The first thing that many people think of when they think of music with respect of the internet of things is the assistance in song streaming with speakers, wearables, and smart home speakers, but the effect goes much deeper than that. There is an immense amount of potential in the types of advances in music streaming and playback in terms of enhanced instruments, in depth recommendations, and assisted composition and recording. One specific example of a piece of technology that is pioneering this is Prizm, which aligns song recommendations for different scenarios throughout the day. So, in operation, the technology would access the interactions that the user has and takes that information formulating it into a playlist for the user to listen to that day. It reminds me of the discovery playlists that one would find on their Spotify account each week with new artist recommendations based on their most listened to artists, albums, and songs. Eventually, Prizm will get to the point that it will be able to sense and recognize the moods in a given space based on the people and conversations present at a given moment.

This next advance that I feel would be really beneficial in the era of DIY recording and composing spaces is recording on one project from multiple different recording spaces. When I was recording my music just recently, I decided that the song that I was working on really needed a drum track in order to really bring it all together. Obviously in a residence hall, I would not be able to bring in a massive drum kit and be able to actually record and play without getting noise complaints from my neighbors. Instead this type of technology would make it possible for projects to be streamlined across different platforms, so that a drummer friend of mine will be able to access my project, record his drums in realtime. Along with the music recommendation, selection, and composition aspects, there is also the aspect that assists hearing impaired users especially with providing a surround experience of vibrations that will represent the audio music well, so the medium is more transferrable among all demographics.

The Rise of Internet of Musical Things

View at Medium.com

When it comes to this generation that we are transitioning into, Instagram and social media influencers are rising, but I feel that the ways that these influencers are posting do not necessarily positively influence the masses like many think they do. From my experience and observation, the life of an Instagram influencer can be complex in the sense that it can be emotionally and mentally straining with negative comments from followers and the constant obligation for updates to their followers. As result, there can be times where these negative situations can put the influencer in a bad place and promote bad habits to their followers as well. On both sides, it can be toxic for those exposed to it. On the other hand, there are times that influencers positively affect their audience. There are influencers such as Jamie Oliver and David Chang, who are both critically acclaimed chefs, who use their platforms on social media as way to teach young chefs or even people wanting something new to cook, how to cook in an easy, safe, and occasionally healthy way. Additionally, other influencers are known promote really healthy lifestyles as well, showing tips and tricks to make eating and living easier and more eco friendly for a more sustainable future. One of the main things that James Asquith discusses in his article is the fact that influencers are spoiling special destinations in the world that should be experienced in person, rather than through a screen. He mentions that influencers do not have the exigence to be able to recommend activities for their followers and they do not actually influence their audience; they essentially provide their lifestyle full of content and have it looked at through a magnifying glass (Asquith 1). I can agree with this ideology, but there are aspects that are not necessarily as black and white as that. These influencers curate content, no different than an advertisement, but there are always areas for promotion and influencing in areas that are familiar with them on their audience.

Have Instagram Influencers Ruined Travel For An Entire Generation?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesasquith/2019/09/01/have-instagram-influencers-ruined-travel-for-an-entire-generation/#1f6d2d171e30

Spotify has been known as solely a music streaming platform for users to listen to their favorite music, make and share playlists with their friends, and for artists, provide a medium where they can share their work. The new integration into Facebook will further this application into become more into the social media style. With this new integration, users will be able to create a Facebook story on Facebook, mark that they are listening to a particular song, and then whoever views that story has the option of moving over to the Spotify application in order to listen to the full song and see the full profile of the artist.

This integration is quite beneficial on both ends of the music marketing industry. A musician would be getting much more exposure, basically doubling their reach and audience, when these users post and in a way recommend their music to their Facebook friends. From the perspective of the user, it would make me more willing to share my playlists and music tastes with others. I am sure that most Facebook users have friends on the social media that they do not know super closely, and this integration can potentially contribute to new relationships forming. If I see that someone seems to have the same music taste as me, I would always be obligated to introduce myself and start up some conversation. I know from my personal experience, the partnership from Facebook and Spotify is much more smooth in the login and sharing aspect. When I am in Spotify, I am able to login, be instantly connected to my Facebook friends, and see the music of which they are listening.

