How Will AI Change Advertising for the Music Industry?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is getting smarter. Among its growing list of accomplishments, AI can pass the bar exam, win chess championships and provide more accurate medical diagnoses than humans. It’s also becoming more agile, moving into the arts. AI can knit a shawl and sell a painting for $1 million.
No wonder, then, everyone’s talking about it — and everyone has questions, including within the media and advertising community, and especially within our little niche, music. AI’s breadth and promise are exciting, but how far can it go? How much will this new technology upend our lives? Will it take our jobs? At a time when an AI-generated artist racked up more than 1.5 million views on YouTube, will we only be listening to AI-generated music five years from now?
Clearly, more changes are coming. AI will transform advertising for the music industry, for the good and the bad. We’ve got some thoughts on how.
The Bad: More Reliance on AI and Algorithms
Oh, if we had a nickel for every time some screwup was blamed on “the algorithm.” Advertising platforms have been limiting our controls over the last year in favor of AI taking more control. For instance, video conversion campaigns on Google no longer allow any targeting outside of audience-based options. Meanwhile, Meta removed targets advertisers used for years and no longer allows any Advantage+ audience to be disabled.
The platforms are forcing advertisers to opt into AI products without sufficient time to assess whether they work. This gives us no recourse if they aren’t.
This will really affect the platforms in the long run. Such changes can have a chilling effect on advertising — fewer controls on our end mean fewer opportunities to make adjustments to optimize a campaign. And if clients see something isn’t working (because we can’t make those necessary changes), they may react by pulling their dollars. We view this trend as a con, but we think platforms could adjust in the long run.
The Good: Solving Pixel Limitations
One of the best things about AI is its results-focused approach. It looks for answers and finds them. That means finding solutions to problems that have plagued the music industry.
We can envision a world where AI bridges the disconnect between streaming services and digital advertising platforms to connect clicks to real-time actions. If we can transition to a post-pixel world in advertising and use AI to represent total streams from each click more accurately, we could make better advertising decisions based on where true streaming conversions are occurring.
To that end, we have a lot of questions that need to be addressed and aren’t getting the attention they deserve:
- Does a click count if the user doesn’t fully load the streaming service page?
- Could AI help advertisers deal with bounce more effectively?
- Is there potential for AI to report to us on what actions the user has taken?
AI bridges the gap between streaming platforms and ad tracking, solving long-standing pixel limitations in music advertising.
The Bad: Less Control of Placement, Creative and Targets
The human touch can’t be replicated. Advertising is an art, not a science, and in art, you need the human touch. AI-generated shawls, paintings and music may have novelty, but they will never match the real thing.
AI puts the squeeze on the human touch. The advertising platforms have introduced AI-created copy and AI-adjusted creative. They’ve decreased the availability of targets that we’ve used for years in favor of broad, AI-determined targets.
Meta is auto-enabling AI even when it compromises brand quality. It has published headlines that don’t make sense (using the file name as a headline, for example), crafted basic ad copy that sounds nothing like the artist’s voice (not understanding who the artist is and what the song title is in the copy), or added a song to an image ad that doesn’t fit with the brand.
You have to ask, is it really a timesaver if you have to double check and redo everything yourself? These small but notable errors make ad set-up more cumbersome than it used to be, and it’s become a fight to disable anything that could affect how the artist is representing themselves.
The Good: Potential to Reach New People
Casting a wider net is beneficial when it comes to advertising. We are always trying to find the best targets, but inevitably, any format leaves potential fans on the table. With the promise of better reporting down the road (powered by AI’s unmatched ability to synthesize data and improve suggestions), broad targets and more capturable data could help advertisers find more fans excluded by previous targeting methods.
The Bad: AI Determines What Songs Are Hits Vs. Letting the Audience Decide
One of the most beautiful things about music has always been its inherent democracy. If you have talent, people pick up on that and play your music to reward you. They respond to the artistry and the message.
AI doesn’t have feelings or nuance, and so it can’t react in the same way. It measures what to amplify based on virality, not powerful lyrics, sheer talent or any of the other things that can make an artist stand out. Would AI be able to pick up on a Bob Dylan-level talent (whose appeal lies in the overall package—seems unlikely), or would it prioritize the creative with the most viral elements? Would the quality of music we consume be affected by what AI deems best?
That seems likely and, to us, sad. We’re in this business because we genuinely love the talented people who produce the music. De-leveling the playing field for them doesn’t appeal to us.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
AI won’t spell the end of the advertising industry, but it will enable advertising professionals to make informed decisions based on the potential new reporting that AI could offer. We’ve laid out the good and the bad. Now here’s the ugly: If AI gains too much control, it could spoil the best creative aspects. Hopefully the industry will maintain the right balance — we know we will. So, if you’re interested in collaborating with us on a campaign that incorporates real human elements, reach out today.