The music industry is always evolving. Artists, trends, labels, and media platforms emerge and depart with startling regularity. Yet performers, recording firms, concert promoters, and other industry players may now be facing their biggest transformation challenge yet — artificial intelligence.
Even at this relatively early stage, there’s no area of the business that’s unaffected, says Daniel Abowd, president of music publishing company The Royalty Network. “On the creation side, AI-powered tools are being used to enhance and synthesize performance, editing, production, post-production, and post-release content,” he explains in an email interview. “On the consumption side, AI is powering listener and playlisting algorithms and other tools that deliver listeners to content.”
There’s already been an incredible number of AI-supported use cases, says Andrew Sanchez, co-founder of Udio, which offers a generative AI model that produces music based on simple text prompts. He observes, via email, that The Beatles’ “Now and Then,” which was restored with the help of AI, was recently nominated for two Grammys in the Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance categories.
There’s always been a distance between music creators and listeners, Sanchez states. He notes that AI is helping to reduce that gap by allowing a more direct dialogue between artists and their fans. “When artists release music that fans can then remix, extend, distort, or otherwise interact with through AI, it opens up an entirely new revenue stream for artists and means of engagement.”
GenAI, in particular, opens a new way to explore musical creativity, inviting people who might otherwise never engage with music, says Mike Clem, CEO of musical equipment retailer Sweetwater. “It takes patience and grit to learn an instrument, and AI lowers the bar on the talent required to sound good,” he explains in an online interview. As a result, there’s now a new wave of music makers experimenting with AI, who then learn to play a “real” instrument.
AI-generated music tools are also helping artists accelerate their creative processes, allowing them to generate hits that match the pace of pop culture innovation, Sanchez says. He notes that comedian Willonius Hatcher, known as King Willonius, used Udio to create an AI-assisted song called “BBL Drizzy.”
“The song made waves in pop culture when Metro Boomin sampled it,” Sanchez says, “marking the first time an AI-generated song was sampled by a major producer.”
A Generational Transformation
Unlike their predecessors, many modern musicians have no desire to appear live on stage or even record an album, Clem says. He believes there’s now a transition from ‘musicians’ to ‘creators,’ fueled in part by AI. “It’s about creating content that connects with their audiences to build and grow their following,” he explains.
Music has evolved throughout history, thanks to artists who aren’t afraid to push the status quo, Sanchez says. “The transformation in AI is really being led by artists who understand how AI-generated music tools can enhance their creative processes.”
Some industry observers view AI as a potential replacement for human artists. But Sanchez disagrees. “In reality, we believe that human creativity will never be cut out of the process,” he says. “The songs that rise to the top have the confluence of the creative spark and the understanding of what people actually want to listen to.”
Both Sides Now
AI-powered tools can enhance, empower, and inspire human creativity, Abowd says. They can simplify many creative tasks, such as editing out breaths from a vocal track. With consent, AI technology can also enhance or simulate the vocal sound of a singer who’s no longer able to perform as they did years ago, as well as inspire songwriters with a foundational sound concept they can build upon.
On the downside, there’s the possible existential threat posed by AI models that use unlicensed human-authored music to create new works that will compete in the same marketplace, potentially at a lower price point, Abowd says. “Reasonable people can disagree on the magnitude of that threat, but it’s certainly a conversation on the tip of many people’s tongues.”
A Golden Opportunity
Sanchez believes that blending AI with art presents a golden opportunity to create a powerful, transformative creativity technology that will open new revenue options for artists. Fans will benefit, too. “It’s clear from recent music tour successes … that consumers are interested in immersive experiences that put them at the helm of the storyline.”
There’s something very innately human and beautiful about expressing yourself musically, Clem observes. “AI may displace some commercial music production — for example, in commercials and video game soundtracks — but we’re in no danger of computers replacing our desire to express ourselves creatively, or our desire to experience live music and all its attached emotions and nostalgia,” he notes. “There’s something about music that resonates in our souls in ways that we cannot explain.”