AI & The Future of Music

If there is one subject that is prevalent across many conversations these days, it’s the future of AI and the impact it will have on our lives, our jobs, and our humanity. The future of music creation is, without a doubt, one of the obvious targets for AI. How far and wide it impacts on how we work and operate in this business is still not entirely apparent, but impact it will. And how we react to it, and deal with it, is going to be a big part of how we succeed with this new reality.

Early signs of what AI can do in music are mixed in my opinion. I have heard some good examples of AI-generated songs and some absolutely horrible ones. It’s still not there yet but it’s going to get better and very quickly. So where does that leave us, the songwriters, producers, and artists that have spent countless years honing our craft and passionately digging deeper to find new ways to express our human existence and experience? Well, we are going to adapt and change as we always have. Thankfully humans are pretty good at that! Technology has always had an impact on the creation of music for many, many years. From the very first recordings on wax cylinders to the unlimited track count of a DAW, from acoustic to electric and electronic instruments, drum machines and sampling through to Auto Tune, we have come to live and learn and use these tools to our creative advantage. Making music is all about passionate expression, and wanting to say something, either lyrically, melodically or just by smashing down on a guitar played as loud through an amp as possible. This is what starts us on this journey. And guess what? AI isn't taking that away. Angst-driven teens who are fired-up and ready to protest about their lives, their parents, their world view etc, will always end up being part of something vibrant and creative. A movement. And music will be there waiting, and I truly believe writing an AI prompt will not satisfy that itch at all. But sitting in a room crying while you write in your diary of a love lost or sweating your way through a gig, screaming and singing into a mic while an audience loses themselves along with you and your music, will. AI is never going to take that away from us poets and dreamers, and those that seek them out.

I watch a lot of documentaries about music, and especially those that visit the creative moments that lead to a band or artist exploding out and making a record that transformed music. And in nearly every case you see passionate musicians, artists and producers talking about their process and how they created the music we all love. Most of it was given birth through pain, suffering, joy and a lot of dramatic interplay from all those involved. People talking, fighting, sharing stories with all their emotional baggage, world and political views and creative aspirations. It’s an alchemy that isn't built upon repetition or regurgitation, but endless cycles of chance and chaos. Like a lottery win of people meeting, just at the right time, at the right place and being ready to explore and make art. This isn't something you can write in code or trawl through millions of songs and capture. Computers and AI may at some point be able to feel, may even be able to have emotions, but it will be built upon the word of code, not the organic variable of humanity, which is constantly reacting to the forces of life, death, love, loss, et al, and all the feelings we have because of it. 

So where does this take us in this new paradigm? Well, AI is here to stay and it will impact on quite a number of the financial outcomes of music creation. Low hanging fruit will be easy to score. Average songwriting and especially something creatively bland and benign will be overtaken by AI. And it will be up to the audience to decide if that kind of music satisfies. And in a lot of cases it may. That’s the reality. AI will, without a doubt, be a wonderful tool to many of us. Just the time-saving capabilities of AI alone dealing with mundane daily tasks, are going to be amazing for streamlining our lives. And I intend on using some of these tools when they come along, if it frees up more time for me to experiment and get creative. So in that regard, I welcome it and as I have always done, will adapt and incorporate it as best I can. 

In closing, I want to share with you my current mantra on AI. And that is to Out-Live it and Out-Write it. This, I hope, will give us some motivation to keep doing what we do. We out-live AI, not in years, but through living consciously and passionately in our collective human experience, interacting with the world, its glorious beauty and color, heartbreak and joy, and absorb every part of it to feed our creative souls. And from there, we can out-write AI using all this beautiful alchemy of collaborators, coming together, sharing life experiences, to shape and pour into every song that only we, in that moment in time, can write. That kind of chaos and chance isn't written in code, it’s written in you. - Richard Harris