Transcription
Let's explore the latest AI music news. Because I'm now convinced the music industry is gaslighting us all.
Everywhere you look in the social media space, you see a vast consensus about AI. It's a plague destroying art. But I'm a skeptic by nature. And where I find consensus, I look deeper. And I did. And what I found is as slimy as it's always been.
This video is not sponsored. I have some affiliate links below, but my opinions here are from, well, getting close to 40 years as a performing musician.
Let's start with a mind bender published in The Hollywood Reporter covering a study at the Berklee College of Music. The headline: 1/3 of musicians now use AI for inspiration on tracks they release. The study found that 33% use it for inspiration and 26% incorporate it directly into their final work. But I didn't expect this. Newer musicians are far less likely to use AI than working professionals. New artists use it only about 56% of the time, while full-time musicians use it around 92% of the time.
If [snorts] you think releasing music derived from somebody else's work is inherently unethical, I would ask, "How did you learn to play?" You listen to music, right? Lifted ideas. There's an old saying, "All musicians are thieves. Some are just better at it than others." My opinion, if copying other people's music is a crime, then every musician is guilty. If you're a musician, tell me with a straight face that you would not give anything for the vast musical knowledge machine learning has unlocked.
But there's a double standard. Big artists are using AI behind the doors to help them to create, while they rant on social media about how it hurts them. All the while, record labels who dominate the music industry have already manipulated the technology by forcing audible changes to the algorithms in December 2025. It's about control and greed. It's not about art.
Do you know how listeners actually react to AI music in blind tests? Researchers at MIT's Media Lab ran a controlled experiment. [music] 152 people listening to instrumental music split into three groups. One group got accurate labels on which tracks were AI and which tracks were human. One deliberately got wrong labels and one got no labels at all. Every participant heard four tracks. One chill, one upbeat, one AI and one human. The findings? People said they preferred the AI tracks. But human composed tracks were more effective at actually hitting the target emotion regardless of what they were told they were listening to.
The way I see it, this study is a case for exactly the workflow >> [music] >> I keep coming back to on this channel. This raises another question. If human connection is what actually moves people, which is what the data supports, why are the major labels spending millions trying to sue AI companies out of existence instead of trusting that a human-centric music will keep winning on the thing that matters most? Emotion.
Here's my theory. It's not about protecting emotional experience. It's about gatekeeping. The music industry has always had gatekeepers. The labels, the studios large and small, producers, distribution platforms, [music] streaming services and radio. They decide who gets heard. That's not a conspiracy theory. >> [music] >> That's just how the music business works, and everyone who's honest with themselves knows it.
So, as musicians, we have to make an important choice. Do we keep supporting an industry by entertainment conglomerates and live venue monopolies that have been ripping off artists for decades? Or do we support the best musical tools that let independent producers create music the way that we want to?
This brings me to a story that's still developing right now. In June, a coalition of 31 artists and songwriter organizations took action. They put out a letter accusing record labels of opting artists into AI licensing deals by default without ever asking them. The American Federation of Musicians, an actual musicians union, sued Universal and Warner. They didn't sue Suno or Udio. They sued the record label. Why? Follow the money. Suno and Udio paid out their debt last year. Universal and Warner got the settlement money for past use of their catalog, and they're now collecting ongoing licensing fees every time those catalogs train on a model going forward. The labels cashed the checks, and they're still cashing them today. But the labels kept it all. [music] And the AFM says the session musicians who actually played on the licensed recordings got nothing, zero. [music] The union claims the labels didn't even tell them the recordings were licensed.
The story has never been AI companies won't pay musicians. >> [music] >> The story is the gatekeepers got paid and kept it for themselves. And this should make your blood boil if you're an independent artist. >> [music] >> That lawsuit only existed because those musicians were in a union. 99% of us don't [music] have that clause. If you're self-released, if you're not on a major record label, and if you're not a session musician in a union, there's no agreement to breach. >> [music] >> Our music has been scraped and trained on, then monetized, and there's no one obligated to tell us, let alone pay us.
So, don't let anyone tell you this is a fight about protecting musicians like you. It's about protecting musicians who already had a seat at the table. You are going to have to build your own leverage. And the very tools that could help you do that are the exactly the ones the record labels are already fencing off and manipulating.
PC World reports that AI music is everywhere, but nobody can tell. 44% of Deezer uploads in 2026 were AI-generated. Streaming platforms are panicking, and they're trying to implement detection systems. They're expecting by 2027 to be able to distinguish between AI and human-created music. Here's the problem. They will never reliably distinguish AI from human-created music with a human in the loop workflow, especially the kind I advocate for on this [music] channel. If you use AI as a tool to generate ideas and build the [music] track, no detection system will ever catch it.
But why all that focus on AI detection? That only makes sense if you see what's happening on Wall Street. This Forbes article is what really gets to the heart of the industry greed. A North Carolina man pleaded guilty to an $8 million streaming fraud scheme using AI-generated songs and bots to create billions of fake streams. But the interesting part is that this case exposes the critical vulnerability in a booming music royalty investment market. Because apparently, music isn't art anymore. It's a stable income asset.
But here's where it gets dark. Blackstone. Yep. The same firm that bought up the foreclosed homes after the 2008 stock market crash back to fund that sold a $1.4 billion bond secured by music catalogs. They hold the rights to roughly 45,000 major titles. And what they're doing is packaging anticipated streaming royalties >> [music] >> into an investment product. And now investors are upset because AI is devaluing their investment vehicles. This has nothing to do with music or art. This is culture as a commodity.
And to understand how evil this all is, you have to understand how streaming actually pays out. Spotify and the rest don't pay a fixed amount per play. They take the pooled subscription and ad revenue and split it across every stream that happened that month. Your slice depends on your share of the total. If you're a moderate indie artist getting a few thousand streams a month, you get nothing. Only the top artists make the most money. And that's exactly why these investment firms package royalties the way that they do. And exactly why they're losing their mind over AI diluting their pools.
As long as major record labels dominate music by propping up top artists while shutting everyone else out, any technology that challenges or threatens their control is going to have a target on its back. AI is a tool, not a crutch. No one should just be pressing a button and uploading garbage music. We're all in agreement there, I hope. But artists should have the right to choose the tools they use to create. The major entertainment conglomerates want to turn AI music into a walled garden where only they have the keys. The future isn't AI slop. And it definitely should not be legacy music monopolies. The future I want isn't just AI as a creative tool. I want a creative tool that is not tainted or manipulated into something less than it can be because of corporate greed and gatekeeping. As independent artists, we deserve the freedom to use the musical tools that we choose to use. Before the music industry once again comes in cashes the check from the tech companies and deposit our future into their bank accounts. That's how we win. Keep making music. >> [music]