When a computer finally writes a great work of art, will it be a triumph or a tragedy? 

http://i.imgur.com/ie2ZYgu.png?1

Imagine opening up an app, syncing it to your Spotify account, and having it create an original album tuned to your exact music taste. It’s instrumental - let’s assume the app can’t fake a human voice yet - but it sounds amazing to your ears. It’s exactly the kind of music you like.

If the app was able to create a new equally enjoyable record for you every few days - perhaps for a subscription fee - would you use it? If everybody uses it, do human musicians become obsolete?

<h3>Not a Good Outcome</h3>

This sounds terrible to me. As a musician, I hope to see a world where more people are able to make living from music, especially outside the world of pop and commercial jingles. It would be beautiful to see more artists making a living off of records without getting famous or weird about it.

I should be clear: I view songwriting and production as the two elements of music that are uniquely human. 

If robots are invented that can play physical musical instruments better than humans, that might have some weird implications, but I don’t think it would affect the music industry. You won’t pay to see a robot band play your favorite songs, you want the real human experience. 

On the other hand, if computers can generate the best music recordings in the world, that changes everything. Humans will be turned into mere cover artists, reinterpreting the work of our computer overlords. Songwriting and production are where the rubber meets the road on this philosophical issue.

<h3>The Human Element</h3>

Looking at computer-created artwork gives you a fascinating lens on what makes humans special. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKRdRzhMgbU

The first computer song you hear, such as this orchestral piece written by the Iamus Computer, can creep you out. The prospect of computers dominating humans in the art world feels very real for a moment. Then… you keep listening, and the fear dissipates.

Computer songs don’t have soul. They lack life. Crawl around the internet for this topic and it’s so obvious what I mean. Here's another one to listen to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbb08ifTzUk

Keep in mind that these are the best examples of computer songs. Humans listen to them and don’t post the terrible ones. There’s a filter, essentially a human-computer team, which is biasing the results to be better than they should be, and the results still suck.

The problem is that computers treat artwork like a math problem. Art isn’t a mathematical construct with steady rules. Ethan Hein points this out here (http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2014/will-musicians-ever-be-replaced-by-robots/).

Ethan’s example is that art is like evolution. Computers can analyze what happened in our evolutionary chains in the past to help us understand genetics - but they can’t predict who is going to exist in the next generation. There’s too many unknown variables, butterfly effects, and random chance. 

Likewise, art is made up of memes that evolve over time. You can analyze the past rules, which will allow computers to write new songs in the exact style of past artists. However, computers lack the innate human gift of crystallizing new ideas and seeing the world more wisely. 

I would argue that the exact thing that is missing from computer songs is the human element. Humans can create new ideas in a way that other animals and computers cannot do. That’s how we have come to create civilization, art, and everything else. 

<h3>Where Computers Will Replace Artists</h3>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiziVsuzZnA

With all that said, computers will replace some human musician jobs. 

There’s already a lot of software out there creating bland background music for people. How long will it be before major TV networks can subscribe to computer programs that create generic musical tags for sports events? Or for computers to generate music for the weather channel?

I could see computers creating facsimile music, designed to sound as similar to a hit song as possible without breaking the law. This royalty-free music would be appealing to owners of shops, restaurants, gyms, and other public establishments.

These substitutions will hurt the people who would have otherwise gotten paid to write that music. It’s not a great situation. But it’s only going to effect a small corner of the music industry.

<h3>The Worst Case Scenario</h3>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZXrwm6iu54

I’ll wrap things up with the worst case scenario: What if computers learn to write better songs than us, complete with human voices and lyrics? What if they can give you as much new music as you can listen to, and it’s always exactly what you want?

The normal system of humans creating music for each other would be ruined. As a composer and music producer, my craft would be destroyed.

Sure, live bands would still exist, and fringe groups of human music appreciation clubs would be out there. These would do nothing to save the music industry as we know it, which would truly collapse in a way that the crisis of the early 2000’s didn’t even come close to.

Humans would shift heavily towards the consumption of art, with few people creating professional quality music anymore. Those humans that do practice music would focus on learning the most popular computer songs. 

The world would ultimately become a more sedentary place, with humans losing much of their energy and creative spark. We would forget how to flex our creative muscles, becoming increasingly reliant on the computers. 

In time, we may forget that humans ever wrote music at all.

<h3>follow me: @heymattsokol</h3>