Me playing my guitar in Zocalo Square outside the Cathedral in Mexico City.
Should We Really Be Worried About AI Music?
I discovered AI music creation almost two years ago. It is exciting. There is definitely a lot of chatter around it.
Musicians are worried.
It's the same old story.
Labels have been exploiting artists for over 100 years, and for some reason, now they care about artists' rights.
I can tell you that zero artists will receive royalties from these products, even if record labels work out rights deals with the AI companies.
Labels are mad because a savvy producer—or even some high school kid—can now make a product that is better than mainstream music that costs millions of dollars to produce.
The question is: Should we be worried about this? Or, more specifically, am I worried?
Not at all.
After working with these AI music platforms, as cool as they are, I can tell you that the product they produce is noticeable. That may change in the future, but what won't change is the fact that making great AI music does not make you a great live performer, and that's ultimately what people buy concert tickets to see.
People buy tickets to see a Pink Floyd laser light show, but tickets to see the actual group Pink Floyd—or Roger Waters or David Gilmour—are exponentially more expensive. If reproducing what already exists were equivalent to the real thing, that would not be the case.
The general public cannot tell the difference in blind tests of AI vs. "real music."
But that doesn't mean it's going to translate to the stage.
Ultimately, AI music will probably just end up being a different product. Not a replacement. Not a supplement.
The same thing happened with DJ music and rap. Both of those are more accessible means of production. It doesn't take five years of learning an instrument to become semi-professional.
Now, with Suno and all these platforms, hundreds of thousands of new creators are flooding into the marketplace.
But how will they monetize it? If everyone's doing the same thing, where is the value-add?
I have seen variations of this happen over the last 20 years with whatever is new. Now rap music and many of these top-listened-to genres struggle to sell concert tickets. The reason is that just because you can rap doesn't make you a live act worth seeing.
Live performers who have actually committed to the process of entertaining their audiences will always hold the key.
AI music, rap, DJ music, or any other type of production that doesn't involve mastering an actual instrument such as guitar is just a different product.
It's really just a symptom of a larger problem: Everyone wants a shortcut to something that doesn't have a shortcut.
Commercial pilots don't get to skip flight hours, and ChatGPT is not going to accelerate that process.
Music is no different.
You can make things that sound cool, but even that won't make you a great songwriter, much less a great live performer—or a performer at all.
If everyone is doing the same thing and the market is saturated with all this sameness because it's easy, it does not become valuable.
That's sort of the whole point.
Artists, musicians, producers, or anyone else actually committing to a process of mastery should not fear all this stuff.
Yes, there will be people who make AI music who will somehow be able to monetize and tour that product, but it's not going to be just because they created the product itself. Just like anything else, the marketing infrastructure will matter just as much as the product itself.
That's my view on it. Take it for what it's worth.
— Mike Dyson