Last month, the nation's first law aimed at tamping down abuses of AI in music was added to the books in Tennessee. With no comprehensive system in place to dictate how these tools can and can't be used, the regulatory arm of the music industry is finding itself in an extended game of Whac-a-Mole. And for those anxious that the inherent value of music has already sunk too far in the public eye, it's doubly worrying that the underlying message of AI's powers of mimicry is, 'It's pretty easy to do what you do, sound how you sound, make what you make,' as Ezra Klein put it in a recent podcast episode. For performers who assiduously curate their online images and understand branding as the coin of the realm, the threat of these tools proliferating unchecked is something akin to identity theft. People are already using AI models to analyze artists' signature songwriting styles, vocal sounds or production aesthetics, and create new work that mirrors their old stuff without their say. Though it's resurfacing some familiar issues, plenty about it is genuinely new. In the music world as in other creative industries, generative AI - a class of digital tools that can create new content based on what they 'learn' from existing media - is the latest tech revolution to rock the boat.

'Both in adapting to new technology, but also when it comes to abuse and people taking what artists do.' 'This industry always seems to be the canary in the coal mine,' observed Mitch Glazier, the head of the Recording Industry Association of America, in an interview. When peer-to-peer file-sharing ran rampant through college dorm rooms, it united an internet-connected youth audience even as its legality remained an open question. When hip-hop's early architects created an entirely new sonic culture, their building blocks were samples of older music, sourced without permission.

When radio signals sprang up around the nation, competitors proliferated just across the border. Each time the industry settles on a set of rules to account for those ambiguities, nothing disrupts the status quo all over again quite like new advancements in technology. The radio version of this story originally ran on All Things Considered on April 8, 2024.įor as long as people have been making money from music, there have been disagreements to hash out - over who gets to claim credit for what, where music can be used and shared, how revenue should be split and, occasionally, what ownership even means.

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