The Future of Music is… Silence?
- Freya Chamberlain
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
As the rise of Artificial Intelligence continues to threaten the very existence of the arts, the influx of AI-generated music on digital music platforms has alarming implications for both artists and listeners alike. With the future of music deeply implicated by this increasing number of AI-generated tracks, musical artists valuing their creativity and rights are pushing back against this unprecedented competition whilst fans are refusing to yield to the machine. The Mic's Freya Chamberlain reports.
It has been almost a year since Damon Albarn, Kate Bush, Paul McCartney and 1,000 other influential British musicians released what is potentially their most important album to date: Is This What We Want? The album is made up of 12 completely silent tracks. The point? To protest the unregulated use of musicians’ work to train AI models. The track list itself, which spells out “The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies”, clearly underscores this message.
A recent survey conducted by Deezer and Ipsos shockingly revealed that 97% of respondents were not able to differentiate between fully AI-generated and human-made music. Almost a year since its release, Is This What We Want? now feels less like a symbolic gesture and more like a warning that arrived early – a moment of collective resistance that has only grown more urgent as AI music shifts from novelty to normality and as the line between human expression and algorithmic imitation continues to blur.
The sheer scale and pace at which AI-generated music is now entering the market indicates that the artists behind Is This What We Want? were right to sound the alarm when they did. It is becoming increasingly clear that the blight of AI within the music industry will only get worse, with roughly 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks being uploaded every day to Deezer (more than 34% of the total daily uploads). Suno, the leading AI-music creation platform, claims to be generating over 7 million songs every 2 weeks. For context, this is more than Spotify’s entire existing catalogue!
Interestingly, over 70% of AI-generated music streams are fraudulent – meaning they are spam songs supported by spam accounts – a revealing indicator that demand for AI music is largely artificial and that most listeners are not actively seeking it out. Nevertheless, the saturation of streaming platforms with AI-generated music risks diluting the royalty pool to the point where human musicians are left competing for shrinking returns.
In other words, when it comes to AI music, artist welfare takes a backseat to profit and labels are happy to compromise creative freedom to line their own pockets. Influential labels such as Warner Music Group have performed a brazen about-turn – moving from suing AI music platforms like Suno to partnering with them instead – a shift that makes it clear that the major players within the music industry are interested primarily in pursuing power and profit, starkly demonstrating how expendable artists’ creative rights have become.
At this key point in time, music lovers who value human creative expression must take active steps to ensure we are not supporting AI-generated music. AI music, along with only being possible due to models being trained on existing, human-made music (very often without consent or proper compensation), also lacks everything which makes music a meaningful and skilful genre of art. AI-music is fundamentally incapable of reflecting human lived experience, emotions, cultural context or soul: the elements that turn sound into a truly enriching emotional connection.
If listeners truly care about preserving music as a human language, that commitment must be reflected in how we are listening to music. This means shifting towards more ethical streaming platforms that prioritise transparency and fair compensation, buying physical media formats like vinyl and CDs, and engaging in live music events in local venues – where creativity still exists and thrives beyond algorithms and profit-hungry corporations. In an industry racing towards automation and soulless slop, choosing how we listen and engage with music becomes a political act. Silence may have been the artists’ protest, but conscious listening and consumption should be ours.
Freya Chamberlain
Edited by Isabelle Tu
Photos courtesy of 1,000 UK Artists, Contributors on Unsplash
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