AI bands signal new era for music business

A rising tide of artificial intelligence bands is ushering in a new era where work will be scarcer for musicians.

- THOMAS URBAIN

Whether it’s Velvet Sundown’s 1970s-style rock or country music projects Aventhis and The Devil Inside, bands whose members are pure AI creations are all seeing more than a million plays on global streaming giant Spotify.

No major streaming service clearly labels tracks that come entirely from AI, except France's Deezer. Meanwhile, the producers of these songs tend to be unreachable.

"I feel like we're at a place where nobody is really talking about it, but we are feeling it," said music producer, composer and performer Leo Sidran.

"There is going to be a lot of music released that we can't really tell who made it or how it was made."

The Oscar-winning artist sees the rise of AI music as perhaps a sign of how "generic and formulaic" genres have become.

AI highlights the chasm between music people listen to "passively" while doing other things and "active" listening in which fans care about what artists convey, said producer and composer Yung Spielburg on the Imagine AI Live podcast.