Moises made Armin van Buuren and Laidback Luke its first Artist Partners

Two of the biggest names in dance music just picked a side in the AI argument. Moises announced on September 2 that Armin van Buuren and Laidback Luke have joined as the first members of its Artist Partnerships program, advising on product direction and helping build features for producers and DJs.

It follows Charlie Puth’s arrival earlier this year as the company’s first Chief Music Officer. The pattern is getting hard to miss: Moises keeps putting working musicians inside the product decisions rather than in a launch video.

What Armin van Buuren and Laidback Luke will actually do

Artist Partners advise on product strategy, help develop features for their own discipline, and take part in public conversations about where AI belongs in music. For these two that means DJ and producer workflows.

Both have the receipts. Van Buuren is one of only three artists named the world’s number one DJ by DJ Mag five times, co-founded Armada Music, and hosts A State of Trance, which reaches more than 40 million listeners.

Laidback Luke runs Mixmash Records, has spent years teaching through his production forums and masterclasses, and championed Avicii and Afrojack early. His remix and collaboration credits run through Daft Punk, Rihanna, Madonna, Jay-Z and Pharrell.

Why Moises keeps repeating that it does not make songs

The company drew a line in its announcement, and it drew it hard. Moises does not generate finished songs from a prompt. Its tools work on audio a musician already has, and the creative decisions stay with the person at the desk.

Three claims sit underneath that: musicians own everything they make on the platform, the company never trains on users’ music, and its models have only ever been trained on licensed and authorized content.

“

The next generation of creative tools has to be built with musicians, not around them.

That positioning is doing real work right now. Suno is fighting a copyright claim from Canada’s SOCAN and an identity class action from Jason Isbell and David Lowery in the same week. A tool that never scraped a catalogue has nothing to answer for in that fight.

What both artists said about control

Van Buuren’s line goes to the thing producers actually worry about, which is whether the machine starts making the calls.

Technology has always been part of how electronic music evolves, he said. What matters is whether the artist stays in control. Moises approaches AI with respect for the musician’s own sound and decision-making.

Laidback Luke framed it as a teaching question, which fits a man who has spent a decade running masterclasses. Every generation of producers gets new tools, but the best tools do not do the work for you, he said. They help you hear more, learn faster, and make stronger creative decisions. That is the kind of AI I want young producers to grow up with.

Where dance music fits, and what comes next

Moises says it started with dance music because electronic artists tend to reach new technology first and turn it into something musical fastest. More partners across other genres and traditions are planned over the coming year.

The program also sits on top of a run of deals that put Moises inside other people’s software. Fender picked it as the first AI technology partner for its Studio Pro DAW, and Ableton chose the company’s stem separation for Ableton Live. Stem separation is the process of pulling a finished track apart into its parts, so you can isolate vocals, drums or bass from a mix.

What this means if you produce or DJ

The honest answer for this week is: watch the release notes, not the press release. An advisory role produces features on a lag, and nothing shipped on September 2.

What it does tell you is where the roadmap is pointing. Two DJs with 25 years each of live and studio work are now inside the feedback loop for a tool 80 million people already use, and both of them said the same thing about keeping the human in charge.

If you want to see the current state of it, my walkthrough of Moises AI Studio covers the workflow as it stands, and the Moises tool page has the pricing and the limits.