Are Virtual Artists About To Take Over?

One more time. One more time. One more time. Spend it, rock. Spend it, one more time. Baby, baby, one more time. And so I can't go back to Costa Rica for 14 months. It's crazy, honestly. Welcome back to another episode of the One More Time podcast. Welcome back, guys. Today we are going to discuss virtual artists. Ooh, virtual, what? So the way that this came about, and the reason why we wanted to talk about it is because we just interviewed legendary music producer OG Parker. OG Parker. And he talked about one of his old collaborators, Deco. De, de, de, de, deco. Are you just gonna do that for everything that I said. For anyone that has a tag, I'm gonna do the tag. All right, and they're close with 808 Mafia. No, I want to finish it. Anyways, so his his old collaborator, Deco, who we kind of got to start with, um, has seen a lot of success because he's part of the virtual artist, Yami. Yammy. Okay, and so you might know Yammy for, and I'm not like the most well-versed. So Yammy has a song called Baby My Phone, and that was going super viral on TikTok back in like 2021. Um, Yammy's crushing it as a virtual artist.

And so, you know, that was one reason why I wanted to talk about this. We also just brought on an intern to the podcast. Uh, shout out to our intern Asha. She's doing her damn thing. We needed all the help in the world, and she is absolutely crushing it. Delivering. She is a music business student who's doing like a project on virtual artists. And then one of our editors noticed our conversation in the OG Parker interview about Yammy, and it was like, yo, Yammy's so dope. Like Deco. Why are you doing Zach's voice like that? I don't know, Zach, I love you. But um, that's not what he sounds like at all. Uh, but so then it was like the third person that like thought that this virtual artist thing was a super interesting conversation. So just we knew this was a thing, like we we knew, but like with the people around us all being like, yeah, we know this, and us being like, oh shit, like maybe we should look into it more because this is clearly affecting like people that you we know. So it's gonna be affecting people you know very soon.

And it's and it's definitely not something that I see a lot of uh like music business music podcasts discussing, right? Because I do think that even though you know you'll kind of allude to this, that like it's been going on for a while. Long time, right? But I'd say that we're really about to it's about to change, It's about to ramp up, bro. Like this is gonna be somewhat of uh of a norm, right? Like it's it's gonna be a real threat to you all as human artists, or a weapon if you embrace it as a thing. Let's just let's just define virtual artists, right? Because I know you were doing a lot of research on this to like make sure we understood exactly how to describe it. I'm still stumbling on this, and it's hard to. So just try and break down, like just generally speaking, what what is a virtual artist? Any fictional character, whether it be a cartoon, a drawing, an animated thing, whatever, you've created a character, and music is being released under the guise. I use the word guise on this podcast.

I it's a little bit of a yeah. Under the guise that this character is the one dropping this music, like it's their music. They're the music, they're the musician. That's the artist. Yes, this uh fictional cartoon animated, whatever character. This goes all the way back to Alvin and the chipmunks, ladies and gentlemen. What? I'm talking black and white cartoons. Like we're talking about like the 50s or 60s or some shit. It's really like that's the technically the first virtual artist. Yeah, and they even had like a song that was uh number one in the country for four weeks. They won a fucking Grammy. Oh shit, really? For some music that uh back in the day they had to slow the beat down, right? Half speed, and then record the vocals very slow, and then double the speed of it to get the pitched up chipmunk sound that we now know and love. Pretty cool, right? Okay, history lesson. People on TikTok are doing that now too. They'll perform their song at you know, slowly, like at half speed, they perform their song and then they put it back to full speed, and then they're like performing their song in correct time, but they're moving twice as fast.

So it's like a thing that started back then. And and we've seen a lot of examples of that being the you know, uh the virtual artist. The most successful, I think, though, that we have to mention is the gorillas. Oh, yeah. The gorillas are the like shining, light. Pioneers, bro. Pioneers is a great word. Literally, It's a great word. these guys figured out they were already established musicians, they already were making good music, but they wanted to make something a little out of the norm, so they created these characters, which I think is very important. The fact that they have a world, right, where these characters live in, they have names and they have shit that they wear, you know what I mean? They have like attributes about them that people can attach to, and they weren't even performing their shows at first, right? They were like behind screens as like silhouettes, or they would just show the characters on screens, and they were still the music was just so good that it became successful. But if we fast forward all the way to now, with technologies being like, you know, holograms, like virtual, like holograms mouthing the words correctly, like moving around the stage, moving, like pointing at fans, like doing the shit that is actually more accessible now. It is under my hypothesis that this is gonna be a very, very big thing very soon with the boom of AI and just the accessibility that's happening.

