a menace to musicians within the artistic sector. And Zeale has this idea about why that’s.
ZEALE: We have already been taken benefit of traditionally, from unhealthy distribution offers, publishing offers, report offers, et cetera. And that simply leans extra into that theme of all proper, nicely, let’s discover a method to monetize on this in the identical format that labels did up to now.
PFEIFFER: Miles and Elizabeth, you’ve got touched on this, however are you able to speak somewhat extra about ways in which AI is being utilized by musicians?
MCQUEEN: Effectively, proper now, there are AI bands and artists. So one instance that individuals may need heard of is The Velvet Sunset. They’ve over 750,000 month-to-month listeners on Spotify.
BLOXSON: And so they’re not the one ones. Simply final week, Xania Monet turned the primary AI artist to land on the Billboard charts.
MCQUEEN: Yeah, I imply, it was already onerous sufficient for musicians to become profitable on streaming platforms earlier than AI artists entered the fray. Like, most individuals solely make a 3rd of a penny per stream.
PFEIFFER: So return a second. I wish to make clear. If you speak about Xania Monet and Velvet Sunset being AI artists, you imply not actual human beings, not actual bands, however music and musicians generated by AI expertise.
MCQUEEN: Sure, precisely.
BLOXSON: That is precisely what we’re speaking about.
PFEIFFER: All proper, so that you talked about streaming, and as I used to be taking a look at your pod in current episodes, I noticed that there is one about an artist in Austin who needs to construct a substitute for Spotify, which actually dominates that house now.
BLOXSON: Yeah, her identify is Lauren Bruno. And she or he needs to construct an artist-centered streaming platform. She needs artists to receives a commission higher charges, and he or she additionally needs them to have higher management over their information.
LAUREN BRUNO: When an artist uploads their music to a platform like Spotify, you understand, Spotify – what they use that information for, in easy phrases – the granule uncooked information is to incur extra income by way of sponsorship and advert placement. And that granular information holds quite a lot of energy as a result of that is all about your viewers as an artist.
PFEIFFER: You already know, it is all the time been onerous for musicians to become profitable, most of them, and it looks like streaming and AI are probably not serving to with that. Are there every other survival methods being developed for the music scene?
BLOXSON: Yeah, completely. In Austin, our metropolis authorities is making an attempt to assist Austin musicians by giving them cash to place in the direction of their careers. We now have a grant program referred to as The Dwell Music Fund, and this 12 months, musicians can apply for grants of $5,000 and even $20,000. And so they can use that cash on all the things from selling exhibits to creating data.
PFEIFFER: Type of a subsidy strategy – how frequent is that within the music world?
MCQUEEN: It is truly not that frequent. We are the first metropolis to do it within the U.S. We may be one of many first on the planet. However it’s a plan that is working, and it is one thing that additionally different cities may reproduce.
PFEIFFER: That is Elizabeth McQueen and Miles Bloxson, hosts of the podcast Pause/Play from KUT and KUTX Studios. Because of each of you.
BLOXSON: Thanks.
MCQUEEN: Thanks.
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