A Deeper Level of Inner Space – out now!
Over the last few months, I have taken a creative break from new releases for several reasons.
On the one hand, I have been helping my partner and Zhineng Qigong teacher Montse Soto to produce meditative music and guided meditations. The first tracks can already be heard on Bandcamp under the deliberately unwieldy project name The Mingueicians – I’ll write a separate newsletter about this. Mingjue Kungfu btw means clear awareness or pure observer.
https://themingjueicians.bandcamp.com
On the other hand, I am always concerned about the current form of music distribution. The streaming platforms pay ridiculously low royalties, with Spotify leading the way at around $0.003 per stream. One million streams equates to around $3,000. I have made a real effort to implement recommendations from social media gurus to some extent with a website, regular postings, etc., but – I admit it – rather badly than well. Accordingly, I’m still a bit away from millions of streams.
Nevertheless, I am obviously more successful than 90% of Sportify artists, even if that only means transfers of 100 to 200 francs every now and then. Music is by no means just about money, but recognition in capitalism is expressed financially. It could certainly be a bit more.
And then there is the matter of AI, artificial intelligence. This is extremely fascinating, and as an old science fiction fan, I consider myself privileged to be experiencing this new and highly consequential technological revolution live. For a long time, it was expected that robots would first take the jobs away from manual labourers, but now it is primarily knowledge workers who are falling victim to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).
Music is already being produced by autonomous music programmes. Style and sound can be specified with so-called prompts. The current status is at the level of hit parade droning, which raises a lot of legal questions as well as musical ones, especially as the AI has been trained with the products of existing artists. In a few months’ time, it will be possible to ask an AI to produce a new Pink Floyd song and the result will be quite acceptable.
But I think that my personal view of things and my own style will still be in demand. I’m interested in how I can make music faster and more efficiently with AI without giving up the sceptre. I’ll report back here when I have new insights.
Anyway, despite all doubts, here is a new track called “A Deeper Level of Inner Space”. The track was created during a Qigong retreat and has a correspondingly ambient character, even if it then leads into a beat again. I like the track a lot. And you?
Bandcamp
https://pjwassermann.bandcamp.com/album/a-deeper-level-of-inner-space
You can play the music for free in Bandcamp and you can also buy it as a download.
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pjwassermannMusic/
Please follow me on Bandcamp, Spotify and the other social media if you want to be notified immediately when I release new music. Thank you.