It's already here, but it's it's gonna be a real thing. That's why we want to talk about it. Exactly. Yeah. So before we get into maybe like a few of the nuances and a couple of the, you know, virtual artists that are crushing it and like what they're kind of doing. Um I just wanted to get your take. Like just how do you feel? And then how do we think our community should feel about this, right? So, like what what just what are your initial thoughts about virtual artists? Are you a fan, not a fan? Like, what do you like about it? What do you not really love about it? Like just initial takes. Well, I would say that my feelings and then what I think people should feel are that's typically the same thing, right? Like at least, you know, I mean, that's how I feel. Like you should feel it. You're fucking egotistical bastard. I don't think people should feel, you know, that's just how I feel. So, like, you know, if you don't agree, that's fine, but like it would be great if you agreed. It's the same stance that I have. It's the same stance that I have on AI in general, and it's that it doesn't really matter how you feel, it because it's it's definitely here to stay. There's not gonna be some ban on AI.

There's not gonna be some, like, we're not going backwards in time. You know what I mean? The government's not gonna protect you from competition against the virtual artists. It's just not happening. They're just gonna and if they do, then Japan will come out with 10 artists that will be on the top of the Spotify charts instead of you. Like it's it's here and it's happening. So I always like to try and embrace the new thing, even if it seems crazy. Like people thought the internet was insane when it came out, and you know, the people that really got really good at the internet, like they crushed for a while and they did good. So I try to embrace the new things. Um, I think a lot of the virtual artists right now are kind of kind of cringy. Like there's some bad ones. Oh. I mean, really? There's some bad ones. Think so. But that's not to say that there's gonna no one's replicated, first of all, what the gorillas have done. Not even close, I don't think, in my mind. I think Deco's doing something great with Yami, but um, it's early, like we're early, and I think that we should have our thumbs on the pulse of this thing because it's not going anywhere. Yeah, here's how I look at it, right?

I think that there's a lot of talented musicians out there who um maybe have, you know, tried the artist thing, right? They've given it a go. They maybe haven't seen the right success. Maybe them as an artist brand hasn't resonated with a tribe. They haven't been able to build a community. I think that to your point, like just jumping on board with this. I think that this is a perfect opportunity for those out there that want to be an artist, but not necessarily do all the things that come along with being an artist. And let's talk about the producers. Like, I know there's a few of you guys out there that maybe you don't like being in sessions with artists, maybe you have a vision and you find yourselves in sessions with artists and they don't agree with your vision. Now all of a sudden you've created, you make your own artist. Holy shit. Like you can type in the lyrics that you know, like this lyric would hit, but say it this way, but say say do this melody. You can create your own artist and be like like a Deco, you know, and have your uh your artist perform and be the the thing.

Let me take a moment to interrupt this episode and tell you about our friends over at DistroKid. DistroKid is easily the best DIY distributor on the marketplace. Let me tell you why. It's only 23 dollars a year. That's less than two bucks a month for you to upload unlimited music to all of your favorite streaming platforms on the planet. It's so easy that it takes me like five minutes per upload, and that's when I'm multitasking, dealing with my two-year old son. Hands down, my favorite part about DistroKid is how easy it is to add credits to an upload. I don't know what distributor you're using, but with DistroKid, it's super easy. You can put the artist, the producer, the songwriter. I'm pretty sure you can put like the junior associate engineer of a song. And me, I I want to know who's on the record. And if you sign up using this link, you're gonna get 30% off an already insanely low price, and you can finally start adding your collaborators because they are checking. They will notice when their name's there and they will thank you for doing it. Let's get back to the episode. What do you think?

Okay. Yeah, so what's your like high level understanding of how this works? I mean, my understanding based on what I was looking up is like there are softwares where you quite literally are typing in lyrics, and it is essentially using vocal samples and using databases of sounds or whatever, like voice sounds, and it is creating a vocal for you that then, like any other vocal, if it was a real human that was recording a track, you can then manipulate it to be whatever it is that you're kind of trying to achieve, right? Like yeah, so yami and another example we're gonna talk about Hatsune Miku. That's a good thing I think you nailed that. I'm pretty sure I said it right. Thank you. Thank you. I think you got it. They both use what's called vocaloid synthesizer technology. They're vocaloid artists. And I think there's there's two sides to it. So one is you have a vocal model, right? Where either I don't know if it's just created from scratch, or there's like a bass voice where someone just says a lot of words and then the model kind of bases the voice off of this person. Okay.

