I first came up with the idea of aMUZE in 2015 as I was observing AI taking off. I thought that soon music composition will be democratised. It would become possible for everyone to create original music from a simple whistle or a hum. AI would take on the heavy lifting of writing the lyrics, creating the artwork and, of course, composing the music.
For my research I put together a very illustrative chart that shows the evolution of music. We started with spinning bones in caves. The people that were doing this were the first "music composers" of the time - and they were not that many.
Then came the writing systems which led to music notation. The industrial revolution made instruments cheaper and available to more and more people. The number of composers kept rising. Then digitalisation made it possible for more and more people to coompose their own music translating into an even higher number of music composers.
Today a smartphone is capable of replacing a music studio. Indeed you can get inspired to write a new song by consuming content. You can use your phone to write lyrics and create artwork. And finally you can use one of the many music composition apps to record your voice, add instruments, mix your song and publish it to the social media!
One might argue that the number of composers might be rising, but the ratio of composers is the same as it used to be. It just seems like the number of music composers is higher because of the exponential rise of the population. But every person hides an artist in them. And with the help of AI all these latent artists will come to life.
It goes without saying that the skill requirements to create music will drop to just having one simple rough musical idea. Today, with the help of current tools, many people that are not adequately skilled, publish their musical ideas online.
Professional musicians are being challenged by hobbyists, and in an effort to increase their revenue, they try to publish as much content as possible in order to remain relevant and increase their popularity. This has resulted in an observable decrease in quality of music. But again, AI will help fix this, making it possible to create great songs out of a simple hum or whistle and some basic input like music genre, year or artist style.
When finally AI makes it possible for everyone to create their art and songs, we will experience an explosion of styles. Every person will create their own personalised poems, paintings and music. Your art, will be part of your identity. It will be a way for your friends to get to know you better. Same as when you tell someone what your favorite music is, they understand somethihng about you that can't be expressed with words.
