Soundtrack My Life Is Porsche’s Tailored Musical Experience, Set to Your Driving

Just as it sounds, Soundtrack My Life is a musical experience in the cooking, among Porsche Digital team members, that’s supposed to adapt and adjust to your driving style, and possibly soon, even adapt to the route taken or mood of the person driving. Time to find out what the heck is going on here, and what it could mean for all drivers, not just Porsche owners.

Imagine for a moment that you’re at a red light. In the background, a bit of soothing music is heard. The light turns green, and suddenly, “Down with the Sickness” from Disturbed kicks in, but not the drum intro, the “OOH AH AH AH” bit. That's what I first thought about when I heard that Porsche is working on a system that plays sound and music according to your driving.

To better understand what Porsche is doing, Norman Friedenberger, Product Owner at Porsche Digital, explains better than anyone else:

“This new technology isn’t about playing personalized playlists or simply adjusting the tempo and pitch of existing music to match the car’s speed, it's about creating an individual sound experience from a construction kit with a variety of sounds and musical structures during a drive. This is created by the driver and their journey in real time. This will then sound different for everyone – as unique as the journey itself."

To make such a system possible, technology partner Boris Salchow, a German film composer living out of L.A. plays a big part in the system. He’s the one responsible for composing the set pieces from which your Porsche will generate its music.

Now, the whole idea is based on something most of us have experienced, but were never really knew it, non-linear music. Non-linear music is just like what you’d normally find in video games. So to adapt it to real life situations, and then to change it as different actions are taken by the car, has been proving to be quite the task as classic linear tracks have a beginning and end, something that’s not applicable here.

One important feature of Soundtrack My Life is that it aims to avoid combining the same sounds at previously encountered locations. This is done in order to offer the driver a different experience every time, no matter if they’re taking the same route to work or not.

Right now, a prototype for this technology exists, in the form of a smartphone app, but Porsche hasn’t decided if it the app will remain as a standalone or if it will be integrated into PCM, even though it can currently be used anywhere there is movement; reacts to mobile data. Plans include geofencing and locking or unlocking in specific locations. The latter allows you to experience a one-of-a-kind soundtrack based on targeted areas.

One thing Porsche is deliberately doing is eliminating AI from the mix. They’re doing this in order to keep a focus on people and their creativity, rather than mundane programming. Sure, AI can make awesome music, but there’s just something about a living being putting some feeling into the mix. To do this, Porsche plans to work with artists in order to develop a never-ending library of sound, and even seeks to make digital collectors’ items; NFTs anyone?

However grand all that sounds like, it’s not the end of the venture. Porsche plans to go one step further with this tech and will eventually seek to detect the driver’s mood and play sounds and music accordingly. Oh, and “real-time sound development" that works through a cloud, and shared online community, are also part of this dream.

My only worry with this tech is the same as in the first few paragraphs; if Porsche is not careful what sort of artists or “tailored” soundtracks spark from such a system, we might have a bunch of speed demons loose on the streets.