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Music lovers can often feel like they're not managing to keep up with the latest new releases. And it's not surprising, since nearly 120,000 new tracks join the catalogs of streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer every day.
Music lovers can often feel like they're not managing to keep up with the latest new releases. And it's not surprising, since nearly 120,000 new tracks join the catalogs of streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer every day.
Luminate reports that an average of 120,000 new audio recordings were added to streaming sites daily during the first quarter of 2023, according toMusic Business Worldwide. That makes for a total of 10.08 million tracks uploaded to Spotify, Soundcloud and the likes in the first three months of the year alone. At this rate, more than 43 million tracks will have appeared in the streaming services' catalogs by the end of December.
That average of 120,000 tracks is up from the 93,400 new tracks added, every day, to various streaming services in 2022, again according to Luminate. Lucian Grainge, Universal Music Group's chairman and CEO, says the increase stems from the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the music industry. "Not many people realize that AI has already been a major contributor to this content oversupply. Most of this AI content on [Digital Service Providers] comes from the prior generation of AI, a technology that is not trained on copyrighted IP and that produces very poor quality output with virtually no consumer appeal," he told Music Business Worldwide.
The rise of AI
Universal Music Group has paid the price of AI's rise. The label recently took exception to the success of a fake song designed to replicate the sounds of Drake and The Weeknd -- two of its artists -- on social networks and music streaming platforms (YouTube, Spotify etc.). Entitled "Heart On My Sleeve," it is the product of an artificial intelligence system that managed to convincingly imitate the voices and styles of the two Canadian musicians. A TikTok user, known as Ghostwriter977, posted it on the social network on April 14, where it quickly scored millions of views. While Universal Music Group eventually got the online content related to "Heart On My Sleeve" removed, this case shows how artificial intelligence software is starting a revolution in the music industry \-- for artists, record companies and music lovers alike.
Many listeners feel lost in the face of this overwhelming musical offer, where the creations of flesh-and-blood artists rub shoulders with those of algorithms. Many people simply see too much choice, and don't know how to navigate through catalogs containing tens of millions of songs, or even a hundred million in the case of Apple Music. Indeed, considering that a song lasts an average of three minutes, it would take about 571 years of non-stop listening to work through the entire contents of the streaming service.
In light of this, it's not surprising that many users of streaming platforms rely on playlists, recommendation algorithms and social networks -- TikTok in particular -- to broaden their horizons. These tools are very convenient, but they risk, above all, confining people to a musical bubble, even though they have millions of different songs at their disposal in just a few clicks.
