🎙️ Is AI the biggest disruption the music industry has ever seen?

In this episode of Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle, Bobby welcomes Matt Adell, COO of Musical.ai, a trailblazer in bridging the gap between rightsholders and AI developers. With a career spanning Napster, Beatport, and Native Instruments, Matt offers deep insight into the seismic shift AI is bringing to music - bigger than file sharing or streaming. He explains how attribution, fair compensation, and licensing are being redefined for a new digital era.

This episode is packed with hard-earned wisdom, music tech history, and a clear-eyed look at where we’re headed next. If you want to understand what’s really going on in music and AI, this is essential listening.

Key Takeaways:

• Why AI’s impact on music is bigger than file sharing or streaming
• How Musical.ai connects rightsholders and AI companies in licensed environments
• Why artists should get paid based on how their work influences AI outputs
• The dangers of unmanaged AI training on copyrighted content
• Why creative outputs are easier to attribute than factual ones
• The oversupply of music and its economic implications for artists
• Why music's shift to streaming wasn't a loss—it was a win for consumers
• The future of fair licensing in AI-driven content creation
• Matt’s unique career path from punk rock drummer to tech executive
• His personal message about sobriety and finding balance

Best Moments:

00:02:05. “AI does not think. It is a giant calculator.”
00:04:03. “Unmanaged, it was an existential threat to copyright owners, to musicians, to composers.”
00:06:37. “Depending on what someone output, it's going to be more or less similar to each piece of training data.”
00:08:34. “Our technology works the same way no matter what. It's model and modal agnostic.”
00:12:13. “Music is usually on the cutting edge, but AI is moving fast.”
00:14:07. “We went from a couple hundred new releases a week to over 150,000 every day.”
00:18:

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This edition adds chapters on intelligent processor plugins, saturation and distortion, and mixing in small studios. Learn to use reference tracks, mix in Dolby Atmos and Sony 360RA, and master modern techniques like MS processing, frequency-based panning, and sidechain compression, all to make your mixes sound pro. 

Thank you for tuning in to Bobby Owsinski’s Inner Circle, the podcast that takes you deep inside the music industry. Each week, Bobby shares insights, news, analysis, and conversations with the movers and shakers shaping today’s music world.

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