German innovation is not limited to the country's capital. In fact, some of this year's most prolific startups are based hundreds of miles away. The AI startup Alpha Alpha hails from Heidelberg. Helsing, which sells AI to Europe's militaries, was set up in Munich. Yet both companies operate Berlin offices.

Universal Music Group (UMG) is partnering with Endel, an "AI sound wellness company" specializing in personalized algorithmic soundscapes, the companies announced today. The partnership aims to let UMG artists create machine-learning-generated sounds for activities like sleep, relaxation and focus. The record label "will use Endel's proprietary AI technology to enable UMG artists to create science-backed soundscapes," the companies said. The soundscapes can contain new music and updated versions of back-catalog tracks. The companies emphasize that the project "will always respect creators' rights and put artists at the center of the creative process," adding that musicians and their teams have the final say on the results.

Generative artificial intelligence is currently one of the hottest topics in Silicon Valley, and its impact is already being felt in the music industry. BandLab -- the music-creation app that has become popular on TikTok -- relies on AI as the engine for its tool SongStarter. Users can lean on it to generate beats or melodies at random, or prompt it to spit something out based on specific lyrics and emojis; BandLab's 60 million registered creators are churning out more than 17 million songs each month, including breakout hits for dv4d and ThxSoMch. The tracks that emerge from BandLab depend on the interaction of human creators and AI. That holds true for some of the companies focusing on functional audio as well.

The other day, Brian reported on Sony's new LinkBuds headphones, including its partnership with "what if Brian Eno was a piece of computer software" app Endel. The company uses really fascinating AI technology to generate soundscapes and music tracks to help your brain do its best work -- to help you focus deeper, sleep more easily or to relax you. I spoke with one of Endel's founders to learn more about the tech and its deal with Sony. "Endel is first and foremost a technology that was built to help you focus, relax and sleep. And the way this technology works, it procedurally generates a soundscape in real time on the spot, on the device. It is personalized to you based on a number of inputs that we collect about you; things like the time of day, your heart rate, the weather, your movement and your circadian rhythms, like how much sleep you got last night," explains Oleg Stavitsky, CEO and co-founder at Endel.

Last October, Endel announced that it had partnered with Grimes for a special'soundscape' inside its music app, which is meant to help you focus, relax or fall asleep. The collaboration was called AI Lullaby and, as you might have guessed from the name, combined artificial intelligence with Grimes' original music and vocals. There was just one problem: it was only available on iOS. The slumber sounds have now disappeared for iPhone users and, as promised, hopped over to Endel's Android application. If you own a phone or tablet powered by Google's operating system, it should be accessible the next time you open the app.

In November, the musician Grimes made a bold prediction. "I feel like we're in the end of art, human art," she said on Sean Carroll's Mindscape podcast. "Once there's actually AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), they're gonna be so much better at making art than us." Her comments sparked a meltdown on social media. The musician Zola Jesus called Grimes the "voice of silicon fascist privilege."

The Artificial Intelligence Takeover Whether as collaborators or on their own, artificial intelligence programs made a huge impact on music this year, one that's only going to evolve moving forward YACHT handed full control of their album'Chain Tripping' to an artificial intelligence. Photo: Mitchell Davis Published Dec 12, 2019 Humans are born to collaborate; we can't help but bounce our ideas off someone else every once in a while. An entirely new musical partner has been emerging recently, however, and it's not human. Artificial intelligence has played a significant role in music this year, and its influence is likely to spread over the coming years. If Grimes' recent comments are anything to go by, then A.I. and other technological advancements are soon going to make live music obsolete -- although we're not too sure about that.

"I have songwriting credits…even though I don't know how to write a song." 1 The speaker of this statement is not a musician and has no musical training. He helped create an app called Endel, which is self-described as "a cross-platform audio ecosystem." 2 Endel is part of a larger part of the current hot debate over works of art being "created" by computers using programs employing "artificially intelligent" modes of computer learning, or AI for short. "Dmitry Evgrafov, Endel's composer and head of sound design, says all 600 tracks were made'with a click of a button.' There was minimal human involvement outside of chopping up the audio and mastering it for streaming. Endel even hired a third-party company to write the track titles." 3 What makes this notable is that Endel has a record deal with Warner Bros. Music. 4 "Five Endel albums have already been released, and 15 more are coming this year -- all of which will be generated by code. In the future, Endel will be able to make infinite ambient tracks." 5 But didn't the Endel engineers create the software in question?

AI is capable of making music, but does that make AI an artist? As AI begins to reshape how music is made, our legal systems are going to be confronted with some messy questions regarding authorship. Do AI algorithms create their own work, or is it the humans behind them? What happens if AI software trained solely on Beyoncé creates a track that sounds just like her? "I won't mince words," says Jonathan Bailey, CTO of iZotope. "This is a total legal clusterfuck."