AIAndMusic

Quora Answer : What are the various future trends in music?

Jun 4, 2018

Artificial intelligence will stop being a joke (as in virtual singers) or novelty item (as in virtual singers) and become a staple.

Listen to Daddy's Car. A song written by Flow Machines. (A set of AI tools to help human creativity.)

AI and machine learning / big data analysis is going to end up in the VSTs inside our DAWS, allowing synths to replicate the playing styles of famous instrumentalists. It will give us virtual singers who are really plausible approximations of real singers, singing the words we want them to sing.

Machine learning is going to be used to crunch millions of popular songs, find out what makes them popular, and give us that "on tap".

The most successful pop songs are already heavily influenced by marketing and the intuitions of teams of expert pop song-writers and producers. Expect all this to be further driven and refined by data.

Another trend which is yet to fully play itself out. Many of the most interesting and talented people in music today are on YouTube.

Whether Jacob Collier, ANDREW HUANG or LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER etc. They're combining making music with various kinds of experiment. Not the "experimental music" we're used to. But clownish performances, unusual and virtuosic cover versions, technical geekery, selling sample packs or home-made (or bent) instruments etc. Interacting heavily with their fans on social media and providing products through Patreon etc.

There are lots of variations of these. And lots of ramifications. Obviously some people become stars on their own terms. In particular worlds. But humour in music is rarely seen as "cool". That's part of the inheritance of 19th century romanticism that particularly infected rock music.

But maybe these people are making it cool. Clowning + virtuosity + the intimacy of Youtube + shrewd self-promotion makes mega stars hardly recognised in more traditional spaces.

Clearly another part of it is that these people created their own stardom the way they wanted. I'm sure it's still a treadmill and they wake up in a cold-sweat thinking "how the fuck do I come up with something new and compelling to keep people entertained today?" Perhaps it's even more competitive and acute than traditional stardom. Nevertheless, they are discovering / making new niches. These people are getting famous for things that more mainstream media / markets hardly acknowledge exist.

If anyone is going to stay ahead of the machines, it's the YouTubers putting their personalities and idiosyncrasies front-stage.

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