M+E Connections

NEW YORK – The growing popularity of smart speakers and the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) and voice-powered systems in the home and car are changing the way artists can create music and how consumers can access music, presenting major new opportunities for the music industry, according to Gracenote and TiVo executives.

Using music metadata effectively will only help music artists and record labels make sure they’re on the right music playlists for each consumer, they said Oct. 4 during a panel session called “AI and Voice-Activation: Creation to Consumption” at the Digital Music Forum that was part of the two-day NY Media Festival.

“Consumer expectations are jumping as aggressively as the adoption of the platforms,” Scott Ryan, global VP of music at Gracenote, said. But he told the summit: “On top of the … data challenges we’ve had in the industry, being able to get to the one right answer” for what a consumer is looking for “has been something that needs quite a bit of care.”

“Data is a huge issue,” Kyle Smetanka, TiVo senior product manager, said. Noting smart speakers have been on the market for 3-4 years, he said: “We’ve been able to solve very simple consumer use cases, which has been great for early adopters” of those products. But now we need to solve more complex use cases for the mainstream market with these products, he said.

For example, Smetanka asked, “how do you personalize” the experience for each consumer so that if the user of a smart speaker or similar device wants to hear a specific version of a song that’s available in many different versions, he or she can actually get the one version being sought?

It gets even more complicated when two versions of a song are very popular, which is the case with, as an example, the Eric Clapton and Bob Marley versions of “I Shot the Sheriff,” he noted.

To figure out which version of a song a specific listener wants to hear, “you could map that to a taste profile – a taste preference — and you could map that to previous listening behavior,” such as whether the person is a bigger fan of reggae or rock music, he said, adding: “One of the tasks for us is integrating that with” TiVo’s AI learning platform. Solving all these issues will help “bridge the gap to mainstream consumers,” he told the summit.

Agreeing with him, John Rosso, president of market development at audio technology and ad company Triton Digital, said “it’s super frustrating” when you get the Kidz Bop version of a song instead of the one you’re looking for.

Consumers are listening to more music and spoken word audio now as a result of owning Google Home and other smart speakers, Rosso said. Therefore, “this is definitely a platform that anybody who creates audio content – whether it’s music-based or word-based … has to pay attention to.”

On the automotive front, meanwhile, car makers are “getting faster at upgrading their head units” to integrate the latest technology, Ryan said.

That trend is “changing the possibilities of what we can start integrating in the car,” Smetanka said. As connection speeds continue to increase, streaming is increasingly competing with AM/FM broadcast radio for ad dollars in the car, he also pointed out. “You have so many different types of options now available” for audio content in the car – which will only expand as we shift to 5G connectivity – the big question is “how do you tailor that to the consumer?” He added: “I think that’s the next big challenge for us.”