Splice reposted this
Why music’s AI opportunity is more Splice-shaped than it is Spotify-shaped Spotify and UMG’s AI ‘superfan’ announcement has grabbed the headlines, and rightly so. While the AI debate has focused on full track creation, the Goldilocks zone is audio-modification. Much of the opportunity for rightsholders may sit in DSPs but the format will be more Splice-like than Spotify-like 🎹 Most consumers will want to spend most of their time listening, but a growing share of consumers want to spend some of their time leaning in and doing more 🚀 This isn’t rocket science. It’s what Instagram and smartphones did for photography. 🎸 ‘Hang on, everyone takes photos while only a minority make music’ I hear you say. Well, in actual fact half of all consumers do something creative with music, whether that be playing an instrument, singing or making music with software. Music creativity is already mainstream, even before the advent of mass-market tools 📈 Full track creation is a big opportunity (gen AI MAUs tripled between 2022 and 2025) but fan creation is an even bigger one. Expressing yourself via your own take on your favourite artists’ music is the ultimate expression of fandom 💪 The grey zone between artist and fan is going to become the attention battleground between listening and creation. This is why Spotify is going all in – they need to act before the likes of Suno and Udio steal the attention, time and spend of significant portions of its user base 🎧 This is why the largest scale AI opportunity for rightsholders is more about seeding fan-modification tools with artist content in a Splice-like way rather than a pure Spotify-like licensing one 🧑🎤Expect this to trigger a whole new economy of artist sonic-likeness products. It won’t be long before we see artists in the studio with prompt engineers building prompt packs for consumer AI tools 🦢 AI is a black swan event for music, intertwining the futures of the creator economy and the music industry 🔋AI has quickly become the music creator economy’s growth driver and is set to become a fandom driver. Over time, it could become the defining factor of both For those who want to dive deeper (a lot deeper) on this, look out for the forthcoming MIDiA report The future of the music creator economy: Tipping point. The report features market sizing and forecasts for gen AI, audio modification, traditional creator tools and much, much more.