Can Badshah and Drake really collab on a spicy track? Or is it a really far-fetched thought? Well, AI can make it true.
Recently a musical track featuring Drake and the Weeknd titled ‘Heart on My Sleeve‘ took the world by storm. Why was the collaboration so special? It never happened. It was a musical track generated by AI. Currently, the track has been pulled down from the store, but exciting conversations have opened up.
Let’s dive in!
👇 The Story
An AI-generated song, “Heart on My Sleeve,” by AI Drake and Weeknd was released last week. It set off industry alarm bells because of its alarmingly similar voices.
Therefore, it was completely taken down by their labels.
The song got:
- 600,000 Spotify streams
- 15 million TikTok views
- 275,000 YouTube views
Therefore, it was completely taken down by their labels. The song definitely caught the attention of the world. But how did real users who listened to the song feel? Here are some of the comments from YouTube:
- “This would literally go No. 1 on the charts if Drake released it.”
- “If you told me this was just an unreleased song, I’d believe it.”
- “I wish I could be a fly on the wall when Drake himself first hears this. This slaps.”
🤔 The Music Industry’s response
The first thing the music industry did was to ban the track. The track earned instant comparisons to earlier technologies that disrupted the music industry, including the dawn of the synthesizer, the sampler and the file-sharing service Napster.
Universal Music Group ensured that the track was scrubbed though it is challenging to remove it altogether. They have released a statement on which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.
This brings back to the thought I circled back to when talking about AI compositions.
It is like the famous Ship of Theseus puzzle - when you replace a ship part by part with new parts, will the ship remain the same, or will it be considered a new ship? Let’s rephrase it for AI - will a new song generated by being trained on all the songs of the original singer be original or copyrighted?
The middle ground is to license their voice likeness - just like merchandising. Some of the artists who have already licensed their likeness are:
- Canadian electro pop artist Grimes has offered 50% royalties for creators to use her voice likeness to generate songs.
- Computer musician Holly Herndon has created an AI-powered voice clone of herself using deep learning.
Closing this topic with a Drake-powered meme seems appropriate. 🙂
😃 AI Humour
Tool of the Day
Vocal Remover
This tool can remove the vocals from a track while retaining the music using AI algorithms. Basically create your own karaoke version of songs. (Or train your super secret AI to compose new songs for you.)
Prompt of the Day
You are an email marketing expert. Craft an email marketing campaign using the 'Friend-Expert' framework.
I want to establish a connection with [Ideal Customer Persona] and position our [brand or product Service] as an expert in our field.
Use a friendly and approachable tone to connect with the reader, but also highlight our credibility and expertise in our field.
Include talking points such as [Unique Selling Points, Pain Points, and Desired Action]
Reference: Colby Shelton
This prompt can help you craft v1 of an effective email marketing campaign. Replace the words in square brackets with the description of your use case.