Rolling Stone <\/em>recently<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m gonna use that to see if I even want the choir sound on there. And then we take it off and replace it with a real choir.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s the correct way of using AI,\u201d he said. But he draws the line at using generative-AI on a finished track: \u201cMaking a song, and then typing in \u2018Make this sound different,\u2019 and it\u2019s spitting out a completely different production with stems is nauseating.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tProducer Nathan Chapman, who has worked with Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, and many others, hasn\u2019t used AI for any vocals or instrumentation, but has gotten requests to change lyrics with it. \u201cI said no, because I hadn\u2019t learned how to do it yet. But it\u2019s the artist\u2019s call,\u201d says Chapman. Still: \u201cI would just rather have them sing it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tSongwriters in Nashville and Los Angeles will use tools like Suno to turn lyrics and chords into fully arranged demos that they can shop to artists and labels. \u201cIn private, songwriters are saying, \u2018It\u2019s kind of awesome,\u2019\u201d says Lewis. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to split your copyright; you can write by yourself; and you don\u2019t have to pay a producer. For a lot of songwriters it\u2019s been very empowering.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt can make it a more fluid process,\u201d says Lewis. Christy says she was recently texted by a \u201cbig star\u201d she works with, asking if she had any songs for them. She was able to reply immediately with a demo. \u201cAll the melodies, lyrics, and chords [were] mine,\u201d she says. The artist said on the spot that she wanted to record it. \u201cI was like, \u2018Whoa \u2014 that just saved me days.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tOF COURSE, FOR every task that AI streamlines, there might be someone on the other end who isn\u2019t paid anymore: a demo musician or producer, an assistant engineer who helps with mixes, a studio owner renting time, maybe a Seventies songwriter living off of licensing fees. Nashville native Chapman says he\u2019s hopeful that the doors AI opens to amateurs will lead to a boom for musicians and studio owners down the road. But for now, \u201cthere are less sessions happening,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s hurting the demo community.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI work in the children\u2019s-animation space,\u201d says Lewis. \u201cThat\u2019s kind of low-hanging fruit for being replaced by AI.\u201d She says she is still getting jobs, but overall, \u201cno one\u2019s working.\u201d Stock music, or production music \u2014 music licensed by companies for TV, radio, and other media \u2014 is \u201ctoast,\u201d says Lewis. Some large companies, like Disney, won\u2019t use AI music because of potential copyright issues, but smaller production companies that need to save money are \u201cfinding the line of what they can get away with.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBaron worries about the pipeline of future producers. Mundane work that used to be the province of assistant engineers \u2014 the work that AI is replacing \u2014 is \u201cwhere you\u2019re training the next generation,\u201d he says. \u201cOur generation is going to go away eventually, right? And we need those 25-year-olds trained.\u201d Aspiring producers have to be in the studio, see sessions, watch musicians interact. \u201cMaybe in the best-case scenario, assistants will just be able to do more stuff,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\n\tThen there are the unintended creative consequences that AI can create. Recently, Lewis\u2019 writing partner made a demo with AI, but the vocal wasn\u2019t quite right. So Lewis decided to sing the part herself \u2014 and realized she couldn\u2019t, because there were no pauses in the vocal for taking a breath. \u201cYou can end up writing a song that is technically unsingable by a human.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tChapman worries about \u201cdemo-itis\u201d \u2014 the tendency of artists to get attached to a demo and want to replicate it exactly. AI demos give that a strange new wrinkle, because they can sound both perfect and off.<\/em> With human demos, \u201cusually what you\u2019re contending with is the demo is crappy, but it\u2019s super cool,\u201d says Chapman. \u201cI haven\u2019t heard a Suno demo yet that sounded, like, bad<\/em> good,\u201d Chapman says. \u201cThey\u2019re all just \u2026 good.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tThere are little AI sonic \u201ctells,\u201d the equivalent of ChatGPT\u2019s tendency to use em dashes and certain phrases, that Baron notices. \u201cIt inserts strange measures,\u201d he says, \u201clike a weird 2\/4 bar that no one would write.\u201d Baron tells the story of a drummer friend, a virtuoso who plays with artists with billions of streams, being asked to replicate an AI drum part. \u201cHe found it humiliating.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tChristy mentors aspiring songwriters, and like Chapman, loves that AI can potentially make their path easier. She imagines \u201ca young songwriter who can\u2019t really sing who is potentially the next Diane Warren. And she has no money to make demos. AI is the perfect tool for her, because she can still retain ownership of her song and give an example of her songs that are produced at a pretty high level.\u201d A darker scenario is that more pathways into the music industry for more music mean that the pie is going to get sliced up smaller and smaller: \u201cWe already have a flood of so much content,\u201d says Baron. \u201cIt\u2019s so hard to get noticed when there\u2019s 60 to 100,000 songs being uploaded a day. So, what happens when AI music makes it so it\u2019s 300,000 tracks a day? And I think that\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cNo one\u2019s selling, like, 10 bricks of coke anymore,\u201d says Young Guru, talking about music\u2019s diminishing returns. \u201cIt\u2019s just, like, a bunch of dime bags. It\u2019s a numbers game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAn enormous issue is that the copyright issues with AI remain mostly unresolved. There are ongoing questions on whose music services Suno and Udio were trained on; how to figure out what music is being recombined in their output; and how to pay artists and songwriters for it. Even AI enthusiasts say they aren\u2019t going to use AI in their released music until that\u2019s resolved. \u201cI\u2019m scared to use anything,\u201d says Christy. \u201cI would hate to have an AI detector detecting something.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tMeanwhile, the AI music services are making their pitch. \u201cThey\u2019re hosting camps,\u201d Lewis says. \u201cUdio\u2019s hosting camps, Suno\u2019s hosting camps. Introducing this software to the pro class.\u201d Big writers are getting invited to nice studios to learn about stem separation and customization. \u201cThey\u2019re not dumb. They\u2019re trying to get us to adopt.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tDESPITE SOME CONCERNS, David Baron is not among the people who thinks the sky is falling. He compares AI to pottery. \u201cThere are potters that make beautiful pieces that you buy for a lot of money, and they\u2019re gorgeous and everyone\u2019s different,\u201d he says. \u201cBut you can also buy pottery at Target that\u2019s all exactly the same and it\u2019s fine. There\u2019s nothing wrong with either one of them, and they both exist in the world together.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tMichelle Lewis\u2019 priority is making sure songwriters have a voice as labels and AI companies get closer to resolving the many copyright issues. \u201cWhat we learned from streaming is, if you\u2019re not at the table during those conversations of how it gets split, you\u2019re on the menu,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tYoung Guru leads Jay-Z\u2019s Roc Nation school for aspiring music professionals at Long Island University in Brooklyn. He tells young people to focus on something AI can\u2019t replace: \u201cphysical human interaction.\u201d He tells students not to email him. \u201cMeet me in person and then let\u2019s talk.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tInterestingly, it\u2019s young people who have the most hesitation about AI, according to some sources: In a survey of music producers by the sample library Tracklib, the youngest age group \u2014 respondents in their 20\u2019s \u00a0 \u2014 had the most negative opinions of AI. Lauren Christy says that her early-twentysomething\u00a0 daughters, who are also musicians, \u201cfeel very strongly about how plastic it all sounds,\u201d she says. They\u2019re \u201chaving a very punk reaction about these technologies.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n