Music in the Age of AI

There will always be a market for mindless party anthems and AI will most likely dominate that market.

AI will be able to write 1,000 songs a day and chances are one of them will be a banger. It will be able to mimic the imperfections of the human voice to the point where you can’t tell if it’s AI or not. It will have no problem mimicking vulnerability and creating deep, heartfelt lyrics.

For any human musician, trying to compete with AI on song quality would be a mistake. 

In a world of AI, the opportunity is in the context of the song. The story behind it:. 

• Why did the song get made?
• Who made it?
• Who’s it for?
• How did it get made?

The answer to these questions will increasingly be the reasons why the audience care about songs. 

There’s no reason to care about an AI song. 

In a world of AI, humans will crave human experiences, like listening to a human express themselves through sound and knowing who that person is. 

That’s why it’s so important to share the story of what we’re doing at Incubator. Musicians here have had their hearts broken and written songs about it. They’ve made friends here, lost friends, grown as people. They’ve figured out that they can do the thing. There have been wins and losses and the music that’s come from all these experiences has been astounding. 

It’s been a privilege experiencing all of it firsthand and it goes without saying it’s made me appreciate the music more. I really only want to listen to Incubator music because it’s the only music that matters to me. It matters to me because I know the people who made it, why they made it, who’s it’s for and how they made it. And now so will you.