However, after all these revelations, there are still concerns from Spotify users that Facebook would be watching their activity. Mark Zuckerberg has stated in previous interviews that he uses the cookies that are within Facebook’s programming in order to generate advertisements that cater to its users for more convenience when purchasing items online. This may be the case when the integration of Spotify and Facebook comes to fruition, but the way that I look at it is that it is necessary for Facebook to make profit as well as retain its users using that convenience factor and allow for that smooth transitions between social media.

Spotify Music Previews On Facebook Foreshadow A Potential Impact On Music Marketing

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinwestcottgrant/2019/09/01/spotify-music-previews-on-facebook-foreshadow-a-potential-impact-on-music-marketing/#89087031c901

As new technology arises in our modern society, people are always looking for ways to make jobs easier and even save money in the long run. According to Taryn Southern from Quora and Forbes, there are multiple areas where computers and technology have replaced humans in creative professions. Areas such as advertisement design, visual arts, graphic design, and even photographers to name a few (Southern 1). There would be no reason why innovators would not want to take it the step further with replacing more professions with computers in order to streamline processes, bring cost down, and overall make the job easier with more yield. I, personally, as a student in a creative professional field, do not think it would be wise to replace a lot of the human properties that go into the creative process in these professions. Although, there are many ways that AI can replicate the process and create something like generating information and interpreting information, there are numerous areas that a computer would not be able to carry out, such as genuine emotion, sympathy, empathy, and interpretation. In the creative process of an advertisement, there is a sense of sympathy and an understanding of how a situation will affect a demographic of people. An ad that shows how it feels to fall in love and how it would hurt if that special someone ended up not being around anymore, would have profound effect on the viewer, because the creator has probably felt that feeling at one point or another throughout his/her life. A computer would be able to generate these feelings, but it would not be nearly as natural as a real human feeling. In the future as well, there will be advancements in ways to interpret information in creative ways, specifically in auditory display and sonification. In these interpretations, graphs of data, let us say that it is a graph of weather patterns, a researcher could compose an audio track and assign it for a specific aspect, like windspeed or temperature fluctuation. These creative professions that marry the areas of data analysis and audio production would be innovative and this way, there would be more viewers of the information, and with the help of auditory display, impaired reviewers of this research will be able to understand the data being presented.

Will Computers Ever Replace Humans In Creative Professions?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/10/01/will-computers-ever-replace-humans-in-creative-professions/#1588b45b5140

Technology is making its way to the music industry, not just in how we experience a live concert, but the ways that we experience and discover new music as consumers. When going through the history of music distribution going from vinyl records to cassettes to CDs to finally digital streaming, there would have to be an easier way to discover music that you may not see at your local record store right away. According to Bernard Marr’s “The Amazing Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming The Music Industry”, he mentions how the playlists and queues that are generated for us in Spotify are created through artificial intelligence, and there are so many further ways that artificial intelligence can make getting popular and recording music easier for artists.

The concept of gathering information and bringing it to the forefront is prevalent here. As said in the article, “about 20,000 new songs and artists are uploaded daily on streaming platforms”, and the AI would be the one to go through and match the preferences of the individual when generating a discovery playlist. The article goes into the possibility that there might be a way the AI could identify artists that are worthy to make it bigger and reach more fans (Marr). The AI could take the information and characteristics of artists that are huge right now like Billie Eilish, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Tyler, the Creator, etc. and apply them to the endless artists that upload music each day in order to see who a user may enjoy more than another.

As a musician, myself, it drives me crazy sometimes to be sitting staring at my laptop hours on end mixing and mastering my recorded music, especially after spending the hours before recording multiple tracks for a song. It could cut down the time when producing this music having an AI technology that takes in my specific music preferences and applying it to the music on its own. For more well-known acts, this could even break down the time taken to record and master music, therefore having more music being released, even constant music being released just by one artist.

The Amazing Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming The Music Industry

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/07/05/the-amazing-ways-artificial-intelligence-is-transforming-the-music-industry/#b55aa0a50721