A Napster Moment
Last week, I had a Napster moment.
In the summer of 1999, I fell in love with music. My brothers had their collections of records, cassettes, and CDs, but I never seemed to have the money or inclination to collect these. When I started driving on my own, I’d turn on the radio and was eventually drawn to Oldies 1310, the local AM station playing “hits from the 50s, 60s, and 70s.”
I had already heard of WinAmp for playing music from the web. But it was Napster that was a magical invention. Any song from any time period could be found, downloaded, and listened to within minutes.
5 O’Clock World by The Vogues?
Make Her Mine by the Hipster Image?
It was of no challenge at all forthe little app. It chugged away and made it seamless to access music.
Why did I feel the same exhilaration way last week?
Suno.AI. What if your life could have a soundtrack? What if your day? Or minute?
Within a few minutes, I was able to create a jingle using ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini and then input to Suno with a description of what I wanted. I did it multiple languages and the result sounded like something that at the least would have cost me several hundred dollars on Fiverr. A few of the sounds were so catchy that I found myself singing them through the day and humming the lyrics.
This is how it feels today. What will it look like in six months? Two years? My hot take is that there will be a fully AI generated charting single in traditional media channels by the end of 2025.
We’re less than half way through 2024 and already we still have the release Sora ahead of us, with other “The Rock Eating Rocks” type video services ahead. When we start to tailor these services to different experiences, it’s going to be magical.
Here are a few of the creations…