Right now, or should I write today there was a release of 125 000 songs online. If we calculate that the mid-length of these songs is three minutes, some are longer some are shorter. To listen to all straight through 260 days, a little more than half a year. 260 days of listening time a day would be on a year, 94900 days of music, and take 260 years to listen through. In one year, we produce more music than you can listen to in a lifetime right now, actually a bit more. If anyone would listen to all the music that came out in 2023 it’s not possible.

Now we are not calculating that AI has fully blown up. In reality, AI can make that anyone with a computer and a hook-up on the internet can do music. Even more, you can tell AI to write music just to write music. We can easily say that when AI comes into full force in a year or two, we probably look at 600 to 700 years of music each year. I probably have to eat up my hat for that number and ten years from now people will laugh about it.

Why are you doing music? Because you want people to listen, right? If not then you do music so you can listen, my point is that you don’t just do music for the sake of doing music. In the end, we want to create a song that a lot of people listen to, and if we can also get fame and money that is a big plus.

Since the creation of music will be as easy as doing an Instagram post, it will have little value. Sorry, your morning Instagram was shitty. Or maybe it was a masterpiece. Anyway, the algorithms are right now sorting things out that there is no way that social media breaks a song. And if it does it will just be a fluke that you can’t replicate. You can probably go your whole life doing something great and it will never be through these algorithms because they just put in what they think you like, nothing that is out of the ordinary.

The future of PR will be socialization. Your song must mean something to someone. You need to be able to put that song into a moment when this person can attach to it. For example, why do we love “My Heart Will Go On”? It’s a great song, but probably with today’s algorithms, it would not have been chosen since it’s a florid ballad. No, instead you saw the movie Titanic and it’s played in the strongest sequence in the movie, and every time that is played you go back to those sorrowful moment feelings from the movie. Same with “Must Have Been Love” with Roxette, the song might not have been that strong if it wasn’t for the scene in the movie.

A song needs to get feelings to or trigger emotions that you want. If you are working out “Eye of the Tiger” might be in your headphones, and that is also proven from the stairs in the movie “Rocky”. But “I got the power” with Snap work as well. So do you need to be in a movie to get that socialization for the song? No these are just prime examples, there are so many other things you can do.

When I was a student, we had a parade from our school. For a week we built silly vehicles and dressed wagons. During that week they only played two songs on repeat. One hit song and one totally silly song. It didn’t matter if you hated or liked the song from the beginning, after the third day you just hated them both. At the end of day five the day before the parade you were fine with both of them. All that struggle to build the wagons, partying, and hanging with friends suddenly was a good feeling and on the parade, you were pretty proud. In the end even today over thirty years later I get the same feeling when they play any of these two songs. I have a social attachment to them.

A social attachment can be equal good or bad. You probably remember the song you listened to a lot after your first break up or the song they played when you met your first love.

One artist I gave out did exactly that. For five years they just played in small villages since they knew nothing happened there. The kids would come down to the show, not so much to see them but to hang out. And of course, there they had good times and memories were built up and in the background was their music and they got such strong social attachment that now they are a big superstar in Sweden and still draw thousands of people even if they are kind of mediocre.

It could be a journey as well. I still listen to Taylor Swift since the band I tour with on one tour just played the shit of her album. Or when my friends and I went to Berlin and just played Bodycount with “Bodycount in the house” the whole trip. I can just go on.

In the future with so many songs, the quality might not be the big thing. You need to get people to play that song in moments when it matters, sorrow, happiness, party. This will be the big nut to crack for the PR people, but you need socialization to a song. and to get that you need a person to listen to the song five times, not that hard, still so hard.

By Peter Åstedt