Random Music Generators Save the Earth
Random Music Generator... I've been trying to recall in which SF novel I first read about this, I think it was Greg Egan's Quarantine. The idea seems simple enough: a computer with a rudimentary, but constantly evolving understanding of the nature of rhythm, harmony and melody, that generates musical compositions on the fly. For the most part the user's interaction with it may be no more than selecting a mood or indicating whether or not they liked the last composition, thus helping the system learn and evolve new music tailored to it's owner. These compositions would almost certainly be only instrumental to begin with since voice synthesis technology is far from impressive (which is surprising considering the advances in the visual equivalent), but voice sampling is a simple workaround that has proved more than adequate in the world of Electronica for many years.

The system could be extended with libraries of samples, instruments and other information on the components of music. For instance one could add an extension that would enable Joey Santiago style guitar crunchs, or one that just makes the music sound more 'Christmasy.' With your choice of extensions and the information gathered about the types of compositions you've favoured in the past, your RMG would become a very personal source of entertainment. You may never buy another CD or download another track; all you would do is look up new extensions now and then.

Can the music industry call copyright infringement if an RMG happens to hit on a pre-existing composition? Could they somehow demand that the software screen out compositions that sound 'too much like' existing copyrighted material? It's doubtful. Technically it would be far more difficult than generating the music in the first place. And, lets face it, there is no "new" music as such, what we are getting now sounds an awful lot like the music of ten years ago. There have been no new innovations, no new genres in that long. Because of this, if copyright were applied as restrictively as it would need to be to cover RMG compositions there could be no "new" music at all since it has all long since become someone's Intellectual Property.

The real downside of this could emerge if RMGs become sophisticated enough to challenge the quality of human musicians. If we all have our own bands and orchestras in our inside pockets what would human musicians do? Well, naturally there'll be things that RMG will have great difficulty with - writing lyrics for instance or breaking and joining genres 'appropriately' and, of course, there will always be the purely organic experience of live performance. Perhaps the artists will even work with their own BMGs, using them to help create new works. But if RMGs work the music industry of the future would be a very different animal, there certainly won’t be the revenue involved with the sort of legal battles they are fighting today, they would be something smaller, driven by artists rather than management, motivated by love of music rather than love of money. RMGs could destroy the music industry and at the same time save the music.