I Only Listened to AI Music for a Week. It Was Bad, But Not For The Reason You Think

Music is always my friend. I’m almost always listening to a carefully curated playlist or a new album. I believe with all my heart Spotify Wrapped Day it should be a national holiday. So, as an AI journalist who has watched the so-called AI music industry grow over the past few years, I decided it was finally time to see how these artificial musicians stack up. So I challenged myself: I would only listen to AI-generated music for a week.

It was a very long week. AI music really takes the “art” out of the artificial. But it was an educational and revelatory experience, too.

The story of AI music is an old record that has been played before. Musicians have debated the role of technology in creating music for centuries, from the introduction of recorded music using phonographs to synthesizers, autotune and advanced production technology. What makes this time different is that AI can create perfect songs with very little human guidance. But the AI ​​models that do so are built using music made by real, creative people fog of legal problems again moral chaos — similar to what other creators face writers, artists and filmmakers.

Music is one of the few universal cultural influences we have. Generative AI is rapidly changing the way music is created, and in fact, it’s changing our personalities.

AI music week

For the purpose of my own testing, I only listened to AI-verified songs. I was excited to see that AI music sites offered a wide variety of songs, but that initial excitement was short-lived. Most disappointingly, most pop music is shiny and blaring — a version of plastic music, in my opinion.

Most of the trending songs were electronic music, which I’m sure EDM fans would appreciate more than I do. It just reminds me of the canon event every teenager has: Being busy at a house party where the aux guy is a “budding DJ.” House and techno styles just reinforced the idea that I’m listening to robotic AI music. It made it hard to enjoy when I knew there wasn’t even an illusion of human creation behind the songs.

I did best with country and folk music, which was heavily instrumental and acoustic. Most of it sounded like it could have been Noah Kahan, Kacey Musgraves or Luke Combs. That’s when I started to break free from my usual musical habits — humming a catchy song on first listen, adding those catchy songs to a playlist that I would eventually prefer over exploring new music as I grew more comfortable and stuck to my favorite songs.

And then there’s the really weird, wacky AI music. Beyond Suno, there is the universe unique AI music on sites like YouTube. My favorite (or worst?) was the 8-minute Game of Thrones disco, complete with music video, while my editor loved the Lord of the Rings version. I found the songs catchy, maybe because they are music videos, not just songs, with lyrics visuals, descending AI.

Technology and music: A song that has been played before

Technology has always played a role in music. Musical AI is part of a long arc in the history of music, Mark Ethier, founder of music tech company iZoptope and executive director of Berklee’s Emerging Artistic Technology Lab, told me.

“When GarageBand came out, people were like, ‘Oh my god, I can make music because I can drag guitar samples, have bass and drums, make a song, right?'” said Ethier. “Where we are today is a more extreme version of that.”

Traditional music software, such as GarageBand, was intended to improve and democratize the process of creating music. AI music companies say they do the same, but there’s a big difference: You can pull off entire AI songs with a sentence or two to direct the vibe. The underlying technology is the same as that used in chatbots and image generators — transformers and distribution channels, Suno founder Mike Shulman said in 2023.

AI music generators like Suno do more than just mix a song or adjust a template. Like photos and videos, AI has made it faster, cheaper and easier than ever to create something that feels like it was professionally produced.

“[AI] it’s changed how easy it is to make, and how abstract the output is,” Ethier said. Before AI, throwing loops together in GarageBand wouldn’t be enough to make a full song or a hot record. “Now, that distinction is no longer clear,” he said.

The AI ​​music scene has grown rapidly in a short period of time. Sites like Suno and Udio have gathered subscribers and gained popularity. Suno reached the milestone of 2 million paying subscribers, its founder shared in February. But like other fictional AI companies, Suno and Udio have been sued by record labels that claim the AI ​​companies are using artists’ work to train AI without permission or compensation.

Read more: AI Slop Is Ruining the Internet. These are the people who are fighting to save it

Can we communicate with AI music?

The amount of time I spent listening to music was significantly reduced on days when I was restricted to only AI music, and I felt that reduction deeply. It wasn’t until I came across a certain section of AI music that I started to enjoy the experience. There is a neuroscientific and logical reason why, I learned.

