When AI is on everyone’s mind, let’s consider how it impacts the music business. We’ve seen FN Meka, the AI that got canceled for black stereotypes and had its song written by a real, black human who got taken advantage of.

I also covered how thirty-four million songs are going unheard on streaming services. Are we just scratching the surface or are we during a trend like NFTs? Are musicians obsolete and will AI be able to do our jobs better than we can.

In this first attempt, to answer that question I had AI make me an instrumental, write my lyrics, and master my song for me. Here’s how that went.

I started my search by looking for a beat. I found a couple of platforms and the first of those was Boomy. Boomy claims you can make music with AI in seconds…

Wait…seconds? Why seconds?

Anyway, this is where things are shaky from the start. I tried finding something good, but my search…well my search was not great. I could have left it there and tried to download what I created, but Boomy would not let me make a purchase.

I moved on to Soundful, which provided me with much more rich and full tracks. That were much better than Boomy’s weird selection. That makes me wonder, is Soundful just a collection of things real musicians created, and computers are just arranging the parts? While is Boomy computer’s trying to make something original? Those questions lingered and I downloaded my track and gave it a fitting title… “Nothin’ Less.” Nothin’ Less has been my motto for 12 years now, meaning we use what we must make the most of it.

Now that it’s time for lyrics, we should go to our most famous friend, ChatGPT. For those not familiar with ChatGPT, it is software developed by OpenAI meant to analyze inputs like text, music, and images then output solutions to human problems. I didn’t know producing music was a problem that needed to be solved, because us “humans” release more than fifty thousand new song per day. We are very productive.

Because I am a lazy, uninspired, bum I asked ChatGPT to write me a trap rap song with two verses and a chorus about taking nothing less. And it did. It gave me a bridge and outro too. Something was wrong with the verses though. They only have eight bars, and I needed sixteen for this song. So, I repurposed the bridge and the outro as part of the verse, changed a few lyrics to be on beat, and boom we have a song written.

Next, I jumped on Pro Tools and gave it my best effort to perform this song. It felt like hearing Tom Hanks trying to rap on late night television.

I pushed down all my cringe, and I finished performing the song. Then, I mixed it for a bit because I could not find AI that will mix a song for me yet. Now we are on to the final part…mastering.

Company X (named removed for lack of partnership) is an AI music mastering software company that takes your song from the mix phase to a commercial ready release. I don’t know how it does it, but it must have trained in the gym on lots of Pop and Hip Hop songs because it’s a decent tool. I popped my song into Company X and out came this “wonderful masterpiece.”

I don’t think too highly of this “song.”  It lacks creativity, it’s very redundant, the beat is a little simplistic, and my performance doesn’t really save the lyrics. But what do you think? Is AI an okay song maker? Do I just not understand this? Or are we right and know AI cannot replace humans in the music business?

To listen to the full song below