And there's another method where you kind of you can actually just sing the lyrics, maybe in your shitty voice, if you're not a good singer, you know what I mean? And it'll spit it back out in, you know, this other voice. So either you can just type in lyrics and you can get your vocals, or you can sing it yourself and it'll synthesize it into uh the same thing, but a based off of a model. And so that's basically how people were doing the AI generated Drake songs and AI or AI generated. Exactly. This model was Kanye songs or whatever. This model was fed Drake vocals, yeah, or Kanye vocals. Just a just here's a shit ton of words that these guys said and how they said it. And it can then kind of create any word, any melody based on what you get it, and the more information you give it, the better, and like any AI, it's learning and it's getting better all the time. Yeah, so like an artist like Grimes, wasn't she the one that was basically like jumping on board with, you know, you can create whatever it is the fuck that you want, and we'll split it as long as I'm like she was one of the first people to agree to let people use an AI model of her voice, yeah, but she gets a cut. Yeah, because I just think you know, while we're talking about how this can maybe benefit artists, I do think that it's it could unlock like new revenue streams.

A hundred percent, right? Where like if you're okay with your voice being used in these different models, right? Like that's you gotta be okay with a lot of them being shitty. Exactly. And that's the tough part as an artist. It's like if I'm giving up the rights to my voice being used in some bullshit for money, that's kind of like that's gonna are a lot of artists are out right there. Yeah, right there. Yeah, for sure. You know what I mean? But I do think it's interesting and something that you should consider when it comes to just like, hey, this could unlock new revenue streams that you never really imagined, right? Yeah, um, so I did want to just from a from a consumer perspective, right? Like you're a music fan, as am I at the end of the day, it's why we're doing this. Like, how do you feel as like a you know what I mean? Do you have yeah, do you have do you think you're gonna be able to like latch on to and really like identify with a virtual artist, or do you think that that barrier still is gonna is gonna exist? I absolutely think I will, and here's why.

Yeah, the virtual artists that are winning right now are the ones that have been able to not only maintain like human elements in their in the artistry, whether it's in the production or the way that the vocals are synthesized, which is crazy, crazy to say yeah, that's a wild sounds counterintuitive, but sure. They maintain elements of like you know, if I told AI make a song, if I told ChatGPT ChatGPT to make a country song, it could do it, but it's gonna be garbage. The the good ones are are maintaining like elements of humanity, which is nice, but they're also able to build these worlds and tell these stories and have these just these storylines that are so fascinating, and I think this is a big reason that Yami is winning with Deco. So shout out to yeah, Yami. So shout out to O Ocean. Ocean, I think. Ocean is the creator of Yami and her world and the the visuals and the the world and like the the graphic, how she looks and that, but Deco does her music, sure, which I think is great that there's a person that's in charge of the the world that she lives in, and then like the music is like also this other side. So like give an example of that world, because you were kind of reading it off.

Do you remember any of the like things like just as like once again she got powers? She got powers from the space god, yeah. And she's she's went to some city to regain that, yeah. No, but but it her powers were taken away. Yeah, I don't know. Sure, but there's there's a storyline. It's like an anime almost, you know what I mean? And it doesn't have to be like a Japanese anime, but if your character can have like things and you know, that just storylines and go on side quests and have this like you know this these episodes of things happening that's what that's what we like and I think humans won't care at the end of the day if it's a real person or not if the story is good. But you know what's so interesting? This should just paint the picture for artists of how important the storyline is for you for facts as a human point it's a great point. Right? And so I do think that if we're just being honest with ourselves if we're able to literally with virtual artists create something from scratch and and paint that storyline however the fuck we want to we can make them fall from the heavens and leave for an ancient city and powers taken and given from gods and whatever the fuck else that's what you're up against. Yeah so your storyline better be good better be goddamn amazing. and good is you know we don't want to scare people like you have to be living some epic life no good can just be relatable relatable like we're still that human thing that we we do love as humans like you had an awkward situation at work.

