AI in music

[Uncle Rodney]

(said in fun) Hmm.. I wonder what an AI generated message board squabble would look like. How much time it would take (1ms?) to generate and how many characters it would need (a zillion or two?). That could be the new tech fun, get AI fighting itself!

 

Anyway, I think we humans are in a new era where we have to double check what we see and hear, ask if it's AI fakery. I think it's the intention of "the powers that be" to confuse us, so we can't tell what's real or their propaganda, they know most people won't bother to ask, they will just believe what they see/hear.

 

What makes humans human is, the ability to ask.

Edited yesterday at 08:31 by Uncle Rodney

[EliasMooseblaster]

19 hours ago, SteveXFR said:

 

I don't think thats technically AI. Its just an analysis tool in the software. 

A lot of things are getting called AI in the marketing nonsense when they're not.

As I mentioned in passing, I think there's deliberate obfuscation going on. In the same way that any computer program is an "app" these days, there's some none-too-subtle marketing going on to dissuade people from (i) asking what's under the bonnet and (ii) questioning what should actually qualify as "artificial intelligence". "Large Language Model" isn't as snappy or sexy, but it's a much more accurate description of what most of these services actually are!

 

And as technically impressive as a large language model is, I wouldn't go as far as to call it "intelligent" - but this is exactly the kind of vast philosophical question their marketing depts would like us to ignore!

[Cliff Edge]

18 hours ago, Al Krow said:

 

You miss the point?

 

The invention of the production line took away skilled work from mechanics who were able to able to put a whole engine together from scratch.

 

AI already has the ability to take work away from skilled song writers, which I wouldn't regard as a mundane task, or have we all been wasting our time discussing that very issue on this thread?😅

I didn’t think his production line actually built the engines or any of the other parts of the car.

[SumOne]

7 hours ago, Uncle Rodney said:

 

 

What makes humans human is, the ability to ask.

 

Fun fact:

 

The Royal Society* motto since 1662 has been 'Nullius in verba'....meaning 'take nobody's word for it'.

 

So I suppose not much really changes.

 

 *the world's oldest national scientific academy.

[MacDaddy]

 

The horse has already bolted when it comes to AI in music. Tools like Suno can generate full songs, backing, melody, vocals, from a short text prompt, (and give you the stems) and they’re already in the hands of bedroom producers and ad agencies.

 

Using The Beatles as an example, because why not:

Imagine a system trained only on music up to 1966. Feed it the Beatles’ catalogue up to that point and say, “Write the next Beatles song.” What you’d get would sound far closer to something from the Red Album era than anything on the Blue Album.

 

That’s because these models learn patterns from existing material and recombine them in plausible ways. They’re excellent at imitation, pastiche, and interpolation, but they don’t experience the cultural shocks, new instruments, studio breakthroughs, or interpersonal dynamics that pushed the Beatles from early singles into the Sgt. Pepper/Abbey Road period.

 

From a business perspective, that’s not necessarily a problem. Plenty of genres run on “don’t scare the fans,” and production music for TV, film, and ads often just needs to hit a familiar brief. For that world, a machine that can churn out convincing, on‑brand material forever is close to ideal. AI is here to stay, and it will dominate the “we need something that sounds like X” space.

 

The real question is this: AI can remix what it has seen in novel combinations, but that’s not the same as being part of a scene, reacting to new technology, or four humans in a room pushing each other somewhere unexpected. Will these systems ever produce the equivalent of the Blue years, those left‑turns where a band invents a new sound rather than iterating on the old one? Imitation is easy. Evolution is the hard part.

 

TL:DR current AI excels at stylistic imitation rather than genuine artistic evolution.

[Woodinblack]

On 28/01/2026 at 11:00, Al Krow said:

With AI, is the situation different to Henry Ford inventing the production line and taking work away from skilled workers who had the skills to put a whole engine together from scratch?

 

This is somewhat different from other industrial revolution things. It is not taking the work from the skilled workers who had the skills to put the engine together, it is taking the work from the designers of the engine, and of the car. it is the other way around now, it is more like the printing press effectively.

 

On 28/01/2026 at 11:00, Al Krow said:

Do we complain about AI coming up with better computer code to enable more rapid and successful cancer diagnosis, and lament the loss of software engineering jobs for graduates who have invested time and treasure in their chosen careers?

 

Some part of me hopes that some AI reads that sentence and really poisons it

 

 

On 28/01/2026 at 11:00, Al Krow said:

AI can't fake a live performance by a human band, which is what audiences want to provide them with the soundtrack to their weddings or parties and end-of-the week nights out.

