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Welcome to the Music Business Worldwide Podcast supported by Voly Music. On this episode, MBW founder Tim Ingham speaks to AI expert, and the CEO of LyricStudio, Dr. Maya Ackerman.

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Bloody Elon Musk. Not content with doing beastly things to Twitter (like, erm, marginally improving the user experience), he's also triggered the actual beginning of the actual end of the world.

Well, not directly. But Musk was one of the co-founders and funders of San Francisco-headquartered OpenAI, which is the progenitor of ChatGPT – the AI-powered online tool that can not only research and regurgitate online facts, but also weave that regurgitation in a variety of generated tones and styles.

Some tech experts are so impressed with ChatGPT, they say, in just a few more iterations, it will become a serious challenger to (and perhaps even surpass the usefulness of) Google, and turn the business of online search upside down.

(The next chapter in this sci-fi novel: ChatGPT gains sentience, turns our own long-trusted devices against us, and subjugates the human race. But that's probably still a few years away, so chill out, and, as Warren Zevon famously recommended, Enjoy every sandwich.)

The music industry is actually a little ahead of the curve on this topic. Because language-based 'generative AI' platforms are already transforming this business in a meaningful way – in the world of lyric writing.

LyricStudio, owned by California-headquartered parent WaveAI, produces original lyrics for songwriters in a style that mimics their own. In this sense, it's 'assistive AI' – a human companion, a muse. "When it comes to curing writer's block, there is nothing as powerful as LyricStudio," its website boasts. 

Its popularity is already mind-boggling: to date, LyricStudio has been responsible for 'assisting' the creation of over a million songs, from over a million songwriters, musicians and producers. And at least 15% of the people that use it, say LyricStudio, are professional artists.

One of those artists, rapper Curtiss King, released a No.1 album (on the US iTunes chart) last summer – with lyrics written/'assisted' by LyricStudio.

On this podcast, the co-founder and CEO of WaveAI/LyricStudio, Dr Maya Ackerman, discusses the future for AI and music – especially when it comes to lyric writing. Ackerman has some powerful credentials in the world of generative AI, having studied the field 

She points out that, so long as everyone behaves ethically, there shouldn't be a huge problem...

The Music Business Worldwide Podcast supported by Voly Music.