Digital disruption is knock knock knockin’ at the music industry’s door, 20 years after the MP3 and Napster made CD collections obsolete. Artificial intelligence is now filling playlists with ambient music and making pitch-perfect copies of human stars like Grimes, who Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lionel Laurent interviewed for this special episode of Crash Course. He dives into the risky race to make musical robots and how record labels and artists are fighting back with new business models, new types of music, and new ideas about copyright — which could serve as a guide for how the wider economy and the rest of society can deal with AI.
NOTE: This episode incorrectly states the name of Grimes' manager. It is Daouda Leonard, not Leonard Daouda.