 

Doesn't it though? Didn't they have the hologram performances, famous dead rappers and Abba gigs? Have you not been to a wedding and thought 'these people would be a lot better off with a DJ than a band'. Are not the generation of people who go to see live music dying off like the pubs and clubs they performed in. 

[edstraker123]

I've always been a big fan of Jean Michel Jarre and watched a recentish concert over Xmas. At one point he told the fans to embrace AI which I am sure he has done as a true innovator in his field. Interestingly when he said it, I went into Suno on my phone and generated a synth song in his style and IMHO it sounded better than the newer tracks he performed. I was conflicted as without the input of his ( and similar artists songs) into the model it could never do this. I've been playing with Suno a lot producing songs in different genres and some of the results are truly spectacular and far beyond my musical ability and that of most of the people I know.  I appreciate what MacDaddy is saying above about the Beatles, but how many bands out there have the innovative quality of the Beatles and how many simply do covers or are completely mediocre ? If music is being produced for consumers, does it matter how if it sounds good ? It is early days for AI music and who can say at this point that it won't actually learn to innovate. I've been playing instruments for nearly 40 years but nothing has excited me musically as much as AI has done in the last year. Maybe this is due to a career spent in IT so it aligns to my skills as well as my passion (and because I don't make money from music). Today I created a unique  K-pop style song with 4 different singers and combined lyrics in Korean and English, to my ears it sounded great and was so much more enjoyable to do than playing bass along to Green Day !

[SimonK]

I'm increasingly teaching ethics and AI in a University. I use music as quite a good example.

 

We need to see AI as a tool, and like any tool it can make some work more efficient, but we must not mistake quantity with quality. Generative AI in particular can create large quantities of music etc. very rapidly, but that doesn't mean it is any good. Conversly, in the right hands, AI can help creators generate really high quality work - for me the main benefit of AI in music is more in recording/remastering than composing (for instance).

 

There's plenty of aphorisms about this but I quite like: "Those who are carried to a goal should not think they have reached it" regarding AI - it's one I use with my students and coursework!

 

 

 

 

[SumOne]

12 minutes ago, SimonK said:

 

 

There's plenty of aphorisms about this but I quite like: "Those who are carried to a goal should not think they have reached it" regarding AI - it's one I use with my students and coursework!

 

 

 

 

 

That's very true for those that want to have pride in their artistic efforts. Unfortunately though, the goal for many isn't artistic integrity and having pride in what they've created - it's reaching the goal of making £ and presumably getting AI to fully compose music might be a way of achieving that. 

 

Perhaps this isn't true, but people are suggesting that companies like Spotify and Amazon music are using AI to create music and are promoting it on their playlists as they then don't need to pay royalties. e.g. Ask Alexa to 'play relaxing background music' and it is in their interest to play bland innofensive AI generated stuff they don't need to pay for.

[SimonK]

16 minutes ago, SumOne said:

 

That's very true for those that want to have pride in their artistic efforts. Unfortunately though, the goal for many isn't artistic integrity and having pride in what they've created - it's reaching the goal of making £ and presumably getting AI to fully compose music might be a way of achieving that. 

 

Perhaps this isn't true, but people are suggesting that companies like Spotify and Amazon music are using AI to create music and are promoting it on their playlists as they then don't need to pay royalties. e.g. Ask Alexa to 'play relaxing background music' and it is in their interest to play bland innofensive AI generated stuff they don't need to pay for.

 

If AI is destroying anything in music/media I think it is the online social media/content creator roles (and I struggle to be sympathetic about this!).

 

I find myself scrolling far less due to the sheer amount of AI related trash on facebook etc. While online marketing has helped many especially younger musicians over the last ten years or so, I think things may start moving back to the importance of a musician being someone who doesn't create glitzy and technically perfect 20 second online clips, but actually someone who plays real music to real people!

 

Edited 3 hours ago by SimonK

[edstraker123]

33 minutes ago, SimonK said:

Generative AI in particular can create large quantities of music etc. very rapidly, but that doesn't mean it is any good

But I think that is the thing it can be extremely good and human created music can equally be woeful. I still see it as an artistic endeavour, before I was just a bassist, now I'm also a lyricist, sound engineer, producer, arranger etc. Obviously you can just tell Suno to give you a blues song with a male singer and it will, but that isn't how I use it, I have literally used 1000's of generations honing songs to get them to be the finished article I want. This weekend I am starting collaborations with another musician who uses AI for creation but differently than I do - this could be the magic sauce !

I also worked at a University till last year and saw the fear that all AI would produce was cheating students but the reality was something completely different when you saw how it could positively contribute to teaching and learning and help those with accessibility issues etc.

