The Music “Demixing” AI Revolution

Remixes have been around for nearly 50 years, <a href="https://abbeyroadinstitute.com.au/blog/samples-creativity-copyright-a-history-of-remixing/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">originating in the mid-1970s</a> and slowly gaining popularity with various musical movements and technological advancements. Music <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix#:~:text=Modern%20remixing%20had%20its%20roots,the%20tastes%20of%20their%20audience." rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">remixes</a> can broadly be defined as creating a new song or composition from the derivatives of previous creations. It wasn’t until the 2010s that the full public acceptance of remixes finally arrived with the popularization of electronic music and new digital tools that made it easier than ever to splice and edit old songs and audio clips in almost any way imaginable. It became common for artists to actually offer their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_(audio)" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">stems</a> to the public to facilitate the creation of remixes of their songs. Stems are the individual tracks, such as vocals or drums, that make up a fully mixed song. However, there still existed a boundary to remixing tracks when the isolated stems were not accessible. Therefore a need arose to be able to “demix” a track into the individual stems of the song. While there are certainly many other factors outside this piece's scope, this need to isolate stems coupled with the ubiquity of remixes prompted an increase in research and development of music demixing, a.k.a. audio source separation, technologies. These new demixing capabilities also raise an ethical dilemma of deconstructing a song without an artist's consent, but we will leave that conversation for another day. <a href="https://rocknheavy.net/the-music-demixing-ai-revolution-9d1528c6ef7c">Learn More</a>