There is seldom a day that passes when I trawl through the feeds of my social media accounts and stumble upon an article or post that laments the current state of affairs for many individuals in the creative/media industry. It is true, especially in the last 15 years, that many writers, journalists, musicians, songwriters etc have had a rough time. The internet, since it’s mainstream adoption almost 30 years ago, has had a colossal effect on this industry.
The emergence of the music file sharing site Napster at the end of the 90s was the first real taste of the seismic effects that the internet would have on the music industry in the coming years since this platform was first unleashed onto the world. Yet, even back then, very few people were able to foresee the long term effects. The internet and technology were moving at an exponential rate and much of the music industry was slow to adapt. In fact, some of the large record labels decided to fight those early disruptive file sharing platforms rather than to evolve and try to stay ahead of the curve.
In the past, bands and artists were able to make a comfortable living on their physical record sales alone. The most successful bands and artists sold records in the millions. Today, the internet has completely taken a sledge hammer to this business model. It is now very easy to listen to most music for free. In the past 10-15 years, streaming platforms such as Spotify have emerged where for a monthly subscription fee one has access to vast libraries of music both old and new. Unfortunately, for the musicians, even a substantial amount of listens does not generate anywhere near the same income like back when people actually bought records. There is the option to purchase or download a song or album, but against options like Spotify and You Tube, nowhere near enough people consume music via this route making it very hard for musicians to make a decent living just via their songs alone.
The internet and digitisation of the printing presses have also had a corrosive effect on the incomes of many writers and journalists. Now many people can create a website and start a blog to share their own articles and written content. Print sales of newspapers have been in decline and the revenues from digital subscription sales falls short of revenue numbers for physical sales from years gone by.
However, I don’t think the current status quo of oceans of free content will continue. In the coming years we will see artificial intelligence (AI) play an increasing role in the way we live our lives. I have been fascinated by the development of AI for over ten years now, yet it’s only been in the last few years that it has really entered the public consciousness and everyone seems to be talking about it. Yet, despite this, most people are understandably very worried about the development of AI and see an almost dystopian future ahead.
I am going to throw my hat in the ring here and say that AI will benefit humanity and lead to a much better world. In the context of the creative industries, I think AI will be on the side of the creators. In my view, I think that as AI continues to improve it will get to the stage where it will be able to do most tasks better than humans can. As the internet further evolves, I can see the net also being policed around the clock by increasingly sophisticated AI. This will be a very good thing as it will lead to a crackdown on all the toxic and nefarious forces of the net. Currently, the internet is a very messy place, but AI will do a remarkable job of cleaning it up and protecting users from the dangerous aspects of it, making it very hard for unsuspecting users to fall victim to fraud, deception, undesirable entities etc.
Ever since the internet first became mainstream, it has, for the most part, been a free wheeling and wild west place and many government bodies and authorities have been slow to keep up with it. However, with AI, I expect in the coming years that the internet will be much more regulated and less of an uncontrolled wild west space. The implications of this will be lots of new legislation created and passed and also applications put into place, which protect internet users.
I think when all this is finally realised, it will have a huge effect on the way we consume content. Suddenly, almost all content will not be free any more. It will not be possible to listen to a song for free or read an article for free like we currently do. To listen to just one song or read just one article, you will have to make a payment in advance. The super strong and sophisticated AI that now controls the internet will mean that there is no other way around those rules. It will be impossible to fight these AI safeguards. Today, free content is taken for granted, but it won’t always be like this and people will eventually have no other choice, but to accept this new reality. I would go as far as saying that people will and with it their values will change. They will begin to fully appreciate what they are consuming and they will be happy to pay for it.
Musicians and writers will be able to make a decent living again through their art. Popular streaming services like Spotify will be doomed if they don’t change their business model. I envisage that if they want to survive they will have to go down the same route as Apple and offer music as a download service where the consumer pays for each downloaded song and album rather than a flat monthly fee for an unlimited tap of music. Furthermore, AI will provide much of the traditional print media with a new financial bonanza. Many news sites have been struggling with the decline of print sales and falling ad revenues. Subscription revenues have been meagre by comparison. However, when people start paying per article I think that there is a good chance that revenues will cease to decline.
Contrary to much of the prevailing narrative that AI will only further increase the hardships of musicians and writers, I think AI will financially enrich them. Back in the beginning of 2022, I wrote an article entitled, ‘The Future Could Be Very Bright For Song Rights’. At the time that the article was written, many musicians were selling the rights to their songs. Some, like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, for vast sums of money. However, despite all this, I was stressing the importance for musicians to think twice before parting with their song rights – even with lots of money involved. You see, it is very likely that AI will open up many new income streams for song rights. The big labels also foresee this, which is why they have been very active buying up all the song rights they can get their hands on. They see these huge new potential money fountains that AI will give birth to for song rights and they are acting now before it becomes a reality.
It is increasingly likely that at some point over the coming years, many musicians will deeply regret that they sold the rights to their songs. At the time they probably thought that they were making the right decision, especially given the precarious and fragile state of the music industry and their natural concern that it will continue to get worse. Recently, Queen sold it’s entire music catalogue to Sony for over $1 billion. A monumental sum of money. However, there is a good chance that over the next ten years, the value of Queen’s back catalogue swells to $5-10 billion. If this were to happen it would become prohibitively expensive for any of the surviving members of the band or members of their family to buy back those rights. This is something to consider for those tempted to sell their song rights at this stage in their career.
By Nicholas Peart
(c)All Rights Reserved
8th August 2024
Image: Larisa Koshkina
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