I understand the fear musicians have whereby the tens of thousands of hours invested in honing skills can be replaced by a one sentence prompt but this will open up music to so many people who haven't got the time or commitment to put in the effort.

[Al Krow]

9 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Doesn't it though? Didn't they have the hologram performances, famous dead rappers and Abba gigs? Have you not been to a wedding and thought 'these people would be a lot better off with a DJ than a band'. Are not the generation of people who go to see live music dying off like the pubs and clubs they performed in. 

 

Hologram performances of ABBA and former stars feels like a very specific type of (phenomenally expensive) tribute act? And if you've ever been to ABBA Voyage you will appreciate how just how fantastic the session musicians are who are playing the music live at every performance. My brother in law asked me if I'd like to play bass on that set? Hell yeah! Except I couldn't tie my counterpart's shoelaces... 😅

 

@edstraker123 - love what you're saying in your two posts above! Using AI creatively in the way you're suggesting seems to me like it's democratising and making accessible the songwriting process to music creators who are using AI as a tool. Getting what's produced to an audience to listen to is going to be another matter though and no doubt the music industry will fight tooth and nail to retain the ability to "make" and promote their own artists to keep some control and earnings. 

 

For me the prospect of covers bands like my own coming up with ai assisted original material that they end up performing alongside all the covers we do is an interesting one and feels like a hybrid approach; one that is a way different skill-set and quality-control threshold to hitting "Suno write me the words and lyrics for a song" to add to the tsunami of "ai slop" being produced. Will be more of a challenge to both us and our audiences in terms of introducing new music than playing Mr Brightside for the 1000th time?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002f1d0/radical-with-amol-rajan

 

Interestingly the discussion of ai in music was a topic of discussion on Radio 4's Radical last night, between Amol Rajan and Panos A. Panay president of The Recording Academy, which organises the Grammy Awards. There's about 13 mins focussed on the role and impact of ai between 27 to 40 mins in.

[TimR]

"And this next one is one that my computer wrote earlier"...

[Al Krow]

12 minutes ago, TimR said:

"And this next one is one that my computer wrote assisted with earlier"...

 

Fixed. There's a world of difference between what @edstraker123 has explained he's doing and what my brother-in-law, who's not a musician, got Suno to produce the other day (yep his was defo slop - but didn't stop it bringing a smile to family members!)

 

And the stuff that's been crafted with care and attention with ai input is likely to be a hundred times better than quite a lot of the "original slop" that's too often foisted on audiences, which should leave no one wondering why no one's turning up to their gigs.

[neepheid]

1 hour ago, edstraker123 said:

this will open up music to so many people who haven't got the time or commitment to put in the effort.

 

Then they shouldn't be "making" music in the first place.  Sorry to get all "gatekeeper-y" on you but do you not see how utterly insulting this is?  What an idiot I must be to have put the hours upon hours of effort into learning an instrument, to spend hours upon hours collaborating with my pals, trying stuff to see what works and what doesn't when creating/refining a song!  It was all for nothing - you can just rock up to this bit of software, tap a few words in and hey presto!

 

I know you're going to consider this pure histrionic theatre, but it is genuinely how I feel about it.

[BigRedX]

To get a passable piece of AI generated music you still have to be able to write a decent prompt (or more likely a decent set of prompts) in the first place.

[edstraker123]

12 minutes ago, neepheid said:

Then they shouldn't be "making" music in the first place.  Sorry to get all "gatekeeper-y" on you but do you not see how utterly insulting this is?

I really don't but obviously didn't intend to be insulting. If you get joy from music crafting songs and performing them with your friends AI doesn't change that at all. Why should the joy from music creation only come from the way a particular group define it to be ? The processes are different but the end point is the same. 

[Al Krow]

8 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

Then they shouldn't be "making" music in the first place.  Sorry to get all "gatekeeper-y" on you but do you not see how utterly insulting this is?  What an idiot I must be to have put the hours upon hours of effort into learning an instrument, to spend hours upon hours collaborating with my pals, trying stuff to see what works and what doesn't when creating/refining a song!  It was all for nothing - you can just rock up to this bit of software, tap a few words in and hey presto!

 

I know you're going to consider this pure histrionic theatre, but it is genuinely how I feel about it.

 

Do you feel the same about software engineers who have spent years training, getting a loan to see them through uni and can now be replaced with ai generating code at the press of a button? Or about language translators who find their work drying up, or ai assisting doctors with identifying cancer cells that they would have missed when looking at scans?

 

Sure this is going to make life difficult for original songwriters looking to break through, no question! But it's already happening. Do you ever use ChatGPT?  Ai is not performing music live to an appreciative audience who don't want a hologram playing for them, so your time and the rest of our time and effort learning an instrument has definitely not gone to waste! And there's nothing stopping you having fun collaborating with pals writing music - if it's decent, people will want to listen to it when you perform it live - something ai ain't going to be able to do.

