Read this before you try another AI tool!

I use AI as much as the next lazoid. 

It’s fine. It helps. Sometimes it’s miraculous. 

And now that I’ve said so, lemme offer the opposite perspective too: 

AI is dumb. It’s same-y. It often needs so much babysitting I'd be better off doing the task “by hand.”

And yet artists are bombarded with promises, new AI tools, new opportunities. It's overwhelming at best — and at worst, distracts us or degrades our work. 

So how do we know where that line is between beneficial and detrimental? 

I made a decision-tree to help you determine whether you should use a certain AI tool for specific tasks in your music career. 

Should I use AI, or just... I? 

Our unhealthy AI obsession 

Musicians, industry pundits, social creators,... they're all obsessed with AI. Why?

Well, beyond the obvious — there are new apps and new promises every day — it’s because the seed of fear is planted deep inside each of those promises. 

“If I don’t use AI, I’ll be left behind.” 

But left behind from what? 

A future where music creation is both literally and figuratively “out of our hands?”

Where we tumble through feeds of slop, while growing further from (as I say in one of my songs) “the practical heat of an actual friend?” Ya know, human community?!

Where our worlds — both real and unreal, internal and interpersonal — turn to wastelands; not because they are cold and empty, but because they are cold and full?

Oh, don’t be such a luddite, Chris!

Well, why not?

As I said: I use AI all the time — and I already feel dumber for it. It’s only been a couple years! 

AI tools have made it more difficult for me to make writing, editing, and strategic decisions on my own. (And progress is little more than a series of good and bad decisions.)

So queue the usual story about ancient travelers navigating by the stars or the moss on trees. I don’t want us to be lost entirely. 

Because I've lived through a thousand broken utopian tech promises. We are not more joyful for the journey. 

Previous tech promises:

- Email would connect us more deeply?

- The internet would be an accelerant for small business? 

- MySpace would be a way to make better friends?

- Digital distribution would democratize the music industry?

- YouTube would reward authenticity?

- The iPhone would make us more fulfilled as creators?

- Amateur journalism would amplify the truth?

- The New Commons would be healthy for politics? 

- Dev sprints would yield more sensible products and less support headaches?

- The Arab Spring would bring flourishing?

- TikTok would be an opportunity, not a trap?

- Decentralized ledgers would mean more responsible money?

- Our “followers” would be reachable?

- Free shipping would be free?

TBQH, if I could push a button and erase the internet, along with all pathways back to it... I’d be tempted. So forgive my lack of optimism around AI tools making everything more meaningful for musicians. 

Notice I didn’t say easier, funner, funnier, cheaper, more profitable, faster. AI might do all that and more.  But I’ve lived long enough to know that happiness comes from something else: Meaning. Not speed, savings, efficiency, or even temporary enjoyment.

Meaning takes time. It takes work, sacrifice, and resilience. It takes disappointment, striving, and triumph. Or as Charlie Warzel says in a recent Atlantic article: 

“The loss of friction deprives people of something crucial. What happens between imagination and creation is ineffable — it entails struggle, iteration, joy, and frustration, disappointment, and pride. It is the process through which we enact agency. It is how we make meaning and move through the world. To lose that, I fear, is to capitulate on our very humanity.”

Why are we in such a hurry to outsource our hearts & souls? 

Well, for the same reasons we bought all the other promises. Email is convenient. The internet has been good for some small businesses. I booked something like seven tours using MySpace. Spotify helped my music reach hundreds of thousands of strangers. Bitcoin prices went up. TikTok is entertaining. Amazon boxes are easy to recycle. 

It’s not all dystopia all the time. Likewise, AI isn’t all slop all the time.

It’s gonna have its uses for artists. Where that line is, though, between beneficial and detrimental… obviously differs for each individual creator. 

That’s why I thought it’d be useful for musicians to have the flow-chart above, that you can reference when you’re wondering about the place of any particular AI tool in your musical life. 

Because I’m sick of progress and press releases being a constant source of stress for artists. 

AI can make your office-work easier as a creative business owner. It can offer a music production assist. It can be an editor. An idea-generator for songwriting or marketing. It can be your mentor. Your designer. Your videographer. It can help you code, analyze data, or tease out themes in your lyrics. It can act as your publicist’s assistant. It can do so much.

Including doing all the musical work “for you,” spitting out a fully formed track so you can lie to yourself that you’re growing as an artist. 

Yes, AI can do a lot.

But should it? That’s a different question.

To find the answer that’s right for you, consider these things:

Generation versus realization

Every individual creator will have a different threshold for defining what’s theirs versus what belongs to the machine. 

- Is it cheating if AI generates an idea that you finish?

- Is it cheating if AI finishes an idea that you started? 

- What even constitutes starting and finishing? 

For me personally, if I wrote the chords, melody, and lyrics to a song entirely myself, but then had AI replace the audio of a bunch of demo performances, I would still feel like the product was mine. 

Like, “take that scratch guitar part, and replace it with Bob Dylan’s Columbia guitar sound from the early 60s” or “I’m going to sing a melody; use MIDI to replace that melody with unison pizzicato cellos.” 

For me, that’s the kind of sonic assist I could barely dream of when I was a kid. But the ideas are still mine. 

It would feel like cheating, however, to say “Write me a song about sad dogs with a Bob Dylan guitar sound and pizzicato cello accompaniment.” 

How to avoid the great homogenization

An obvious risk of AI is that training and regurgitation becomes a doom loop of blah. 

Are you willing to resist this trend by being extra human? Extra quirky? That can be either on your own, or with the help of AI — but whatever makes you unique should be a central element of your work. 

Slop sucks, but sometimes it’s fine

As long as your music is the priority, other aspects of your music career — office work, email copy, press releases, cover art for a single track, even some marketing content — can be less than A+ material. 

I mean, of course you should try to do everything well, however you define that. But we all know we can’t be masterful at every aspect of our music business. So perhaps the C+ grade you earn today with the help of AI slop is better than the imaginary A+ you could earn tomorrow (but probably won’t because you’ll never get around to doing it). 

Hold onto your human value

Most of the above questions and criteria in the flow-chart relate to the quality of the output, the comfort of your soul, or the value of your time. 

But let me remind you of one other thing: Money.

So much of the conversation around AI has to do with job displacement, cost savings, corporate profits, productivity, blah blah blah. Which of course leads to more fear and anxiety for you. 

So remember the good news: Scarcity, urgency, connection, brand affinity — those are all important economic factors too. 

The guy who crafts farmhouse furniture by hand with ancient tools… 

… it’s precisely his INEFFICIENCY that commands the higher price tag. 

The small-batch ice cream truck in the woods with the line of customers a mile long? Tell them they need an army of robots to do the work, and watch their business tank. 

The humans singing the most beautiful three-part harmony at the house concert? After the show they sold the last of their vinyl run. Think those sales would “scale” up if they were a hologram band beamed into a hundred houses at once? No! Because it's the rare, intimate, personal performance that matters here. The fact that it's happening right now and will never happen this way again. That's what makes a fan want to commemorate the experience and buy the merch. 

All those buzzwords: slow food, farm-to-table, artisanal, handmade,...

Yes, they're annoying. But they get at something true and important. 

Imagine how valuable your human approach can be in a world of infinite and instant slop. 

Your existing process may be adequate!

AI is fine. It can be helpful. It can be harmful. It can be a neutral waste of time. 

Value your humanity, your aesthetic, and your joy above everything. 

Then see where AI can assist without sacrificing what’s most important.