Music Industry Divided on AI Music Composition

Artificial intelligence has become able to take over the jobs of humans in the music industry, potentially threatening human creativity, similarly to this photo which was generated by AI. Photo by Shutterstock.AI

Students, music enthusiasts, and industry professionals struggle to accept and integrate AI created music into the industry due to ethical concerns and a lack of raw human emotion.

Music has the power to take hold of a person’s attention, perspective, and empathy and mentally divert them from their daily patterns. Through this deviation, music can offer an opportunity of connection and relief given to them by a fellow human. For young people, like college students, having access to a metaphorical escape can alleviate the burdens of assignments, juggling responsibilities and making decisions about their futures. In today’s society, however, the beginning of artificial intelligence has become an integral part of everyday life, in aspects like business, education, healthcare, technology and now music. 

In a formative period of life like college, students rely on a sense of belonging in one way or another. Music can not only act as a tool in their academic lives, but can also be a way to form social closeness with those around them. Can people connect with artificially generated or assisted music? Can there still be authenticity in something that isn’t human?

Many people in the entertainment industry cannot fathom the idea of authenticity in artificial intelligence, and because of the usage of AI in many aspects of the entertainment field, people see AI as a threat to their careers and demand for protections against it. The Writers Guild of America went on strike from May to September of 2023 against The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in which writers stopped producing work until their protections against AI written content were met, according to the People article written in 2023. 

What does authenticity look like in music? That might depend on a person’s perspective, however the music industry currently seems to crave it. The music industry is in an interesting place where there needs to be a connection that they can grasp onto. Artists like Noah Kahan, an American singer-songwriter in the folk-pop genre, have influenced the industry through vulnerable lyricism and themes of relatable struggles, thus creating a community.

Queens College in Queens, New York has a wide range of students with a plethora of different majors, some including majors related to music. Students everyday walk to class with headphones on and use music as a form of pleasure, stress relief, and escapism. After talking with students on campus, some students are afraid of the effects of AI composed music.

The Quad on Queens College campus, home to over 15,000 students who listen to music on their way to class everyday. Photo by Queens College.

Queens College student Johnny Nelson said, “I think that AI is a dangerous tool to experiment with, especially in creative fields. AI engines having the ability to generate replications of such painstaking and complex results inevitably causes one to question whether or not the true value we find in music lies in the process of manufacturing or in the end result.” 

Another Queens College student Kisakye Sendi said, “I hate AI generated music. Not only does AI steal, but whatever it creates will never be as impactful as anything a human makes.”

While the movement of AI into the music world is just beginning, new developments have already been experimented with through the artists of today. AI generators are able to use machine learning algorithms to examine existing music and from that, make new songs based on that data, according to Digital Ocean’s article written in 2024. Some use this technology to create music from scratch, while others use it as more of a launching point for creativity. 

Music production has been made easier through AI, and according to Rolling Stone’s article written in 2023, some tools include mixing and mastering, instrument generation, and voice synthesizers. These plugins allow producers to utilize time in the studio.

While some people see artificial intelligence as a way to cheat the system, others see it as a way to make composition accessible. “I think what AI can do is it can help lower the barrier to entry so that somebody who wants to create but doesn’t necessarily have the skills in the way that they want to can use the AI to help supplement the skills that they do have,” said Southern New Hampshire University’s Director of AI Integration David Humphreys.  

Well known musicians have used AI as an aid in their creative processes. For example, according to the article from Happy written in 2024, songwriter Paul McCartney was able to utilize AI to recover a rough recording with John Lennon’s vocals that were lost, allowing McCartney and Ringo Starr to complete the Beatles song, “Now and Then.”

The music video for the Beatles song “Now and Then”, which was produced by Paul McCartney and Giles Martin. Photo by Peter Jackson.

DJ and producer David Guetta used AI at his shows to analyze the audience and adjust his sets live based on the data. Artist Lauv and DJ Swivel translated Lauv’s song, “Love You Like That” into Korean by using an AI voice model.

Some musicians see aspects of AI as a threat to their livelihoods, especially with AI’s capability of generating known artists’ voices on tracks, which can directly represent and impersonate artists without their permission. Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, Stevie Wonder, and more than 200 other musicians signed the Artist Rights Alliance Open Letter, in efforts to fight against “the predatory use of artificial intelligence that mimics human artist's likeness, voices, and sound,” according to The Guardian’s article written in 2024.

Humphreys sees the importance of respecting other people’s boundaries. “You shouldn’t be able to sample that artist’s voice without their permission.” Humphreys said. “There may be something that they vehemently are opposed against and they do not want to be represented that way. This even further accentuates that we need to respect each other’s privacy.” 

Copyright discrepancies have haunted the music industry creating scandals left and right, and now AI might make this topic a little more complicated. The question of who owns AI generated music comes down to the data that it is created from. 

For the music generators to create works, they must be equipped with large amounts of training data, which causes problems for a large number of rights holders of that music data. According to A&L Goodbody’s article written in 2024, the only way to solve this dilemma would be to use only public works, or make formal licensing arrangements for each song they wanted to use. “There's a potential for an industry wide change.” Humphreys said. “We’ll see how long record companies let this go on for. I don’t think they’ll let it go on for too long because they’re going to end up losing money because of it.”

Before today, copyrighted works of all kinds were allowed to be used for commentary, criticism or other “transformative works,” however this may be reassessed now that the span for what technology can do has widened. According to the New York Times’ article written in 2023, the US Copyright Office declined copyright claims for AI generated images in a graphic novel because the images do not have the “human authorship” that is required for copyright protection under the law. 

Labels like Universal Music Group have decided to adapt to the new technologies and collaborated with AI music companies like Klay Vision Inc., YouTube, ProrataAI Inc., Band Lab Technologies, Endel, and more. In Universal Music Group’s press release in 2024, they stated that “building generative AI music models ethically and fully respectful of copyright, as well as name and likeness rights, will dramatically lessen the threat to human creators and stand the greatest opportunity to be transformational, creating significant new avenues for creativity and future monetization of copyrights.”

The choice is up to the audience. Some people will embrace the new technologies and join forces in an attempt to balance the opportunities for new resources and the enforcement of ethical applications. Others will reject it completely in efforts to preserve the authenticity that comes from a true musician. And that is the great thing about music. The listener gets to decide what they consume. 

“You’re always going to have people looking at an evolving art form and saying, ‘no, that’s not the art that I know.’” Humphreys said. “But the younger generation tends to adopt it. And then something else will change, and that generation will be like, ‘that’s not art.’ It’s just this whole cycle, right? So maybe it’s just the change itself that people don’t like.”