I Am A Salmon: AI Music Has Arrived

Recently, I was invited to an Instagram chat with music producers who create the same genre of music I do. One common thread is that we love to sample records of yesteryear and turn them into club tunes.

As the Instagram chat was bustling with producers sharing their own music, one dropped a track that is an absolute heater. It had elements of classic disco such as a robust horn section, a lively bassline, and, most importantly, a hypnotic vocalist.

I know a lot of disco music, I tend to dig for old dusty deep cuts, you know…the ones your parents might remember... But what I was hearing come through my iPhone wasn’t a sample I was familiar with. 

I promptly reached out to the producer asking where he got this sample from. 

He simply dropped a 😈 and pasted the link to Suno.

Everything kinda changed for me after clicking that link.

Suno is the Midjourney for music. You feed it a prompt, you wait a little bit, and you get a full-length song in a matter of minutes. The rabbit hole goes deeper though…Suno can create virtually any genre of music that you feed it a prompt for; it even writes lyrics for you, too.

Not too shabby huh? Also, I found the irony in this one quite funny.

Or how about this one?

I am a salmon might not be a banger, but considering it’s got a solid chord progression, “thought-out” lyrics, and a functional bridge…it’s pretty wild where we are considering this is the relatively early stage of Suno. 

What could this mean for music in the future?

I see both sides of this. How can you not? Musicians are quick to grab their pitchforks and say that AI music will ruin careers and harm the industry. There is some truth to that. But I have a hopeful take: quality music that we see among the Chappell Roan’s of the world and even the resurgence of Charli XCX,will shine and rise to the top. Our ears cannot help it, and the story of an artist is entirely irresistible. 

Artists should have a healthy fear (just Google it) But here are three artist benefits that I see in AI music: 

1. Limitless Inspiration: Writer's block is very real. When the creative slump hits, it hits hard. AI music can open the door for artists who can't get the music ideas out but can quickly write them out as a prompt and draw inspiration from these tools.  These AI music tools are helping bridge the gap between ideating and creating.

2. Genre Bending: In practice, sitting down to write a tune that sounds like a “Reggae-EDM-Rap-Top40Club-Banger” would be pretty tricky to pull off in a short amount of time (unless you’re “Major Lazer”). But when provided with an AI tool for music, one could type in a prompt that reflects a track that sounds like this and the output could allow for a very experimental “first start” of something incredible. Suno Explore enables site visitors to roll the dice and mix genres for hilarious and inspiring results.

3. Innovative Collaboration: AI can help redefine the way we understand music and using these tools as collaborators can guide us to creating genres or styles that could have never been explored before. Consider one of my favorite movies of all time, AlphaGo. If you haven't seen it, open a new tab and click that link because it's free to watch.  The story of AlphaGo is simple: Google Deep Mind pits one of the best Go players in the world against their AI platform, which studies all aspects of the game and sees what happens.  The classic “Man Vs. Machine” story, if you will. Spoiler: while the AI is under serious pressure from Go champion Lee Sedol, the machine learning competitor makes an incredible move (known as move 37), and this essentially reshaped the way the game of Go was played forever. 

AI is clearly here to stay. And I’m happy about that. The presence of AI has spurned endless creativity and new horizons. From creating new genres of music to helping put together a recipe with mismatched ingredients, I think we’re experiencing a growth of technological advancement that will help remove efficiency blocks and expand our thinking.

I’m genuinely excited for the new frontier and the creativity that it will bring.