The Majors Are Ushering in an Era of DAWifcation and Hyper-Personalization
And with it, fans will be able to alter and play with the traits and catalogs of their favorite musical artists, creating a mash-up economy that will relegate streaming to the background.
Hey everyone. Shawn here. I just wanted to quickly mention that today’s article is by Frankie Pizá, a Barcelona-based writer and self-described “context creator” whose work—including his essential FRANKA newsletter—has been mentioned countless times here at First Floor. Given that Pizá works primarily in Spanish, his writings unfortunately don’t tend to circulate as widely as those of his English-language contemporaries, which is why I asked last year if he’d be okay with me occasionally running translated versions of his output. He agreed, and we started in December with a piece about the majors and their total reversal on AI technology.
The response to that article was extremely positive, so when Pizá this week published what’s essentially a kind of sequel—his original Spanish-language piece is here—I immediately hit him up about the possibility of a translation appearing in First Floor. That translation is below, and it goes deep into the weeds of recent deals between Universal Music Group (a.k.a. the biggest label in the world) and a variety of tech platforms, along with the way they’ve been presented to the public with a veritable tidal wave of double-talk and marketing speak. (Highlighting the absurdity of the language being used, Pizá has also created a playful series of graphics for the piece, all of which give the speakers in question an AI-assisted “LOOKS MAX” treatment.) More importantly, however, the article pieces together an outline of what he sees as an emergent new music industry business model—one in which, crucially, the majors and tech platforms are still very much in control.
In a recent interview at NVIDIA’s GTC Conference (the “Super Bowl of AI”), Lucian Grainge sat down with NVIDIA’s Richard Kerris to offer some insights into what awaits the music industry and the artistic community at an event titled “Building the Future of Music and AI.” It’s no coincidence that the president and CEO of Universal Music Group—who, for what it’s worth, has numerous ties to Zionist causes and events—was the first music executive invited to the conference; UMG unveiled an agreement with the tech giant in January, aiming to take the music experience “beyond current constructs of search and personalization.”
At the time, it was announced that the two companies would “pioneer responsible AI for music discovery, creation and engagement leveraging NVIDIA AI infrastructure and UMG’s industry-leading music catalog.” Although UMG has other deals in the works, specifically with Udio, KLAY, Stability AI, EVEN, Splice, SoundPatrol and even Roblox, its partnership with the NVIDIA’s Music Flamingo model seems to be gaining prominence.
Music Flamingo presents itself as a system capable of processing complete tracks of up to 15 minutes while also analyzing harmony, structure, timbre, lyrics and cultural context. Far from existing solely as a musical chatbot or another layer of intelligent recommendation, NVIDIA appears to be creating an infrastructure that can read, index and operationalize a catalog at a much deeper level.
Grainge was already a disruptive executive when streaming first emerged, and now that UMG has struck this flurry of deals, it might seem like he’s looking to provoke a battle among several generative AI companies, each of which would do anything to capture a major-label whale. My intuition, however, points in another direction. If we analyze the nature of these entities, we can start to see a clear assembly line: protection and auditing on one hand, tools on the other; licensed creation platforms; direct-to-fan infrastructure; and immersive surfaces where the interactions of fandom become monetizable dynamics.
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