Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FlowMachines (Flow Machines)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2015-03-01 al 2016-08-31
During the project, we realized the following:
- The legal aspects of music style imitation are extremely complex (at least in a country like France, but also in other European countries), due to the aging copyright retribution system. A report lists all the copyrights issues involved and summarizes them a very big table. However, we considered that it was not worth addressing the issues raised by each copyright type, in a context where AI technologies are evolving very fast, without risking to produce irrelevant conclusions.
- Direct commercial exploitation of AI technologies per se is no longer a profitable route. Most AI technologies are now essentially free (e.g. TensorFlow by Google). Exploiting these technologies as commercial assets is therefore extremely risky in this very competitive environment.
Instead, we have shifted to a model in which we produce, distribute and monetize content using the "traditional means" of the music industry. Based on all our experience, results, and demonstrations, as well as the tremendous success of 2 AI generated songs (Daddy's car, a song in the style of the Beatles produced in the Flow-Machines project with the help of this POC project got over 1 million views on YouTube, and generated considerable media attention), we have managed to convince top executives of a major music label to create a dedicated label, specialized in the production and dissemination of music composed with AI technologies. This is the route we will now pursue.