AI-generated music is flooding streaming platforms, and it seems to be here to stay. Last month, three AI songs reached the highest spots on Spotify and Billboard charts. Jorja Smith’s label has called for her to receive a share of royalties from a song thought to have trained its original AI-generated vocals on her catalogue, which were later re-recorded by a human singer.
With this in mind, we asked for your thoughts on music composed by AI, the use of AI as a tool in the creation of music, and what should be done to protect musicians. Here are some of your responses.
‘There was one song I actually liked’
I have already found AI songs being added into jazz playlists and “radio stations” on Spotify. There was one song I actually liked, so I did some digging and found out it was a group with a generic name that had around three to five albums all released in 2025. Then I noticed the next track and the track followed the same path. It was really irksome. History, I hope, shows that people do value human flaws in art. Sometimes it helps us feel seen or not alone. I don’t understand how a completely computer-generated sound based on what’s come before could do that. Then again, some people fall in love with LLMs. I just think everything should be labeled somehow. Give people the choice. Make sure there are protections in place like forcing social feeds and music platforms to give consumers the ability to filter out AI-generated content. Casey37, Chicago, US
‘There’s no heart in music generated by AI’
There’s no heart in music generated entirely by AI, and encouraging it is hurting the livelihoods of musicians. It is also very important not to call music made by AI “composed”. That word gives AI prompters far more credit and muddies the waters as to what composition is. The only people served by AI music are companies like Spotify, and major record labels who would no doubt rather not have to pay artists at all.
As for working with AI, I once recorded an album with my band and lost the stem tracks before we finished the final mix, but we were able to use an AI tool that could isolate certain instruments in the masters and boost them to get the mix we wanted. That seems to me an example of positive AI usage, and something that wouldn’t have been possible before AI. A composer like Ben Nobuto is also an example of someone who has used AI as a starting point for building real, human music. It’s probably too late now, but all musicians with work on streaming sites should probably have been paid as their work was likely used as training data. Additionally, musicians should be able to opt out of their work being used to train LLMs just like cookies on a website. Jon, 30, musician and music teacher, Switzerland
I believe music needs a human component to be of any value. Music composed by AI has, from what I have heard, a big problem with simplistic or visible lyrics and a lack of emotional content.
But I am happy with musicians using AI as a tool. It brings professional quality recordings to those unable to hire a studio, orchestra or vocalist and so on. I have been writing songs for decades – in the 80s I couldn’t afford a Portastudio (four-track cassette recorder), so I used two single-track machines instead to play and record simultaneously. Now I can upload my songs to Suno (a generative AI program) and create new arrangements of them close to my original intention. It is great to be able to write for voices other than my own. Even so, some of my family and friends tell me they prefer my original versions. Mike Lee, 67, ex-photographer and teacher, Southampton
‘It’s stopping creativity’
AI-generated music is a copyright nightmare and is stopping creativity. We don’t have to accept it, and we don’t have to use it. The most irksome thing is non-creatives believing themselves to be artists, using AI to create and claiming it as their own art, when it’s an amalgamation of stolen work. Not sculpted with their own hands, not conceived in their own minds. Frankly, I find it embarrassing when someone proudly declares using it. Artists are already marginalised, but there is a kickback against, for example, TV slop, and a growing demand for audiences – in all forms – to not be treated like idiots. Artists are the answer to this, not AI.
If you can harness it to your advantage as an assistive tool, then by all means use it. The danger is to become reliant on AI. There should be a clear payment scheme, similar to PRS and PPL where AI shows exactly which items have been used to create. Or a watermark on copyrighted material. Nicole Vardon-Martin, 37, events and stage manager, Dagenham
When social media and streaming services are flooded with digitally regurgitated stuff, it becomes harder to find the pieces with personal decisions behind them. I like knowing there’s a story behind the songs I get stuck in my head. I don’t think generative AI is the neutral tool many describe it to be, both because of its strain on the earth and because anything used by these algorithms has to come from somewhere, and keep coming, for what they chuck together to seem original.
Blatantly copying someone else’s work doesn’t become “taking inspiration” because some software has mixed it around. Yes, there are musicians who use only their own work to generate “new” music, but in my opinion this is quite an insular and thoughtless way of creating. Generative AI will always, eventually, become bland without new content to sustain it, and more AI-generated work cannot fill that void. Charlotte, student, Cornwall
‘I worry I would become dependent on the technology’
In my home studio I use AI to help mix and master music. I can see that it might be tempting to use an AI voice on your composition if you can’t sing – but why not go out to an open mic and see if you can find a real, living voice? Where would Burt Bacharach and Hal David be without all the brilliant singers who interpreted their songs? Who knows what a real musician will add to your music.
I might be tempted to use AI to write a song but then I suspect my own musical abilities would atrophy and I would become quickly dependent on the technology. I don’t know enough about how copyright would work in these circumstances, but we need to protect human creativity and one way is to go out and see live music, commission people to write it, and to buy music directly from the artist if you can, avoiding those streaming services that pay very little and seem to be actively promoting fake artist profiles. Geoff Smith, 65, musician and retired headteacher, Cornwall