If you paint that story well like that's a great story. It doesn't like the littlest things. You got your heart broken right who hasn't you lost someone you fell in love with someone you you you overcame a struggle right like all these different like human elements um I do think that's where like virtual artists I'm hoping I'm kind of hoping this is that virtual artists that do have these like epic storylines are gonna challenge human artists to figure out what theirs is, right? And to really be crystal clear with the story that you're telling as an artist brand and then the story that you're telling with every single release, right? Whether it's a song, EP, album, doesn't matter. Like everything is a story, man. Like that is what I think is the I think the biggest takeaway for me. Yeah. Because it was something we were talking about that was so cool about virtual artists. Like, oh god, these storylines and this, that, the other. Like they have a dope storyline that's curated by like some people that are very creative and good writers, and then they have good music on top of that that are created by fantastic music producers. Like, why would someone give and then you can hear and then you can go see them live now?

You can actually go experience them and like see, sure, it's like a hologram. And it's but you know, Tupac was a hologram too. You know what I mean? Like, why should I why should I choose to be a part of your world when I can be a part of this world that's so much more captivating? You know what I just thought about that's kind of interesting? You can do both, maybe to 100%, right? You should you borderline well, if it's your thing. If it's your thing, if this is not your thing, sure, just to tune off. Sure, but but I guess what I I was kind of thinking of it as an either or, right? Like, either you need to be a human artist or you need to be the virtual artist. But no, honestly, you can be human artists and have artist brand number one, and then you can create this whole fucking other character for maybe it's like a genre you've always wanted to do, but you don't think that you as a human being like can actually pull it off and you don't have the image, like that's what happened with the gorillas. They were the the actual artists behind the gorillas didn't think that they're the type of music they wanted to make would fit in like the sphere of who who they were and where they lived, yeah, and how they looked. And so they created this thing to like as an outlet.

Ah, that's beautiful. It's an outlet. Oh man, It's a creative, it's a medium for for people to express themselves in brand new ways. That I think is beautiful. Yeah, no, for sure. So let's talk about um Hatsune Miku. Yes, yes, yes. Because I think um if we can maybe pull this up on the screen during this edit, awesome. If not, we'll link it to it. There's a video of her performing live. Um, and I mean, to be honest, she's obviously a fictional virtual artist, right? Uh, she's J pop, which is the Japanese pop. Yes, yep, exactly. So she's J pop, she's a hologram on stage, performing, you know, her songs, and they're the crowd is massive. It's insane. It's the crowd is not AI. But the crowd fucking borderline looks AI. Like, because it's just for me, it was such a peculiar thing to see. I had never really witnessed like a hologram show like this and with that many people, right? And it just looked fucking insane. So for me, what what do you think is so unique about what um how do you pronounce it?

Hatsune Miku. Yeah, Hatsune Miku, like who by the way has toured with Lady Gaga, has collaborated with Pharrell and Steve Aoki and like has sold out concerts in around the world. It's actually batshit crazy. Yeah, so so there's one super unique thing about her, kind of like on the open source side of things. So talk about like what she's doing. I think it's really unique. For my understanding, they've set up her basically uh we're talking about vocal models earlier. Yeah, okay. They've made her vocal model public. So the thing that they've created that you can feed words and it spits out vocals in her likeness, they've made that public for anyone to be able to create anything with her voice. So their whole mantra is that she's everything and she is everyone, right? Hatsune Miku is is just we are I I am Hatsune Miku. You're Hatsune Miku. No, I am. We all are. We are everyone is. So people are making like metal trap, like jazz, folky, whatever the fuck type songs with with her likeness. And uh does it like dilute kind of her as you know an artist?

Sure, but like does it spread her message and and her brand throughout the world, also, yes. Yeah, which is so cool. No, for sure. So just to wrap up, I think there's a few things to note if you're considering like going down the virtual artist path. Because I do hope that this inspires some of y'all to at least like think about it. Or pay attention to what's going on. Exactly. Either pay attention to it from like a competitive landscape, like, hey, this is who I'm gonna be up against when I'm making music. Uh, or if you are interested in it enough to like consider doing it, right? I think here are a few things that like set it apart, right? Like we mentioned the whole like them being able to tour. I mean, it is a cost-effective way to tour. Yeah, right. Like, you don't have other than like once you got the hologram technology set up, that's like some investment, of course. Like, you're not fucking paying for, you know, 10 hotel rooms, and you're not paying for like all travel and shit like that, right? Like that virtual artist can simultaneously perform in every single venue across the world if they wanted to at the same time. In the same night.

