Navigating the AI Content Deluge: Why Discovery Will Be the Next Battleground
It’s inarguable that AI has already begun to drive down the “friction to create” across many industries. Creating code, creating art, creating music, creating books, creating spreadsheets, creating analysis….all are getting easier, faster and cheaper with AI tools….and the tools will only get better from here.
But in a world where the friction to create diminishes exponentially, the array of choices for every decision will surge, creating a landscape where options multiply at an unprecedented rate.
This is both a problem AND an opportunity.
Imagine a future where the number of new songs uploaded for streaming, the number of books written and the number of pieces of digital art being created doubles every few months. In 2023, over 100MM new songs and 4MM books were uploaded to major platforms….so imagine this number growing exponentially!
With a rapidly growing number of choices, individuals face the daunting task of deciding between consuming well-known content or engaging with lesser-known creations. And to complicate matters further, AI tools will soon be able to help consumers create high-quality, customized content on demand.
It won’t be long before a parent will choose between reading an existing children’s book to their daughter or creating one in real time with her. Curated and static content will compete with dynamically composable content that’s created on demand. This surge in options is going to create a new battleground centered on curation and discovery and this in turn will have to compete with spontaneous autogenesis.
To put this in context, the total international music catalog sits at a bit more than 160MM songs and it was recently calculated that 38MM songs have zero streams. Zero. And 67MM songs have received fewer than ten streams. Imagine what will happen when the catalog becomes 10X, 100X or even 10,000X today’s size! Imagine what will happen when you’ll have the ability to generate lyrics and music and produce them into a “listenable song” in minutes using natural language prompts. Creation, curation, discovery and consumption of content in the world of today vs the world of the future won’t look anything alike.
To navigate this labyrinth of content, the emergence of robust discovery engines becomes a necessity. The big question is not what these engines will do, but rather who will control them. The engines will possess the ability to sift through the overwhelming abundance of content and present tailored, meaningful recommendations to individuals. But if the engines are controlled by platforms like Spotify and Amazon the result won’t be the same as if the engines are controlled by individuals!
Herein lies a multi-billion-dollar prize in each and every content heavy industry! Will new discovery engines emerge as independent layers to the servers that house and present content or will the discovery engines be built into the existing content platforms with the algorithms controlled centrally? Are consumers willing to pay for independence or will they be satisfied with free tools built into the platforms they already use knowing that “the algorithm” controls discovery?
The answer to this question isn’t a little important to the future of content creation…it’s a lot important. As it stands today, it’s incredibly difficult for even a fraction of content creators to make a good living because the explosion of choice has spread the economics of industries incredibly thinly. For instance, musicians who monetize via streaming revenue are paid between $0.03 and $0.06 per 1,000 streams. Using modern tools and AI to reduce the cost of producing their songs is helpful, but the truth is that it still takes 1MM streams to earn $30-$60K of top line revenue. Getting discovered isn’t easy (and becoming more difficult as choices expand) and making the math behind “marketing” work is challenging given the economics of the industry. The same is true for publishing. The same is true for art. The same is true for everything content related.
Friction reduction is driving a Cambrian Explosion of choices.
A Cambrian Explosion of choices creates a curation and discovery issue.
A curation and discovery issue presents both a problem and an opportunity!