Joy Allen, a music therapist and director of Berklee’s Music and Health Institute, told me there’s a reason the music of our youth sticks with us. Our teenage brains are sponges, and music is one of the only things that activates all parts of our brain, Allen says. That connection, fueled by hormones and neurochemicals, stays with us for a long time.

“When you listen to music, it doesn’t just activate the auditory cortex. It works when you’re processing emotions. [and] physical reactions … Our brains like patterns,” Allen said. “When you think about music, patterns, song structures, musical lines… so we get used to patterns and predictability.”

My teenage years were largely structured around the music of Taylor Swift, and anyone who has met me knows that she is still my favorite artist. But even knowing what Allen told me, I was surprised at how AI covers of Taylor Swift songs made me feel.

Most of the AI ​​covers I’ve listened to have taken Swift’s songs and reimagined them in different forms. AI’s pop punk version of “You Belong With Me” sounded like it was sung by another band from my youth, 5 Seconds of Summer. It was strangely satisfying, with a heavy dose of nostalgia. And it was the only AI song to get stuck in my head.

We can emotionally attach to any music — created by humans or AI, in theory, Allen said — at this point. But since my musical identity was already formed, the AI ​​songs that elicited a visceral, emotional response for me were the ones that drew on those connections and memories, firing those sensory chemicals in my brain. I was more involved and had more fun listening to these AI Swiftie covers than any other AI song. The songs were different, but they were still the words I sang to my hairbrush as a child and in a million other cases throughout my life, they came to life in a new way.

While these songs stood out in my testing, they didn’t sell me on the AI ​​music like the “real” songs did. The AI ​​reminded me a lot of the covers I had listened to in real life and seen clips online. I liked AI People’s cover of Swift’s “All Too Well,” but it was a cheap imitation compared to the guitarist I heard singing in a coffee shop last year, or the indie bands adding their individual touches I encountered on TikTok.

The power of a great artist is their ability to create music that inspires others, moves them and ignites the flames of creativity. Covers by human artists are a way to praise and express appreciation; The AI ​​covers felt like cheap imitations and mockery in comparison.

Music is human

I could see with annoyance my assessment while I was doing it. AI music has never held my attention in the same way as human music. With a few notable exceptions, the AI ​​songs were basically white noise. I used to find myself looking at the Spotify app to play better music. In the last days of my testing, no music was better than the AI ​​music. Even now as I write this, car horns and birds chirping outside my window are better company than fake bells.

AI has become a part of our lives, for better or for worse. But it’s not just part of our expertise; it is slowly entering our culture. Music is one of the strongest cultural touchstones we have, and to have AI so quickly and effectively mimic something so natural that is human… it’s amazing. Worryingly. But it’s definitely a clear sign that AI is remaking the very things that define our humanity. It left me with a deep sense of dread about the damage AI is causing to our culture and humanity.

It’s not just listeners like me who struggle — musicians, too. AI-generated music is flooding streaming platforms, leaving companies like Apple Music and Spotify struggling to define what’s allowed, what’s not and what makes money. It is even more complex from a legal and ethical point of view.

“As an artist, this is a very difficult time to be the tools of understanding,” said Ethier. “You could pick up a trumpet and play the trumpet. You didn’t have to think about how that trumpet was trained, or if the trumpet owned your music.”

Music is inherently personal and social by design. So it’s no surprise that I felt disconnected throughout my AI music week. It was divisive — no memories tied to key moments, no TikTok dances, no ritual. No artist personality, little fandom. No thoughts of “do you remember how he skipped an octave when he sang it live?” It was superficial listening. I didn’t want to revisit them once my experiment was over.

Much of the music we listen to is tied to certain memories. The AI ​​songs I felt the most connected to were covers of songs I already had a strong emotional connection to: Taylor Swift songs I listened to for the first time as an eight-year-old in the back seat with my childhood friends; songs that were inspired but not at all the feel of the ’90s power ballads that dad loves but mom groans at every time she plays them; a “Stick Season” AI wannabe without Noah Kahan’s signature “dance while the world burns” flavor.

Music guides many moments of our lives, from big moments like a couple’s first dance to small moments that pass by without our awareness. All of that builds upon our lives. Depersonalizing it — or worse, trying to imitate it — sucks the soul out of what makes music important.

So, no, I wouldn’t recommend listening to only AI-generated music for a week. But it was useful, if only to further refine my worries about how AI is eroding our humanity.