China-headquartered Tencent Music Leisure – which operates music providers QQ Music, Kugo and Kuwo – is doubling down on AI.
Final fall, the corporate mentioned it had created greater than 1,000 tracks that include vocals created by AI tech that may imitate the human voice.
This “patented voice synthesis know-how,” referred to as Lingyin Engine, can “shortly and vividly replicate singers’ voices to supply authentic songs of any model and language.”
A kind of songs, whose identify interprets as At present, “has change into the primary music by an AI singer to be streamed over 100 million occasions throughout the web,” TME Government Chairman Cussion Pang advised analysts on a name final November.
Now, TME is transferring ahead with extra initiatives involving AI – together with the likelihood that it’s going to launch AI music making-tools that it says will “assist scale back the barrier to music creation’” for artists.
On TME’s Q1 earnings name, held on Tuesday (Might 16), the corporate emphasised AI and particularly AIGC’s (Synthetic Intelligence Generated Content material) means to broaden musicians’ capabilities, slightly than the likelihood that it might exchange musicians altogether.
(By the way, TME’s earnings for Q1 2023 had been earnings little wanting spectacular: The corporate grew its paid subscriber base by 17.7% YoY, to 94.4 million, and revenues from on-line music providers soared by 33.8% YoY, to RMB 3.50 billion (USD $510m). If there was a darkish spot to be discovered anyplace, it’s that its cellular music month-to-month lively person rely fell 6.9% YoY, to 592 million.)
“These improvements are designed to additional enrich our platform’s content material, creating large alternatives for us to fulfill customers’ various and nuanced music tastes and social wants in new and thrilling methods.”
Ross Liang, Tencent Music Leisure
TME’s execs solid AI as a strategy to allow artists to create music extra effectively, in addition to giving followers extra alternative to attach with their favourite music and artists.
“We’ll be trying into growing a chatbot, the place customers can chat… in regards to the sort of music they prefer to hearken to, and to find new content material,” TME CEO Ross Liang mentioned, in response to a query in regards to the firm’s AI plans from Financial institution of America Merrill Lynch analyst Lei Zhang.
“We’ll be cooperating intently with [parent company] Tencent to develop purposes primarily based on their LLMs, in addition to to work with open supply LLMs to develop different purposes resembling these round picture creation,” Liang continued.
Liang added: “Just like Google’s music LLM, we’ll look to supply instruments to assist musicians considerably scale back the barrier to music creation and decrease the price and to enhance effectivity, to assist them with music creation in addition to lyrics writing.”
That’s a reference to MusicLM, an AI device that Google launched in January and made obtainable to the general public this month, which may generate high-fidelity music from a textual content immediate.
In response to a research paper revealed by Google engineers, MusicLM also can create songs from snippets of melody which can be whistled or hummed.
However for all the eye MusicLM has been getting, it’s not the primary generative AI able to creating songs.
Customers of AI music creation platform resembling Boomy for instance, have created 14.4 million songs, which, the agency claims, accounts for “round 13.78% of the world’s recorded music”.
So is TME planning to create an AI music-making platform to rival the likes of Google’s MusicLM or Boomy?
That’s arduous to say, given the scant particulars provided on Tuesday’s earnings name, however one factor is obvious: TME is all-in on AI’s potential.
“By ongoing exploration of enormous language fashions (LLMs), we have now invigorated our platform ecosystem with a broader vary of AI-generated content material (AIGC) purposes,” CEO Ross Liang mentioned in a press release.
“This endeavor permits us to enhance musicians’ effectivity in the important thing steps of music manufacturing in addition to to supply customers with a extra dynamic and interactive person expertise. These improvements are designed to additional enrich our platform’s content material, creating large alternatives for us to fulfill customers’ various and nuanced music tastes and social wants in new and thrilling methods.”
TME will not be the one China-based know-how and leisure big exploring AI-powered music-making instruments.
MBW just lately noticed that TIkTok guardian firm ByteDance was on the lookout for a Product Supervisor in Los Angeles to affix a crew that’s “engaged on an AI-powered device that gives clever music creation and audio modifying capabilities”
The job advert defined additional that the app’s “imaginative and prescient” is “to considerably decrease the music creation barrier and encourage musical creativity and expression, additional enriching the music content material”.Music Enterprise Worldwide
