AI and the Downfall of the Music Industry

By Ray Zafran
Archivist-Webmaster

We have entered the age of automated content creation with generative AI, from requesting ChatGPT to create our very own Ghibli-styled portraits to AI engines creating their own subreddits to complain about humans. Drawing and connecting through online forums are just two examples of what make us human. This is what separates us from other creatures. But AI is no creature.

Artificial Intelligence has begun to compete with our creative mediums. AI “creators” and bots have been quickly taking over YouTube and Spotify with slop videos and generic music, with Spotify having to remove over 75 million spam tracks in the past year on their platform. They have begun to replace certain aspects of the music industry: Lo-Fi, instrumentals, and backing tracks are now fields widely dominated by AI “artists”. We are already beginning to see struggle in distinguishing fake, generative tracks from true music. As of 2026, we have already seen AI-generated chart-topping songs and popular new artists… who aren’t real.

A survey conducted by Morgan Stanley shows us that 36% of Americans listen to AI-generated music, with 60% of said music being listened to by 18 to 29-year-olds. Whether or not this demographic was aware that they were listening to music with the same regurgitated material, these percentages are concerning, especially when put into perspective that ChatGPT was only released to the public in November 2022.

We have entered the age of artificial music. How much worse could it get from here?