I Spent a Week Listening to AI Music, and Here’s What I Learned

With surprisingly catchy outcomes, artificial intelligence is generating a plethora of new tunes to try out on popular streaming platforms like Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube. While they may be fun at first, I wanted to switch back to traditionally created music by the end of the week for a few reasons.

Where to Listen to AI-Generated Music

While you can generate AI tunes using an AI music generator, plenty of AI music is already out there, just waiting for someone to hit the play button.

YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify are great places to find AI-generated music easily. YouTube and SoundCloud AI content is only a search in the search bar away from multiple titles. If you are already a Spotify user, accessing artificial intelligence-generated music is as simple as hitting play on a Spotify-curated playlist. Check out the This Is Beats By AI playlist or Beats By AI Radio.

If you’re a student, you can even make use of AI outside of listening to new music by putting it to work in the classroom and taking notes.

What I Liked About Listening to AI-Generated Music

The biggest benefit of listening to AI-generated music is that the resource is essentially endless. While a person can create a finite amount of music and only have access to the skill sets they are born with or curate within a lifetime, AI can pull from vast resources across the web to create an endless variety of lyrics, sounds, and styles. From different vocal ranges a human couldn’t even produce, to a harmony of millions of voices, AI is the only avenue to creating some truly outside-of-the-box musical entertainment.

While listening to AI music for a week, I enjoyed the fact that I was never bored and could find any genre of music I wished. I also tried my own hand at creating AI music, which was fun. With multiple prompts that honed in on the genre of music I like best, I was able to generate music that was more to my tastes.

The Downsides of AI-Generated Music

The biggest downside to listening to music by artificial intelligence is the likelihood that, at some point, you will come across a song that makes absolutely no sense at all. It is an incredible tool, and many believe AI has reached a pinnacle, but it is still flawed. While humans would pick up on nuances or bizarre verbiage, AI does not.

I certainly wasn’t bored listening to music by AI for a week, but I did find myself questioning what the song was referring to multiple times.

AI music will most likely always struggle to connect with audiences like traditionally created music does because it cannot live the human experience, which helps to generate our emotions. Music, at its core, is an emotional creation with emotional connection, and without the feeling behind the music, AI-generated content often falls flat.

AI Music Falls a Little Flat

At the end of the day, AI music is a novelty I enjoyed indulging in for a week, but I won’t continue. Throughout the week, I found myself humming the AI tunes and laughing at crazy lyrics, but I never felt a connection to a song like I often do with traditionally created music.

Who knows? That might change in time, especially as AI improves and becomes better at understanding and relating to emotions. But currently, its best output is electronic music that doesn’t require lyrics (or that elusive emotional connection), which means real, human musicians are still safe for a while longer.