06/11/2025
I'm going to post here about a touchy subject that people seem to just want to whisper about in music these days, and that's AI. I have talked to people about AI in music and musicians seem to be hesitant about saying how they feel about it. In the last 2 days I have had 2 friends of mine that are international musicians state they will be leaving music in part to the way music is trending to the use of AI. I'm going to give my thoughts on it.
First of all AI is not going to go away. It's here and it's being used and it will only be used more and more, not less. AI can be used as a tool to help with a musician/ band enhance what they are creating. Maybe just to help with some lyrics, to fit with a idea you're already creating. Maybe to fit add different tones or chords to match the feel for a song you're creating etc. It's hard to be against it to much if it's used to help with your creation. Since I started playing in 1980 there have been so many changes with technology to enhance and help with the creative flow. If used as a tool to enhance your creative flow of something you are creating there shouldn't be a problem with it, just like other things that are used already. I wrote a song once and used a cool little drum and bass line off of a Casio keyboard to write it with. I didn't create the bass line or the drum track for it, so is that kind of like what some musicians/ bands are doing? Is that something that is still in the realm of a person creating something themselves?
Here is where some people have the problem with AI. Some musicians/bands have taken to letting AI write songs for them, and then they just learn how to play the song from AI. I have heard of this being done, and I know the record companies know that it's being done, and I believe they have no problems with it and may even encourage it. Here are some of the issues with that.
1) AI is still not really learning to create so much on it's own as it is taking pieces from established songs and using those to create hit songs. Remember when people were posting these really cool pictures from AI a couple years ago and painters were upset that it was using their paintings and they were not getting credit for it. It's the same thing with the music industry. There are lawsuits already filed from big name musicians about copy write infringements. Eventually AI will probably make it's own hit songs without using other people's music, but I think it's still learning.
2) How long do you think it will take before a record company could just have some IT people get AI to make a album worth of music that they can push and sell in house. They can get 4 or 5 musicians to be a corporate made band to push them to be stars. They have done this many times in the past when we had the crop of boy bands, and young pop singers. You don't have to have AI sign a contract, pay royalties to, worry about it trying to buy it's catalog back. With technology now you could just hire some actors to pretend to play the songs and just have them lip sync to these AI created songs.
So is that so wrong if that happens? Every weekend in just Tacoma we probably have about 80 cover bands playing other peoples music around town. How many tribute bands do we have playing around town other peoples music? So you have some musicians playing a AI's song, it's kind of the same, or is it?
Like I said at the start of this post. 2 friends that have been touring around the world and just off of tour last year have both decided to get out of music, and pointed to what's going on with AI being one of the main reasons. These people are way up higher in the music business than I am, and know way more about what's going on than I do, but it doesn't take much to see where things are going. I know of one organization that does award shows every year that has put out a memo on musicians/bands using AI songs to be up for awards. So again I can see that other people know more than me and see a issue with it, at least for now. I listen to the podcast alot from this guy that talks about how things are done in the entertainment business, and he said one thing that hit home with me and it fits with this. He talked about how he didn't like the way that almost all shows are starting to record from certain camera views. He said he never liked it when he was doing shows, but he knows why they do it. Since he didn't like it the industry wasn't going to stop for him so he either had to adapt to the new normal or be left behind. I think with AI it's going to become the new normal in the next few years and we can either adapt to to it or walk away. Those 2 made their choice that they needed to walk away at least for now, and everyone is going to have to make their own decision on this topic.
Look AI is not going anywhere, and people are going to use it more and more for many things besides just music. It's going to be harder and harder to tell what is AI generated in music, movies, etc. It's already hard to tell when you see someone giving a speech in a video if that is really what they said or was it someone using AI to duplicate their voice, and change their words.
This post is not to make you like or dislike AI. I myself am still trying to figure out where I stand on the subject. I do think it can be a great help, or it can do real damage. I do know that being afraid to talk about it is not the answer