It's insane. Literally, say it one more time. Hatsune Miku. Hatsune Hatsune Miku. I don't know why I'm like, I can't even spit that out. Hatsune Miku. Uh, she can literally perform in London, Japan, fucking China, Australia, US, it doesn't matter, all in the same night and make five times, 10 times, a hundred times the money all in one night, right? So there's a there's an economic opportunity, right, for you as a virtual artist that just simply doesn't exist if you're a human artist. And your virtual artist doesn't uh really ever ask for royalties or splits or anything. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Yep. And then I do think that the um the cross industry uh like collaboration opportunities, right? So I do know that, you know, we see artists in commercials and we see them, you know, doing work with brands, and we see them acting and so on and so forth, right? But I do think there's a lot of unique opportunities to easily, once again, just because the nature of them being virtual, I think that virtual artists have a really unique opportunity to do a lot of cross-industry, like, you know, cross brand collaboration and promotion, et cetera, right?

Like it's really, it's really easy to insert Hatsune Miku into whatever the fuck, right? Coke. Yeah. And she doesn't have to even be physically like there's no limitations to like, oh, we're shooting the commercial in New York and I'm in LA this weekend. It doesn't fucking matter. Drop the file in the drop box. Exactly, right? So once again, I think that like there's a huge opportunity there. Um, and then I think to your point, the uh experience, right? Like, I think artists today, um, live shows are being challenged with creating like more and more engaging experiences. And I think that just by nature of them being virtual, I think that there's gonna be a lot of futuristic shit happening at virtual artist shows just because they're already virtual Oh, there's gonna be a lot of. She could grow to 10 times her size and then shrink and then clone into 10 Hatsune Mikus. Like the possibilities are endless. The possibilities are endless, right? So I think that it's really, I'm really fascinated by what's gonna come with the live show experience. Um, and then even on like online, right?

Like I just think once again, the virtual nature of it, you can really place that Hatsune Miku in any like digital world. Uh and it's a lot easier to kind of activate that and bring communities around that, right? You can put her in Fortnite easier, you can put her in whatever any video game, right? Yeah, you could drip her in designer without buying the designer. It's pretty great. Right. Put her in gold chains. You don't have to buy shit. Yep, for sure. And then I think that this this one I'm I'm interested to know like how this plays out, but the fan engagement side of things, right? So I do think that to your point, like the world building. That's actually that's a good point. That seems tough. I yeah, I don't know. It's either gonna be really tough because like how does she communicate? I don't know how how do they communicate with their fans right now, right? Like, and who's the mastermind behind that, right? Um, but maybe you even care to communicate with her knowing she's I don't know. Yeah, so I think that like that's something that's a little bit like a question mark. There's some kinks to work out here.

That's a question mark for me. But I do think to your point, because you can really create this like never-ending storyline and like have it take twists and turns that you are in control of 100%, no limitations, no barriers. Um, I do think that it allows potentially for higher degrees of fan engagement, right? Because if you know exactly what you're trying to achieve, there's no human elements that would be, you know, restraints to that, right? Like you can execute pretty much anything that you want, right? There's a lot more open-ended, uh, like the the possibilities to your point, are a lot more like vast, right? When it comes to like how we can engage with our fans. You could have a Hollywood writer write her life, which is crazy, but it still scares me a bit at the end of the day, man. Cause it's like the natural things that do happen to humans, you know. Like it's it's not, it's not Hollywood. We are human and we are just living real lives. So that's why I think the ones that win are gonna be the ones that figure out how to cling on to humanity while still being this new virtual thing. For sure, man.

So if there's any virtual artists that you are tapped in with, please drop a comment. We want to know more about this, right? And Yemi's new album is fire. Like, actually go stream that it absolutely is. So yeah, hopefully you guys found this interesting. This is something that we've just been thinking a lot about. People in our community put us on. So hopefully you guys found this valuable, something you need to think about because this shit is here and it's gonna be coming even more forceful than it is yet. I'm telling you, we got top we got top records. Wait to wait till a virtual artist wins a Grammy. Holy shit. I thought you said that when the Chipmunks did. The next one. Until next time, y'all. Peace. Bye bye.