Johannesburg - The brief rise and fall of virtual artist FN Meka makes clear the incentives for music labels to replace human creativity with technological short cuts for profit.
The virtual rapper project, FN Meka, could not survive the intense scrutiny of the media attention its hype created. After blowing up on TikTok, amassing 10.2 million followers, the virtual star’s creators Factory New landed a deal with music giant Capitol Records.
The deal has now fallen through after media coverage and careless comments from Anthony Martini, FN Meka’s manager, fuelled public backlash around themes of race and artist compensation.
Music news platform hotnewhiphop put the criticisms succinctly in an Instagram post on August 23:
“In a climate where black creators are airing out their grievances with social media platforms for going unrecognised and uncompensated for the works and trends which they create, is an AI-powered "rapper" good for hip-hop? Music artists have also been under fire as of late for their lyrics both in the courtroom and online, so why should a racially ambiguous virtual personality be allowed to say "n***a" and promote gun violence so freely?”
This was not to be the last bit of controversy. Anthony Martini has subsequently left the project after it was revealed that the vocal talent had not been paid. His outgoing comments have also admitted that his claims about the project being powered by AI were misleading hype.
The details of this example, and the candid statements from Martini, suggest that this will not be the last we see of virtual artists. The financial incentives of using new technology to disenfranchise artists might end up being too tempting for executives to pass up on.
Virtual artists are not a new phenomenon. Various artists have been performing behind created characters, personas and bands for decades. A quintessential example would be that of household name Gorillaz, a virtual band brought to life by a musician and visual artist pairing.
The concept can be extended to many other acts, such as Daft Punk and producer Marshmello. The idea has also become popular in the online streaming and video space over the past three years, in the form of VTubers – content creators who use avatars and motion tracking rather than showing themselves on camera, and often act within a persona.
But FN Meka is a markedly different case. While the above acts may be created in collaboration with management and marketing teams, there is an artist or performer directly behind the content.
In contrast, FN Meka was created by a faceless team of indefinite number, each subject to the creative oversight of executives.
This fragments responsibility for anything the virtual artist does, making it hard to hold individuals accountable. It also serves to make the human artists doing the work nameless and interchangeable.
This anti-artist, metrics driven, profit-prioritising approach was on full display in Martini’s comments to Music Business Worldwide before the negative public reaction.
“The old model of finding talent is inefficient and unreliable. It requires spending time scouring the internet, travelling to shows, flying to meetings, expending resources all in search of the magic combination of qualities that just might translate into a superstar act.
Even with all the money labels devote to finding talent, the success rate is a pitiful 1%. Now we can literally custom-create artists using elements proven to work, greatly increasing the odds of success.”
He continues: “We’ve developed a proprietary AI technology that analyses certain popular songs of a specified genre and generates recommendations for the various elements of song construction: lyrical content, chords, melody, tempo, sounds etc. We then combine these elements to create the song.”
After Martini vaguely walked back his statements about the use of AI in the project, it’s unclear whether the above quote is genuine. However, it is emblematic of an attitude that prioritises formulaic market popularity over human creativity.
“Not to get all philosophical but, what is an ‘artist’ today? Think about the biggest stars in the world. How many of them are just vessels for commercial endeavours?
“Most hits are written by teams of people who get paid to make music that will “sell”. We think machines can eventually run this process more efficiently than humans. How many fans ever actually meet the stars they idolise anyway?”
These attitudes clearly bled through to (in)action considering that the vocalist behind FN Meka’s voice, Kyle The Hooligan, claims he has not been paid for his work.
A move towards digital artists whose likeness is owned by corporations upends the power dynamic between labels and human creatives. Like ride-sharing and food delivery has done, this would see the gig economy reshape the music industry.
This would mean artists reduced to disposable, nameless wage labourers at the mercy of a labour market controlled by cash-focused labels. Bargaining power would fall away as fans form a relationship with a brand rather than an artist.
The financial incentives are clear: pay artists as little as you can get away with for their one-off work while pocketing the profits every merch sale, ticket purchase, and song stream.
It isn’t worth it to risk spending money on a musician who people might not like or who could blow their careers up with scandal. Better to identify the statistically perfect track and pay someone by the hour to build it for you.
IOL Tech