AI Music Industry
Interviews, analysis, charts, and editorial on how AI is reshaping the music business.
- 03 Jul
03 JulThe AI Music Briefing #9: Sound of Fractures built a room the feed can't reach
The AI Music Briefing for June 29 – July 5, 2026: Sound of Fractures builds Alone Together, TIDAL cuts AI royalties, and Suno explores its first API.
Read the full story - 26 Jun
26 JunThe AI Music Briefing #8: Anyone can ship an AI mixing tool now
The AI Music Briefing for June 22–28, 2026: a flood of vibe-coded AI mixing tools, two new lawsuits, SZA's 238 tracks, and the moat money can't buy fast.
Read the full story - 26 Jun
26 JunAnyone Can Ship an AI Mixing Tool Now. The Real Audio Models Just Got More Valuable.
- RoEx founder David Ronan called out a wave of AI mixing tools that pick EQ and compression from instrument labels with an LLM, never analyzing the actual audio.
- The same week, AudioShake pulled a clean vocal from a stems-free 1990 mix, while Modulate and RTM Audio launched detectors that read the audio signal itself.
- When the cost of building something that looks like a product drops to zero, the moat moves to what you cannot prompt: a trained ear, real signal analysis, and years of R&D.
- 17 Jun
17 JunAn AI-built Dolby Atmos encoder decodes in open software, but certified hardware rejects it by design
- A developer published a Rust tool that re-encodes Dolby Atmos audio into Dolby Digital Plus, and says the AI model Claude Fable 5 helped build it.
- Open-source players like ffmpeg and Cavern decode the output as valid spatial audio with correct height positions.
- Dolby-certified hardware refuses to play it and falls back to standard surround sound.
- 16 Jun
16 JunLionel Richie is trademarking his voice because nothing else protects it
- Lionel Richie filed 4 USPTO sound-mark applications on June 11, 2026 to guard his voice from AI clones, joining Taylor Swift and Matthew McConaughey.
- A fake EP slipped onto Bridgit Mendler's official Spotify and Apple Music profiles in early June 2026, despite Spotify's opt-in Artist Profile Protection.
- The trademark filings are a defensive scramble around a protection layer that already failed, and they cannot cover the timbre of a voice, the one thing AI copies.
- 12 Jun
12 JunThe AI Music Briefing #6: Riffle is the Figma moment for songwriters
The AI Music Briefing for June 8–14, 2026: Warner buys Sureel AI, the musicians' union sues UMG and Warner, and Riffle brings Figma's canvas to songwriting.
Read the full story - 08 Jun
08 JunAudioShake CEO Jessica Powell on the 2026 AIMS: AI Music Summit, where AI helped an ALS patient sing again
- AudioShake CEO Jessica Powell recapped the 2026 AIMS: AI Music Summit, where Berklee College of Music students protested AI music outside while a more nuanced debate played out inside
- Researcher Richard Cave used AudioShake and ElevenLabs to clone the singing voice of an ALS patient so he could perform with his band again
- On the CEO panel, the consensus was that users never ask for "AI" itself, they ask for tedious or impossible tasks to be solved
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- AI Music Briefing — the week's biggest AI music news, the AI Music Lawsuit Tracker, and Music Intelligence.
- 1 tutorial every week — AI music promotion: from a 4-week song-release strategy to a music video in under 10 minutes.
- 08 Jun
08 JunBehind every copyright is a human being: a publisher's case against the catalog-first mindset
- Angry Mob Music CEO Marc Caruso argued in a June 8, 2026 Hypebot op-ed that music publishing manages trust, not just copyrights
- He proposes one test for every negotiation, licensing deal, and policy call, does it make it easier or harder for a songwriter to make a living
- Caruso warns that the industry's focus on catalogs, scale, and platform economics creates distance from the people whose work it sells
- 05 Jun
05 JunThe AI Music Briefing #5: Parkinson's took his guitar, so he used Suno
The AI Music Briefing for June 1–7, 2026: Suno's $9.1B damages math, a $65B Anthropic war chest, and a musician with Parkinson's who finished his album with AI.
Read the full story - 03 Jun
03 JunBubbleUp CEO Coleman Sisson, 50 years in tech, says stop panicking about AI
- BubbleUp CEO Coleman Sisson argues musicians should treat AI as a tool, not a threat, in a guest column for Digital Music News.
- Sisson has spent 50 years working alongside technology, from 1981 PCs to the internet, the iPhone and now AI.
- He says the music industry survived microphones, drum machines, Pro Tools, CDs, downloads and streaming, and each one expanded access instead of replacing musicians.
- 03 Jun
03 JunControlla CEO Rohan Paul predicts 5 billion people will love AI music by 2040
- Controlla CEO Rohan Paul predicts 5 billion people will embrace AI music by 2040, up from roughly 200 million who have tried it.
- He compares recorded music to mass-produced furniture, live shows to handmade furniture, and AI music to a custom piece built for your taste.
- His case rests on 90 to 95% of people enjoying music and 6 billion people having internet access.
- 02 Jun
02 JunRIŽIK's case for optimism: tame the machine, don't fear it
- LA artist RIŽIK, real name Hisham Dahud, argues music is heading for a correction back toward humanity, not away from it.
- His "Tame the Machine" philosophy centers performance on risk, presence, and real-time creation.
- He sees streaming turning music into a utility, not AI alone, as the deeper problem.