The music industry is changing faster than ever before, as technological advancements drive rapid transformation across all facets of the business.
One of the most significant shifts on the horizon is the development of artificial intelligence. As an independent record label, it’s essential to recognize the potential of AI, preparing your label to take advantage of its growing potential. In this article, we’ll explore how you can ensure your label is prepared for the coming AI revolution.
1. Embrace AI-driven marketing
AI can rigorously analyze data on your audience’s demographics, behaviour, and interests, unearthing valuable patterns and insights that can help to shape your marketing strategy. These technologies can pinpoint the age, gender, and geographical location of your target audience, along with their favourite music genres, artists, and streaming platforms.
Equipped with this information, you essentially possess a playbook for tailoring your artists’ content to their specific audience. This unprecedented access to consumer data, coupled with the efficient processing and presentation AI offers, has simplified the process of audience development. It can be surprising, from a consumer’s perspective, how accurately labels can decipher current and future listening habits. However, as an independent record label, you can embrace this reality to connect your artists with the audience they deserve.
Chartmetric is an example of a great AI tool you can use to leverage ai driven marketing, it’s free to sign up too!
2. Consider AI&R
AI + A&R = AI&R. Get it? AI algorithms are extremely effective in analysing vast amounts of data and providing useful insights that can be applied to real-life decisions. This process can be tailored to assist with A&R; discovering artists that will prove successful down the line. AI can analyze data from streaming platforms, social media and other sources to identify emerging artists with the potential to make it big. By tracking metrics like streaming counts, social engagement and audience demographics, AI will be able to pick rising stars and undiscovered talents out of the crowd, and even predict the potential success of any artist based on historical data, market trends and consumer preferences.
A really neat tool that’s been making waves lately is Every Noise At Once. What sets it apart is how it serves up a ton of information, like what’s currently jamming at various college campuses across the globe. Plus, it delves deep into all those hyper-specific music genres and pinpoints where folks are tuning in from.
3. Enhance copyright protection
As the years roll on, AI will have an increasingly significant role in protecting the rights of artists and labels. AI-powered algorithms can continuously monitor various online platforms, including social media, streaming services, and websites, to detect unauthorized use of copyrighted music. AI-driven audio fingerprinting technology even allows for the unique identification of audio tracks based on their acoustic characteristics. These systems can identify instances of unauthorized uploads, cover versions, and potential copyright infringements, even in user-generated content. By ensuring your label’s content is protected, you can make sure artists will receive their fair share of royalties.
4. Adapt and learn
As the AI landscape continues to evolve faster than ever before, it’s essential to remain informed and adapt to new technologies as they arise. Keeping a close eye on industry developments is key; attend conferences, workshops and webinars to learn from the experts and stay perpetually ahead of the curve. Don’t be afraid to experiment with AI-powered tools when you have the chance, and consider teaming up with startups or companies that specialize in music-related AI applications that could be beneficial to your record label. Stay proactive and AI could become a powerful ally in your label’s journey toward innovation and growth.
5. Let AI make the music
Okay, we’re not entirely serious here! While AI music generators like Google’s MusicLM and Meta’s MusicGen have come on in leaps and bounds in recent months, we would never advocate for technologies that replace musicians wholesale. Despite that, there are numerous ways that AI can assist and enhance the music-making process for your producers and artists. Some AI-powered tools can generate melodic and harmonic ideas to serve as starting-off points for tracks, while some VST plugins, used in digital audio workstations (DAWs) make use of AI to enhance the mixing process. Services like LANDR even use AI to automate the mastering process, making this costly outgoing a little bit more affordable for labels on a budget. There’s even a new generation of AI-driven tools popping up that allows artists to clone their voices with AI and license these voice models to anyone looking to imitate their vocals; this is likely to become a new revenue stream for both artists and labels in the years to come.
