Artificial intelligence has seemingly taken over the digital world, even moving its way into the physical space with robots, data centers, and self-driving cars. The technology is rapidly growing, and now it seems to be humanizing more and more by infusing itself into our culture, especially music.
The problem is that AI music is not just a machine creating its own sound, it’s a machine that takes music from all over the internet and analyzes patterns to mesh together what it thinks a song should sound like. The fact it takes from original music that is human made is the primary issue people have with it. It doesn’t do this with just sound effects or instruments, it can do it with voices as well. Each AI voice you hear is inspired from thousands of real human voices, it’s generated from a library of music, but never gives credit to anything it takes from.
Have you scrolled through instagram reels or tiktok recently and seen an ad for an app called Suno? Suno is an app where you can tell an AI a prompt and it will make a song for you based on what you said. This process takes less than a minute and can spit out songs left and right, way faster than any human could ever imagine making a song. With a ton of apps just like Suno appearing, people have been creating prompts and generating songs with no problem.
Thousands of accounts on Spotify and Youtube have been popping up. These accounts drop hundreds of songs in less than a few weeks, quicker than any other artist. The thing is, people listen.
One notable account is Enlly Blue on Spotify which is described as an “independent blues artist from the US. With soulful vocals and original lyrics…” Soulful vocals created by an AI, original lyrics, also created by an AI.
Are either of these statements true when you think about it, or are they just another detail used to humanize a robot?
This account has released around 60 songs just from June 2025 to October 2026. Enlly Blue has also amassed 290k monthly listeners, and many of its songs have gotten over one million listens. Should a profile that doesn’t have any human involvement other than a few sentences, be able to dominate so well?
If an AI is the one meshing together sounds to create a song, who really owns the AI and its uploads? This has become subject for debate as people realize that while these accounts are uploading music, they are also making earnings for typing literal sentences. They are also making money off of essentially other people’s work since each song is just created by analyzing the algorithm and patterns of existing music.
“I don’t like that it makes you feel like you created it yourself since you had a machine or program create it. A false sense of being creative is what I disagree with,” said Mr. Herrera, the music teacher at Huntington Park High School.
As a music teacher and someone involved with the arts, Mr. Herrera believes music is a way people can express themselves. Essentially, music is a creative output of expression.
How can you take apart something so vital to Music and instead put it through a machine?
Listeners can argue that machine made music is essential because it helps less musically inclined people create music, but there is no need to create music. If someone really wanted to create music, they should hone their craft and practice, just like the many other people have before them.
Music has existed before me, you, and anyone else in the world. It follows each culture and blends into something unique, personal to each person. Music has always been something that connects people to others, but also to parts of themselves. Music has been traced back to 35,000 years ago. From oral tradition, to gospel, to activist music, it has always been something that people use to unite and communicate with.
Why make music which has been so interconnected into humankind a product of a machine? Do we really need AI a part of everything humans do? Instead of supporting AI music, you can work against them and support real artists. Some platforms are making users aware of AI, like Spotify which has recently implemented AI persona badges that help you recognize which accounts are created by AI. They also excluded these accounts from recommendations and the algorithm, meaning you can only find them if you search for them. To help local artists that actually need your streams as opposed to an AI, buy physical copies of music, attend local concerts, and most importantly, listen to their music.
Written By: Aileen Zuniga, staff writer