Slave to the 'rithm: the AI turn in the music industries

Music services increasingly claim to use artificial intelligence (AI) as a key part of their business. AI is typically depicted in terms of its benefit to music creators and practitioners, democratizing creativity and facilitating low- or no-cost participation; or its efficiencies for businesses, offering data-informed insights into an increasingly complex economic and technological landscape. We argue that the “AI turn” represents a re-consolidation of corporate power, where capital, knowledge and access lie increasingly in the hands of a few digital intermediaries. We document five historical and current trends: the emergence of a streaming oligopoly, the datafication of music, music as digital asset, the changing value of recorded music artefacts and the increase of sub-amateur music producers whose work relies on centralized technologies of production. These trends lead to the treatment of music as an asset class, to be monetized by actors both within and outside the music industries.