Will Generative AI Destroy Music and the Music Industry?

A Better Moog

In 1975 a young Peter Vogel finished highschool and his school-friend, Kim Ryrie, had recently discovered “Switched On Bach” which was one of the earliest successful albums to feature the Moog synthesiser. This album inspired both of them to see the great potential of electronic music.

This led Kim to want to create a better synthesiser than the behemoth that the Moog was. So he teamed up with Peter, who was interested in electronics, to try and create a digital synthesiser that would be much more powerful and user friendly.   

After four years of intense work, in 1979, the world received the Fairlight CMI 1. This synthesiser cost a packet. $50K – $100K Australian dollars in 1979 which would be $190K – $230K Australian dollars in 2025. But despite this, it helped create some of the most iconic songs from the 1980s. A few hits the Fairlight was featured in include:

• Michael Jackson “Thriller”
• Peter Gabriel “Sledge Hammer”
• U2 “The Unforgettable Fire”
• Jan Hammer “Crockett’s Theme”

These Kids Will Put Us Out Of A Job

So what does all this have to do with generative AI music? At the time of the Fairlight’s inception the Musician’s Union suggested that the Fairlight posed a “lethal threat” to their musician members. The Failight’s ability to sample and playback real instruments meant that they felt that musicians would become obsolete.

Did that happen? No. Did it change the music industry and the music creation process? Definitely. I for one love the songs that the CMI made possible and I love that I can write music with a pretty spot on emulation of the original for a fraction of the cost.

Technologies Change Things

The Fairlight didn’t take away musicians’ jobs. It did give songwriters and composers a new creative tool to wield which in turn was used in conjunction with real musicians. It created its own sound and own creative techniques and processes.

Every new and disruptive technology will cause music and the music industry to change. Generative AI will do this too. It will divert some streams of income to other areas but it will also open up new opportunities and musical possibilities. Just how much it will change the landscape is yet to be seen as it’s very early days.

The Not So Good

In an effort to keep things simple here are some of the concerns regarding the rise of generative AI music: 

• Job Displacement: How much will AI tools and generative AI replace composers, producers, and even songwriters? 
• An Already Flooded Market: Will AI-generated music flood the market, making it harder for human artists to compete?
• Devaluation of Human Creativity: Does relying on algorithms to generate music diminish the role of human expression, emotion, and originality in the creative process?
• Control and Ownership: Questions arise about copyright and ownership of AI-generated music. Who owns the output? How do we fairly compensate artists and developers involved?
• Homogenisation of Sound: Will AI-generated music, trained on existing datasets, lead to a lack of diversity and originality in musical styles? Will AI music start being fed back to AI music leading to even more homogenisation?

The Potential Benefits

• New Sonic Possibilities: AI can push creative boundaries even further, generating novel melodies, harmonies, and rhythms that might not have been conceived by humans.
• Enhanced Collaboration: AI can be a powerful collaborator, assisting musicians in realizing their creative visions and augmenting their skills.
• Increased Efficiency: AI can automate tedious non-creative tasks, freeing up musicians to focus on the more creative aspects of their work. I personally think this is a great advantage of AI in music BUT it still requires a trained ear to know if what the AI has done is suitable for the task.

Here are some thoughts on the above from my experience using AI (both generative and assisted), listening to other people’s experience and hearing what professionals in the music industry have to say:

AI Won’t Steal Our Jobs (Maybe)

With generative AI and AI assisted tools there will be some diverting of income that will go to AI services. At this stage it’s hard to say how much but I think we should remain hopeful. 

I pay for some generative AI services and use AI tools but it’s a fraction of my available budget for marketing and equipment. I use AI generation for my music artwork, previously I was using free stock photography. I know my way around photo editing software and have been doing the artwork for my releases for years.  

In the past, I’ve had a professional designer create some amazing logos and assets for my releases but I did a contra deal to pay for those assets. 

Given that I’m currently trying to release music every 3 – 4 weeks (a symptom of the current consumption of music) there isn’t always time or budget to engage a graphic designer or photographer. 5 years ago I thought differently but the industry and music consumption habits have changed so these tools are helpful in this regard. 

AI Might Steal Some (Demeaning) Jobs

As well as mixing and mastering, I also write production music. There’s definitely a case for this sort of work being affected by generative AI music. How much and in what areas of the industry, it’s hard to know. Given some of the examples of generative music I’ve heard I feel electronic types of music will be more at risk. That said there are some pretty impressive generations of more acoustic styles too.

I think it’s realistic to say however that generative AI music will probably only steal some production music jobs that some composers might be happy to avoid. Maybe I’m being naive but I think there is definitely a “what the market wants” to all this. Cheap and easy isn’t always what people want. This for many reasons and some of them are purely psychological on the music buyer/licesors part.

AI Won’t Do Everything For You

As independent musicians we’ve had to go DIY in the last 5 – 10 years and content creation is more important than ever. One thing I don’t think people consider about generative music is marketing. Reaching an audience with your own songs is hard enough, but with generative AI you have the same issue and a less impressive skill set and very little story telling opportunity to display on social media. 

People won’t be that interested in how you typed in a two sentence prompt and produced your 2:56 synth pop banger. Yes you might have written the lyrics but the vocals and music are generative. You can’t talk about the producer or singer you collaborated with. There is very little nuance in the creative process for you so you’re going to have to find other ways to promote your tracks and be perceived as an authentic artist.

AI Is Still A Child

I’ve used ChatGPT, Gemini, Mid Journey, Dall e3, Runway ML for generative purposes. My biggest takeaway, AI still needs its hand held and often spits out a lot of garbage until you really dial in your prompt or just have to compromise with the results you’ve got.

If you’ve done a lot of generative AI image creation like I have, it is still a challenging task and I have given up in frustration many times. Sometimes you can get some real gems because of this but you still have to spend a deal of time working on your prompt and rolling the dice to get something you want and sometimes … you just have to take what you can get.

There Might Be An Anti AI Reaction

One thing I think about is the reaction of the general public to generative AI. Like the sound of a DX7 synth, glam bands or ska music, at one time they were a wildly popular fad but then that sound/look became dated and uncool. This leads me to think that there might be a backlash to generative AI at some point. In turn, this might mean that works which are heavily generative AI might be less popular to some audiences.

The Takeaway

There’s obviously a lot more that I could include above. Maybe I’m  being naive about the impact of AI on music. It’s still early days and there are some really helpful AI tools for music that do help the creative process. 

It’s important for us as humans to create. It’s important to tell our stories and show our work. People using AI to create music derive no creative enjoyment from it. Sure they might like the results but they’re participating as consumer and curators.

Generative AI isn’t creative – it’s purely derivative. You could say that all human creativity is derivative and whilst there is an element of truth the difference is, getting metaphysical, that AI doesn’t have a personality or soul. In the most basic sense, it’s an artificial neural network that excels at taking in a lot of data, analysing it and making something that’s derivative from the data. It doesn’t mean it won’t create some cool things, but it’s not the same as a human creating music, art, stories etc. where that individual’s life experience, personality and soul impact upon the creation.

That’s why I’m just going to continue to do what I feel compelled to do, write and release music and help others do the same.