TECHNOLOGY

What the music of the future will sound like (Jakob Pallinger - February 27, 2021)

Algorithms are not only increasingly determining when and how we listen to music, but are supposed to be even better adapted to our mood. Is this changing our listening experience?


The music industry has undergone a transformation in recent decades like no other. Once, music was only what you experienced in "real life" with your own eyes and ears or in the production of which you were involved with your own voice or hands. It wasn't until the phonograph cylinder was invented around 140 years ago that it suddenly became possible to record music and play it back on demand.

With the possibilities of audio streaming services like Spotify, music is now available everywhere, at any time, and in all varieties. Amateur musicians can rise to new stardom virtually overnight thanks to social media - a potential audience of millions is available to them on the Internet. But the industry could be in for far more changes: Smarter algorithms analyze our listening behavior or could soon compose world hits themselves, new technologies make speakers and headphones obsolete.


Adapting music to our moods

One thing is certain: In the future, it will be increasingly possible to adapt music to our respective listening behavior and even our state of mind on the day. The music service provider Spotify, for example, is working on an algorithm that uses speech recognition to determine when a listener is feeling sad, happy, anxious or neutral. The program will use the pitch, accent, intonation and rhythm of the voice to infer not only the emotional state, but also the age, gender and origin of the listener. In conjunction with the data that Spotify has already read out and categorized from users' previous search behavior and follower circles, the aim is to make even better and more individualized listening recommendations.

Developers are also promising great possibilities with artificial intelligence in the song-writing process: it could one day take over all or a large part of the composition. Computer programs have been helping to create new pieces of music for many years, especially when it comes to classical music. By "feeding" individual song components to the programs, musicians are supposed to produce new variations or come up with completely new ideas. In addition, complex data analyses could help in the future to track down the "recipes for success" for world hits and derive recommendations for the musicians from them.

Music producers are concerned with adapting their works as closely as possible to our wishes and listening habits. Programs such as Auto-Tune, which correct incorrect pitches and have probably helped many an artist to a great career, are already so strongly integrated into the music business that we can hardly hear the corrections. How much technology has helped in the background usually only becomes clear during live performances without major technical aids.


Sounds directly into the brain

The listening experience itself is also set to reach new dimensions in the future. Last year, entrepreneur Elon Musk drew attention to himself with a statement that it would soon be possible to "stream" music directly into the brain with the help of chips.

In fact, the Israeli company Noveto Systems plans to launch its "Soundbeamer" as early as the end of this year, a device that should soon make headphones superfluous. With the help of ultrasonic waves, the sounds are to be sent directly to the user's ear. The advantage, according to the developers, is that anyone anywhere could listen to their playlist or have navigation instructions announced to them while driving, without anyone else in the room being able to hear the sounds. Nevertheless, it should still be possible to perceive all ambient sounds at the same time. The device is also supposed to make 360-degree sound possible for the listener.


Virtual concerts

The pandemic has also strengthened the trend toward the virtual in the music industry. For several years now, developers have been working on making music experiences seem real in the virtual world as well, or enriching concerts with additional effects using augmented reality. The virtual concert by U.S. music producer Marshmallow, which took place in the video game "Fortnite" in 2019 and attracted more than ten million "digital" viewers there, was a first glimpse into the future for many. Virtual concerts by star violinist Lindsey Stirling, in which people can join in as "avatars," have also attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers.

However advanced the technologies and algorithms may seem, they will probably not be able to replace the social and interactive part of music in many cases. For many, good and moving music continues to thrive on real concert experiences and private music events. For this very reason, it is probably neither the full machine takeover nor an abandonment of technology, but that space between algorithms and human creativity and interaction in which new, moving music could be written and heard in the future. (Jakob Pallinger, 2/27/2021)

Source: www.derstandard.de/story/2000124483354/wie-die-musik-der-zukunft-klingt

 

In future, Producers will become more and more obsolete. Artificial Intelligence will get insanely powerful in creating music, and even creating new music on the fly on how we feel.

 

Why? Tell us your story!

 

will sound like :

Moving further and further away from the sound of nature.
Will sound more and more like machines.

oh wait, aren't we almost there already?

computers can only imitate what WE define and then feed that back into the computer.

 

When techno music came along, some said this is music without a soul. Techno because of technology, humans err and make mistakes, a robot programmed correctly does not. The robot is also never sick and does not need breaks, but what makes the human being, he can not.

Technology has helped us a lot in agriculture, but many people do not realize what the Internet / smart phones does to us. Continuous accessibility and constant information overload leads to stress, dependence and an unhappy lonely life.
One would actually need a driver's license like for driving a car for the Internet.

 

Ask me tomorrow again. then I know it

 

It'll sound like this, exactly like this.