OCTOBER 22, 2026.
With the use of AI growing increasingly, its usage begins to expand into the music industry. This is a growing problem, as music artists and musicians become countered by new, generated music that could have been prompted by anyone.
With modern media and advancing technology, artificial intelligence has become more prominent in social media and viral audios, ultimately affecting authentic artists sharing their personal creativity.
How is AI being implemented into modern music?
In music, AI is commonly used from assisting in inspiration to creating an entire piece of music. While being extremely damaging to the environment, AI also has its threats against human creativity, especially in creative areas and industries. It has been used to create initial chord progressions or provide ideas in softwares such as BandLab and LANDR, and generative AI is used to create whole pieces of music. This can be seen in sites such as Suno and Udio, where users are able to enter a direct prompt that generates a completed song. The sounds used for this would have been from the AI’s training from likely other artists or musicians, creating a serious ethical consideration regarding consent if it had not been provided.
Furthermore, voice cloning is an ongoing problem, duplicating and replicating the exact voices of existing artists. This has been used with artists such as Bad Bunny and Harry Styles, creating disputes and disapproval from creators and audiences alike.
Popular streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music have also been implementing AI into their platforms. From generating personalised playlists for the user using their data and statistics to analysing artists’ songs that may or may not be incorrect, AI has become a normalised function in everyone’s day to day lives.
Impacts and effects on Musicians and the Music Industry
While these uses may be useful in some ways for musicians and artists, some features could be detrimental in the long run to human experience and creative expression, as it reduces the need for coming up with individual unique ideas. The use of an artificial generator inhibits authenticity, having been trained with real artists’ content. Aside from the ethical violations that arise from this, without any copyright preventions of generated songs, this means that anyone can publicly use and manipulate this feature, resulting in limited individual artistry and sincerity. Through this, the demand for authentic, original and legitimate music will continue to increase. Without the genuineness of human-made compositions, authentic songs will become rarer, impacting the creation and process of human-made music.
Moreover, the quick production of generated pieces would lead to an infiltration of AI compositions, blocking the stream of new authentic artists who may have great potential. With approximately 44% of AI generated music having been uploaded to the streaming platform Deezer, it is not illogical to consider how much has appeared on other platforms also. This strongly prevents incoming, unknown or smaller artists to surface as more competition with AI rises, creating an unfair limitation to the income of new, authentic music.
These are only a few of the many more impacts that AI could cause upon the music industry, so further research is encouraged.
What has been done? What now?
If this continues, this may cause devastating effects such as less jobs on the market throughout the music industry and decreasing acknowledgement of newer artists and human creativity.
However, so far, many famous artists have begun to speak out about this issue. Over 200 artists, including Billie Eilish and Stevie Wonder, have since signed a letter issued by the Artists Rights Alliance against the predatory use of AI in the music industry. The letter, acknowledging AI’s threats to human creativity, states that “we must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists’ voices and likenesses, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem.”
Awareness of this issue also allows the encouragement of actions that would benefit the musical community. This includes promoting the making of music or exploring new creative hobbies in newer/upcoming generations, advocating smaller, new or any musicians directly through merch, attending concerts, or more to help boost their popularity, reinforcing original compositions from real artists. Buying physical music such as CDs and vinyls allows people to own their own copy of their favourite music, while supporting the artist directly along the way.
By collaborating together, Symphoria and Monarch News aim to spread awareness of the rising impacts of AI on music, and how it may affect the wider community. By establishing these boundaries and taking a stance against these pieces of AI “slop,” it would be beneficial for all in encouraging creativity and capabilities.