Inaccessibility of research – whether because of paywalls or the complexity of the subject matter – means much of it doesn’t reach the public. Even a successful academic textbook often sells fewer than 500 copies over its lifetime. Our most recent book, Cities in the Metaverse, is a prime example. The challenge for academics, then, is to translate complex theories from books or research papers into formats that reach beyond the library. When the trailer for our album version of the book attracted 68,000 views within its first month, we realised we were on the right track. It has since surpassed 80,000 and Place and Space is available on all streaming platforms.
Although AI’s impacts on academic writing and on the planet are still a concern, emerging tools allow academic outreach beyond what was previously possible. AI-enabled music generation allows academics to advance arguments in a way that traditional text cannot, breaking down complex theories (in our case the metaverse, digital habitation and convergence matrixes) and translating them into catchy tracks. It is now possible to publish academic work via a single or album and distribute it on Spotify, Apple and YouTube music. You can even upload them to your own university’s research publications service. By shifting the research from the page to the playlist, you can increase its reach by several orders of magnitude.
How to create and distribute an academic album
The task requires a blend of traditional scholarship and use of emerging digital tools but it is relatively simple and satisfying (you can even go as far as pressing a vinyl version).
Here’s how:
Write your lyrics: This is arguably the most critical stage for maintaining academic integrity. I would not recommend asking the AI tool to write the lyrics for you. Instead, take the key arguments or summaries of your chapters and distil them into rhythmic sections based around a central chorus that repeats two or three times.
Focus on clear, direct language that explains “what” and “why” while keeping technical terms as the rhythmic anchors. For example, a track I am working on, Design Fiction, is based around an academic paper and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council funded-project with Lancaster University. It uses the design fiction methodology as a tool for academic discussion around the concept of digital empathy.
The track goes directly into the concept for the first verse, similar in many ways to an introduction to a paper:
Let me show you the future
Step inside my mind
It’s about design fiction
You never know what you might find
Subsequently, it has a series of statements that allow the story and the academic concept to develop:
Is this to be an empathy test?
Capillary dilation is what I do the best
We call it Voight-Kampff for short
Next, a catchy chorus:
Welcome to the future
A fiction of design
Building new devices
Devices in the mind
Show how you feel
To prove you are real
Pupil dilation
Leads to revelations
This paves the way for the next verse and for the chorus to repeat, reinforcing the concept. While it might not win an Ivor Novello award, the structure allows you to break an academic paper into simple three-to-four-line sections. The outcome is remarkably catchy.
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Decide on structure: Eight to 10 tracks work well for an album. You could write songs about your best academic papers or structure the album around the chapters of a book, like we did. Ensure your opening and closing tracks are upbeat and you thread a narrative through the album – perhaps your academic career progression or route of discovery. You could even make your academic CV into an album!
Choose a genre: Once your lyrics are ready, use a platform like Suno AI music generator to generate the audio. Choose a genre that reflects the “vibe” of your research. For a futuristic topic like the metaverse, we chose 1990s-style Eurotrance at 120 to 130 beats per minute. In the “custom mode”, enter your lyrics and specify the genre, mood and tempo to ensure the music supports the educational message rather than distracts from it. You then press go, wait two minutes and your track will be ready – it can be edited at this point, and you can listen to a series of iterations.
Download: You can now download your album. Ensure you have the necessary commercial rights from the platform to distribute the content – Suno provides full publishing rights as part of the paid service (approximately £12 a month and you only need a month’s use).
Distribute: To reach a global audience use distribution services such as DistroKid or TuneCore. These allow you to upload your tracks and automatically distribute them to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon and YouTube Music. This places your research directly into the reach of a global audience.
Real-world impact
Our album was an experiment in academic outreach that opened up new routes not only for people to hear about the work but to learn the techniques. At an event at our local village hall (where the album was played during a break in a quiz night), a resident took interest not just in the research on “Mirror Worlds” but in the AI technique used to create the music. By demystifying the technology and explaining the process, we inspired 80-year-old Dave (now known as Lipzee on Spotify) to record and release his own album globally. He told us it has given him a new lease on life, and he is currently working on his second.
Scholarly work that can find a home on the dance floor can make a big impact on the public, engaging new audiences in academic work they would never have come across – while inspiring others to find new ways to express their creativity.
Andrew Hudson-Smith is professor of digital urban environments at the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL.
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