Temp check: AI sentiment across the music industry

By: Water & Music

Published: 2023-02-16

This report is part of our Season 3 research sprint on creative AI for the music industry.

There has been explosive growth in the number of users and dollars coalescing around creative AI tools over the last six months, and a new music AI wave is on the horizon that many claim will “democratize” music for the masses. At the same time, music artists are still facing challenges around content oversaturation and listener fragmentation, seeking alternative ways to monetize their work — and wondering if AI will help them, or conversely make it even harder to earn a living in their profession. There are also ongoing concerns around AI’s potentially negative impact on persistent challenges around attribution and compensation for creative work in the music industry, as well as entrenched geographic and algorithmic biases that exist in who has access to certain creative and marketing opportunities and why.

Amidst this tumultuous landscape, we decided to embark on a survey exploring the attitudes of music-industry workers and stakeholders toward creative AI. Our goal with this study is to identify cross-industry patterns in AI-related needs, use cases, and concerns, especially among professionals who are already using these tools in their day-to-day work.

We designed a survey in collaboration with our community, and received written submissions from over 150 music-industry professionals. We worked to identify broad themes and trends across responses, which reveal key insights for:

Builders and developers looking to make betterproduct development decisions to meet potential users’ needs, as well manage public sentiment around complex issues like copyright management and model bias.
Artists and their teams looking to stay up to date on emerging tech and use associated tools productively in creative practices.

You can view the full report below (recommended to view on desktop), and catch up on the rest of our creative AI research on our STREAM landing page. Thank you so much for your support!