Rolling Stone (RS) reports that Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram are all launching music-tech programs on the same day, few hours within each other.
First up was Amazon, with its “first-ever creative musical experience” for the company’s voice-activated Echo products. Taking a cue from TikTok, Amazon picked up Charlie D’Amelio, that sites big star to create a campaign with Marshmello and Halsey. As Halsey’s label Capitol Records points out, from May 27th to June 2nd, “users can ask their Echo devices ‘Alexa, what’s Marshmello’s (or Halsey’s) thought of the day?’ to get a peek into the celebrities’ minds.”
A few hours later Instagram announced that “users can now create effects that ‘respond’ to music.” Instagrammers can now create augmented-reality effects using photo and video filters that would operate in sync with the music. As RS points out, “in theory, this could give Instagram more weight as a music-discovery destination.”
It took Instagram’s parent company Facebook minutes to announce that its “ research and development team, The NPE Group, has designed an app called Collab for making collaborative music videos.” With it, the users are able to fuse together parts of uploaded videos and create content exclusively for original music (as opposed to covers). The project though is still only available in beta and through an invite.
RS notes that “amid the ongoing quarantine, the projects also offer new ways for tech giants to collaborate with the music industry — which has been hit particularly hard by the loss of live events and is eager to adapt and innovate.”
