Debbie Ball on screen Photo: supplied
A PR manager passionate about helping get Indie artist cut-through, the UK’s Debbie Ball has developed an expertise in how best to work with digital media to make new fans for music online. Now also a digital humanities lecturer at King's College London and the University of Westminster, its led to an interest in the role of AI in music creation
The influence of AI on how we create and listen to music is growing, exponentially.
A Los Angeles-based app Mayk.It, for example, now allows you to create a song in under five minutes. You can render your voice to create a pretty uncanny version of Taylor Swift’s ‘Take it Off’ - correct pitch, add effects, edit audio and mix in a few clicks.
From AI-generated ‘Fake Drake’ tracks, to an about-to-be released new Beatles track constructed from old demo tapes, AI is both democratising music and cutting out the artist.
AI has also majorly changed what we listen to: algorhythms determining both what plays next, but also what ends up in our social media feeds.
But it’s not all dystopian horror. AI products can be a fantastic creative tool, to a degree, argues Ball. Used responsibly, she says, they enhance our human skills, as well as boost music discovery.
Ball’s PR company Create Spark has worked with everyone from Katy Perry to Tame Impala and Sufjan Stevens. She was recently at the Going Global Music Summit in Auckland care of British Council NZ. She joined Mark Amery on Culture 101.
