Robot Rock: Can Big Tech Pick Pop's Next Megastar? - AI Summary

They hoped, on their return, to have the answer to a question that would change the music industry: can a computer pick a hit record? Pettersson, who is Swedish, was a specialist in artificial intelligence (AI) with a background in neuroscience; Savage, a British music industry professional with tech pedigree, had worked for Shazam and the Pandora streaming service. Savage says Musiio can now run through thousands of songs – submitted as demos or uploaded to streaming services – and sort them, according to whether they contain a vocal, whether they're trap, indie or classical, and even whether they bear resemblances to an existing hit, say Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson. For decades, talent scouts or record company A&R professionals used to find new singers, musicians and MCs by going to concerts, listening to radio, talking to people in record shops, receiving tips from well-connected pros such as gig promoters, and listening to unsolicited demo tapes. Conrad Withey is the CEO of Instrumental, a British company that uses data analysis to identify, track, profile, rank and sign overlooked recording artists across the globe – doing digitally the sort of number-crunching an A&R professional might once have done manually. We also have our own playlists that reach more than 1.5m listeners and those help recordings reach new audiences – and trigger other playlist editors and algorithms." Their software tracks bookings at major venues, mentions on music blogs and inclusions on playlists and charts, as well as support from tastemakers, influencers and playlisters. He says that today, an obscure singer, rapper, music producer or band showing good data points might get multiple offers from labels, and little in the way of guidance. Withey points out that Simon Cowell effectively shuttered his record label Syco – once home to Little Mix and One Direction – last summer and argues that talent-show viewers prefer watching TikTok or Instagram to broadcast TV, and follow the music from there. "If you go on Sony Music's global website," she says, "it says, 'We do not accept unsolicited demos.'