The last 100 years have been revolutionary for music but is technology still bringing positive change for the industry?
ADVERTISEMENTThe music industry has evolved enormously over the past century. When we look back at the technology that has emerged in that time - electric guitars, synths, amplification, records, tapes, CDs, mp3s - it’s all been for good in the long run.
Even the technologies that haven’t stuck around - minidisk, I’m looking at you - didn’t really have a negative effect on the industry.
But is the future quite so positive?
It seems unlikely that we'll see the invention of anything as ground-breaking and physical as an electric guitar. Today's technological advancements are much more software based.
Euronews Culture spoke to Niall Doorley, founder of the Future Music Forum in Barcelona to discuss whether the intersection between technology and music will continue to be a helping hand for artists.
What are the most exciting tech developments in the music industry right now?
Niall Doorley: It's a very good time to be in the industry right now with regards to additive and disruptive technology.
You mentioned the word technology and automatically people jump to AI. AI production is a great tool these days. I think it's framed wrong or the narrative is wrong in the media - it's got this negative connotation to it, almost like a disruptive tool, which it is, but I see it more as an additional tool to what artists are doing. You can be a music producer and use AI which I think everybody is going to do in the future, or you will not and you'll be left behind.
Spatial sound and sound-scaping is a big thing in the industry right now too. [With] Dolby Atmos producers can really get to a level of sound production that they couldn't do before. That also jumps into the mental health space where music is having a huge impact these days.
Are there any technical innovations which are putting the music industry at risk?
Nile Doorley: 'Deepfake' is the bingo word at the moment when it comes to what we're seeing and if it's real. That kind of slides into the world of rights and who's getting paid for these things?
There's also a great technology out there now called Beatdapp who are actually going out there and finding streaming fraud, which is a big thing. I saw a stat recently where something like 15% of music on streaming platforms is fraudulent, which is a huge number if you think about the number of streams per day.
Shout out to a great Barcelona based company called Unison that finds a lot of missing revenue for [artists] through blockchain technology. Artists right now need to have their rights managed correctly because there's so many platforms.
Are streaming platforms like Spotify good or bad for the music industry?
Nile Doorley: Streaming is a tool. It's another part of your tool[box], use it in that way.
If you think back to the mid-noughties, when Napster and LimeWire and all these things were out there, piracy was rampant. [Spotify] came along, there's obviously going to be improvements to it but remember Spotify came out in 2008 - it's still in its, kind of, teenage years. [There’s] a lot of things to improve but you're seeing more decentralised platforms like the Audius which is more of a decentralised platform where artists get paid more
SoundCloud now are doing fan powered rights too where more musicians are getting paid correctly from the old ethos of Spotify where it's more of a generative, and collective payment.
A few years ago everyone was (briefly) talking about NFTS. What is the future of additional revenue generation for artists?
Nile Doorley: So there are lots of different revenue streams now for artists, live gigging is the number one, that's where you’re going to make your money. But also on the flip side of that, there's something like eight mega festivals in the UK this summer that have been cancelled because of demand and supply and costs. So it’s a bit of a quagmire at the moment.
There's actually a huge rebirth of physical vinyl. Bands can make money from that because it's just a huge rebirth because of nostalgia.
You've got sync [licensing] - there's so much content out there now that needs music so getting your music synced and licensed properly is huge. (Sync licensing is when a song or an instrumental version is used in TV, film or advertising. Licensing a song for use in an advert is a particularly big source of income for artists.)
But it's all going to come down to that world of fandom. Artists should be looking at fandom and creating superfans, creating your tribe. Because I think the era of superstars is probably gone. There's a very small percentage in the music world who can [sell out stadiums] so I think artists now can find their tribe and they can utilise all the tools they have online now to create fandom. And if you have 200 or 300 superfans and you're releasing merch, you’re releasing music, they can sustain you on a small level.
ADVERTISEMENTWhat up-and-coming artists in Spain should we be looking and listening out for?
Nile Doorley: There's a real hotbed of talent here. Spain is the kind of launchpad for a lot of Latin America to come into Europe. I have my bookers who are always scouring the clubs in the streets for the next talent.
There's a couple of bands I'm going to shout out right now. They're probably not massively known, but bobbing under the surface and super talented groups like Laguna Goons who are based out of Malaga, Sila Lua who is based out of Madrid now, Marina Tuset is a local Catalan artist who just won a Latin Grammy last November, Lauren Nine is another artist who's doing really good things and starting to make that jump internationally and another great artist here called Cecé from Venezuela who I love.
Future Music Forum Barcelona is an annual event, established 14 years ago, which gathers the brightest minds in the music industry to talk about how technology is shaping its future.
