Drowned in Sound

“If you start out and it doesn't do something that you're very impressed by, your assumption should be that your prompt wasn't very good,” this summarises the advice from music industry veteran David Boyle, who specialises in understanding audiences, and over the last few months has become an expert in using ChatGPT (if you've not already, give it a go here). So much so he's co-written a book called PROMPT about, you guessed it, writing prompts to get artificial intelligence to give you better answers.

This conversation is aimed at musicians and people who work in the music industry, but the takeaways should be fairly obvious whatever you're trying to achieve. Our host, Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams, shares some of the ways he's been using ChatGPT to get movie recommendations based on the songs that are on the soundtrack and using it to better understand the complex legalese in a contract.

This conversation has also inspired David and his team to write a new edit of PROMPT for musicians, taking in some of the elements and workflows we discussed. Drowned in Sound listeners can grab it at a special rate using this link.

We hope you will find the practical examples and advice in this episode useful, and we would love to see screenshots or hear about how you've used it. Tweet @seaninsound and @beglen if you get chance. Actually, a sneaky tip, there's also a Twitter bot that you can send Qs to here.

Related Links

• the Hannah Peel tweet that inspired this episode.
• the Nick Cave blog post about ChatGPT.
• here's MidJourney, the AI image generator that's mentioned in this episode.
• this is where you can sign up to the Drowned in Sound newsletter on Substack.
• Water & Music have just released an interesting deep dive into AI and music - summed up in this Twitter thread

The robots are coming, and people are fearful and excited about the potential for AI and music to collide. It's hard to escape the discourse surrounding artificial intelligence, with various projects launches or low-level things reaching critical max in 2023.

As someone who is pretty cynical and emo about everything, Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams is oddly optimistic about some of AI music's potential futures, especially surrounding the collision of science, technology and more 'functional' strands of music. As a lover of Sigur Ros, side two of Bowie's Low and contemporary composers like Poppy Ackroyd and Grouper, he's been a heavy user of the Endel app, which composes/generates music in real time, using sounds, textures, samples and frequencies, to create a soundscapes to listen to whilst you focus, relax, walk, sleep and more.

In this episode, two of the co-founders Oleg Stavitsky and Dmitry Evgrafov (listen to some of his non-AI music on bandcamp here) discuss everything from circadian rhythms to their love of Brian Eno. They also explore the science and tech behind the launch of an 8-hour Sleep Science playlist (listen here) with Amazon Music, which opens with an Amazon Original track featuring electronic duo Kx5 (Kaskade and deadmau5) that was produced using the hit EDM track “Escape”. The source material, including synths and chill vocals, was processed by Endel Pacific to create a high-quality, relaxing soundscape activating the parasympathetic nervous system and getting the listener ready for sleep.

Using this link, you can get a free month trial of Endel to better understand what we're talking about: https://code.endel.io/?code=drownedinsound (worth getting it just to hear the James Blake soundscape)

Also mentioned in the intro to this episode was Bronze Format, Max Richter's groundbreaking SLEEP album, and toward the end Oleg encourages you to join Endel's Discord community, which is here.

As always, if you have any thoughts or ideas, contact our host @seaninsound on your social platform of choice and subscribe to our mailing list here.

TikTok is so important, but what on earth are you meant to be doing on it? Here at Drowned in Sound we have not had a enough of experts, so we found one who can help us and you get our heads around TikTok. Our guest this week is musician and producer (and soon to be stand up comedian) Eleanor Fletcher, who's also a member of festival favourites Crystal Fighters, to find out how she's garnered 900k like on the platform and found a new audience in just a few months. Give her feed a scroll and follow her here tiktok.com/@eleanorkishere

This is part of a sub-series of podcasts, looking at the foundations of where the music industry is at. It's sort of a mini masterclass for musicians but the advice applies for anyone who wants to have a better understanding on creating "content" for the platform.

There's some really simple tips about how to introduce a video (the first few seconds are known as the 'hook' to 'hook people in', rather than the melody of a pop song...) and Eleanor mentions the key things of being "interesting and intriguing", keeping a list of ideas in your notes app, and makes the whole thing feel a lot less daunting.

Would love to know what you took away from this episode and anything you feel I missed to cover in future episodes.

Links to bits mentioned in the show

• The clip by TikTokker ToLiveWithIntent
• Recommended musician to follow: KiraLise
• Hemingway App

For more, join Drowned in Sound's new Substack newsletter.

In case it wasn't obvious, this a music podcast that hasn't had enough of experts and to mark International Women's Day 2023 we spoke to Vick Bain the founder of The F-List and President of ISM (the independent society of musicians), to her PhD research into inequality in the music industry.

This episodes covers everything from her research into the Ivors songwriting awards having a pitiful amount of women winners to setting up the F List database of female+ musicians.

In recent days, Vick Bain has appeared on the BBC's flagship programmes Woman's Hour and Newsnight, as well as spoken to The Guardian about what Glastonbury's Emily Eavis called a "pipeline problem" in trying to secure festival headliners that aren't male.

This is the first in a series of conversations about inequality and the future of the music industry.

If you've been impacted by harassment within the music industry, visit WeAreMusic for a selection of links.

For more about Drowned in Sound, join our Substack newsletter and follow our founder and podcast host @seaninsound.

How do we "fix" music streaming? It's a question that has plagued the music industry and musicians for a decade and a half, whilst debating the pounds, pennies and slithers of a pence per stream... so this discussion about music streaming seemed like a great place to restart our podcast, which is will focus on music, through the prism of creativity, sustainability, pioneers and big ideas.
There are now a range of campaigns around the world and several organisations unifying in the UK to try to change the law, to ensure musicians and those who invest in them receive fairer pay from Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, Apple, Amazon, etc, etc, etc...

In the UK, there's been a UK government DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) enquiry exploring the issue of music streaming royalties and the challenges faced by musicians in receiving fair compensation for their work.

In this relaunch episode of our podcast, DiS founder Sean Adams (@seaninsound | drownedinsound.org) spoke to Naomi Pohl, the General Secretary of the Musicians' Union, a trade union representing 33,000 musicians about music streaming. We also discussed various campaigns she's the driving force behind to improve things for musicians. The General Secretary highlights the efforts of the Musicians' Union to advocate for and support musicians, including their fight for fair pay and improved working conditions. You'll also learn about the importance of joining a union and how both musicians and music fans can support their campaigns, which you can find here musiciansunion.org.uk (including how new members can join for as little as £1).

The wide-ranging enquiry into music streaming, entitled Copyright (Rights and Renumeration, etc) Bill, also known as The Brennan Bill (named because it's been led by musician and Labour MP Kevin Brennan) is looking into the current music streaming landscape, including the payment structures and methods used by music streaming platforms, as well as the challenges faced by musicians in receiving appropriate compensation from the platforms and their labels. The aim of the enquiry, which has been going on for a couple of years now, is to make recommendations to the UK government on ways to ensure that musicians receive fair compensation for their work, and to ensure that the music industry continues to thrive and support musicians. You can read more about where the enquiry is currently at on MusicAlly here.

In this conversation, Naomi Pohl explains her role and the process of changing the law and discusses her wider challenges over the coming months and years.
Want to help? "A positive step you can take to find out who your local MP is and try and build a bit of a relationship, especially if you find that there's somebody there who's passionate about music" - you can find your MP using theyworkforyou.com
How many musicians are there in the UK? There's a census happening which you can take part in here musicianscensus.co.uk