From jingles to pop hits, AI is music to some ears

A growing number of firms are using artificial intelligence to compose music

Patrick Stobbs recently sat in a conference room here playing songs from his smartphone, attempting to show how his start-up, Jukedeck, is at the cutting edge of music. The tune sounded like the soundtrack to a 1980s video game. “This is where we were two years ago,” he said, looking slightly embarrassed.

“And this is where we are now,” he continued. He then played a gentle piano piece. Its melody was simple, and it was unsubtle in its melancholy, but there was no denying that it could work as background music for, say, a health insurance commercial.

Stobbs didn’t write the music himself, nor did he commission it from a composer. Jukedeck is one of a growing number of companies using artificial intelligence to compose music. Their computers tap tools like artificial neural networks, modelled on the brain, that allow the machines to learn by doing, rather as a child does. So far, at least, these businesses do not seem to be causing much anxiety among musicians.

“We see our system as still in its infancy; it’s only learnt a certain amount about music,” Stobbs said, although he quickly hinted how he hoped Jukedeck’s music could advance: “There’s no rule of physics that says computers can’t get as good as a human.”

Having machines write music is not new. In the 1950s, the composer Lejaren Hiller used a computer to produce the “Illiac” Suite for string quartet, the first computer-generated score.

Since then, countless researchers have pushed that work forward. But several start-ups are now trying to commercialise AI music for everything from jingles to potential pop hits. Jukedeck, for instance, is looking to sell tracks to anyone who needs background music for videos, games or commercials. The company charges large businesses just $21.99 to use a track, a fraction of what hiring a musician would cost. Stobbs wouldn’t reveal how many tracks it has sold, but said that the British division of Coca-Cola pays for a monthly subscription.

Tech giants are also involved. In June, Google Brain announced Magenta, a project that aims to have computers produce “compelling and artistic” music, filled with surprises. Its efforts so far do not quite fit the bill.

In September, DeepMind, the Google-owned British artificial intelligence company, also released results of an experiment it undertook for fun. DeepMind put samples of piano music into its WaveNet system, used to generate audio, such as speech. The system, which was not told anything about how music worked, used the initial audio to synthesise 10-second clips that sound like avant-garde jazz. IBM also has a research project called Watson Beat, which musicians will be able to use to transform their work’s style, making songs sound Middle Eastern, for example, or “spooky.”

Jukedeck’s beginnings are somewhat surprising for a tech company. Mr. Stobbs and the composer Ed Newton-Rex, both 29, founded it in 2012. They had been choristers at King’s College School in Cambridge, England, and Newton-Rex went on to study music at the University of Cambridge, where he first learned that artificial intelligence could compose. 

© 2017 New York Times News Service