[EliasMooseblaster]

17 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

Then they shouldn't be "making" music in the first place.  Sorry to get all "gatekeeper-y" on you but do you not see how utterly insulting this is?  What an idiot I must be to have put the hours upon hours of effort into learning an instrument, to spend hours upon hours collaborating with my pals, trying stuff to see what works and what doesn't when creating/refining a song!  It was all for nothing - you can just rock up to this bit of software, tap a few words in and hey presto!

 

I know you're going to consider this pure histrionic theatre, but it is genuinely how I feel about it.

 

You're far from the only one who feels this way! I read a very good piece the other day which was built around a similar argument: that an awful lot of tech "solutions" are trying to convince you that you shouldn't need to put any effort into writing reports, reading your emails, deciding what to eat, or even making music...when actually, the sense of reward and satisfaction is far greater when you've put in the hours to master your craft, work through the mistakes and the dodgy first drafts. That far from being an inconvenience, the process is the point. Not to spaff out an album and push it to market as quickly as possible, but to take the time to work on something you'll be proud of.

 

 

(Plus, early studies suggest your brain is far healthier if you don't use AI as a crutch, so you were probably wise to put those hours in after all!)

[edstraker123]

13 minutes ago, EliasMooseblaster said:

the sense of reward and satisfaction is far greater when you've put in the hours to master your craft, work through the mistakes and the dodgy first drafts

But it isn't necessarily.  The satisfaction of producing a professional sounding song using AI as a tool for me has been just as good as sitting for hours with a guitar or bass to come up with a single element of a track. You are mastering a new and different craft if you are using it to do more than just writing a prompt to produce a funny song about basschat.

I have spent days on a single as yet unfinished song using AI so it isn't just here's a sentence and out pops a masterpiece.

[12stringbassist]

I don't mind the idea of the use of AI to actually help to shape a sound, but when it comes to any actual performance aspect, it should come from a human.

[edstraker123]

8 minutes ago, 12stringbassist said:

when it comes to any actual performance aspect, it should come from a human.

I completely get that but it might be difficult to assemble a bunch of humans talented enough to perform the song especially locally !

[Al Krow]

24 minutes ago, 12stringbassist said:

I don't mind the idea of the use of AI to actually help to shape a sound, but when it comes to any actual performance aspect, it should come from a human.

 

All for live music being performed by real people.

 

But, if you limit ANY "actual performance" to humans, what does that imply for, in order of artificality, to the following:

 

1. guitarists and bass players using pedals?

2. keys players playing the horn section on their keys, doing away with the need for eg a trumpet or sax player for the occasional song (although won't be anything like as good IMO!)?

3. bands using backing tracks?

4. bands replacing drummers entirely with drum synths?

5. solo artists replacing entire bands with backing tracks?

6. DJs playing recorded music with no need for any live musicians?

[7. Jukeboxes replacing DJs? - just for completeness that's obviously not live 😅]

 

Fwiw when we play live we're at level 1.

 

Edited 1 hour ago by Al Krow

[chris_b]

AI for finding a cure for cancer is good. AI for replacing people's jobs, absolutely not good.

 

As far as music goes, we survived Synths, so we can get through this. IMO the bigger problem is that younger kids don't see live music as a thing. It's as interesting to them as golf. They have their songs on Spotify, playing on their phones, it's musical wallpaper.

 

My musical career has gone from cutting edge to historical. 90% of the music I get asked to play is from the 20th Century.

 

When AI has its own programs on Radio 4 I'll start getting annoyed.

[neepheid]

54 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

 

Do you feel the same about software engineers who have spent years training, getting a loan to see them through uni and can now be replaced with ai generating code at the press of a button? Or about language translators who find their work drying up, or ai assisting doctors with identifying cancer cells that they would have missed when looking at scans?

 

Sure this is going to make life difficult for original songwriters looking to break through, no question! But it's already happening. Do you ever use ChatGPT?  Ai is not performing music live to an appreciative audience who don't want a hologram playing for them, so your time and the rest of our time and effort learning an instrument has definitely not gone to waste! And there's nothing stopping you having fun collaborating with pals writing music - if it's decent, people will want to listen to it when you perform it live - something ai ain't going to be able to do.

 

Don't do that.  The title of this thread is "AI in music", so let's keep it relevant?

 

And no, I have never used ChatGPT.  I have no desire to either.  I've got a brain, and despite what my frequent word salad spewed around here might suggest, it's reasonably competent at times 

 

Edited 1 hour ago by neepheid