Each autumn, I begin my course on the intersection of music and artificial intelligence by asking my students if they are concerned about AI’s role in composing or producing music.Their fears can be summed up in a sentence: AI will create a world where music is plentiful, but musicians get cast aside.
Here are three ways AI is changing the way music gets made – each of which could threaten human musicians in various ways:Many programmes can already generate music with a simple prompt from the user, such as “Electronic Dance with a Warehouse Groove”. Furthermore, streaming services like Spotify and Amazon Music are naturally incentivised to develop their own AI music-generation technology. Spotify, for instance, pays 70 per cent of the revenue of each stream to the artist who created it. If the company could generate that music with its own algorithms, it could cut human artists out of the equation altogether.
While these apps undoubtedly take some work away from professional mixers and producers, they also allow professionals to quickly complete less lucrative jobs, such as mixing or mastering for a local band, and focus on high-paying commissions that require more finesse. These apps also allow musicians to produce more professional-sounding work without involving an audio engineer they can’t afford.