Most Wanted: Music 2017

Blockchain technology seems to be the most decisive (and only) hope for musicians and artists in general. It delivers the promise of a transparent, secure and fair exchange for creative work. Or to say the least, to get more money faster. However, the mess musicians are in is only another even fractional proof for what is wrong in society and business as a whole. Economic principles or governmental systems with the best reputation start to malfunction or even fail. This talk puts music into perspective. Into the broad context of the fundamental changes and challenges ahead.

The project ABC_DJ aims at providing new software tools that enable European branding agencies to identify brand-fitting music titles from large music archives. Therefore, a statistical model will be developed to predict semantic, brand-related connotations of musical pieces based on acoustical features of the music and the social and cultural context of the listeners. These predictions will be used to automatically create playlists which can be used for marketing and point of sale branding activities such as selection of instore music. ABC_DJ will thus increase the pool of music effectively exploitable for branding agencies significantly and enables them to serve the diverse market needs. The project receives funding by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 688122.

Event organizers and promoters face multiple risks: artist cancellation, bad weather, etc. However, the most common yet usually uninsurable reason for unsuccessful events is unsold tickets since “78% of events don’t actually sell out”, according to Michael Rapino, CEO of Live Nation. Luckily new possibilities of gathering and analyzing data by the means of intelligent algorithms by now enable promoters to accurately predict ticket sales with no need to rely on their guts or big pockets.

In a soon-to-be fully-digitized world, people will be confronted with an ocean of choices in consumption across music, movies, video-games, books, shopping, leisure, employment, well-being, sports, relationships, etc. Personal virtual assistants will become vital to meet the demands of the consumers of tomorrow, seamlessly guiding them in real time to tailor-made content recommendation according to their emotions, personality, social contexts and health status. Because of its emotional intelligence, Musimap’s game-changing HI + AI powered technology represents the trust engine and compass that will navigate people in the upcoming Internet of Emotions era, allowing them to enjoy an enriched life closer to their emotions.