
Ask HN: Music tech, what's next? - londondev45
Hello,<p>Just wondering if anyone is in the music technology space, where is the industry heading? Is Spotify the last word. It seems like there&#x27;s innovation happening with machine learning, recommendations etc, what comes next?
======
Tunecrew
New standards and techniques for B2B interchange of metadata to help solve
licensing and payment problems. Blockchain is a potential part of this.

------
neilsimp1
You mentioned Spotify, which is tech for music streaming. I saw this and
remembered an idea my old bandmates and I came up with once. I'm going to
share it anyways, even though it's more about music performance than
streaming.

Has anyone ever used an Fractal Axe-FX or Kemper or any other amp modeler? If
not, it's essentially a digital replacement of tube amp technology, with the
capability of modelling a whole bunch of guitar amps and effects. We dreamed
up the idea of having one device like this, but capable of handling the whole
band. Essentially, we'd want a small but powerful PC, running a custom Linux
distro built for audio processing, with enough inputs for several instruments.
The machine should be able to record, have outputs to plug into PA, have
effects processing, etc. The technology for all of this already exists, it
just needs to be combined into one box.

Maybe this is a little bit off-topic for this thread, but I still think this
would be a great idea for any recording/performing band.

~~~
hluska
That's a very interesting idea. If it could handle the rigours of the road and
the heat of a stage + lights, I think it would become an extremely common
sight at live shows.

Wicked job!

~~~
neilsimp1
Oh, sure. That thing would have to be a tank to survive gigging.

------
twunde
What's happened in the last 5 years is the rollout of multiple streaming
services (Tidal, Apple Music, Amazon Music) and the partial collapse of a few
players like Pandora, SoundCloud, LastFM. The real challenges to creating
music platforms are music licensing and being able to create enough revenue to
offset licensing costs. Enough people have left Youtube or the labels that
licensing systems are now common at the large players. Expect that the
advertising players without them to build/acquire them in the near future
(Facebook purchased source3 to do that about a year ago). The big push over
the next year is to update these systems for the Music Modernization Act,
which was passed in 2018. The other big change is expanding internationally
and getting music licensing to work with each country's laws and regulations.
I'd expect a new streaming service to appear in the next 5 years and at least
one to collapse. I personally suspect that there's going to be a continued
increase in services that help artists monetize, especially self-published
companies.

------
pizza
Well if by music that includes music production:

Check out Google Magenta for machine learning applied to music:
[https://magenta.tensorflow.org/](https://magenta.tensorflow.org/)

As for industry: probably more ways to sample sounds on the fly into new
instrument presets, new ways to organize music (both live and arranged),
better ways to collaborate, and better ways to self-market.

------
Juliate
That's not music tech, that's salesmanship tech.

