Will AI Destroy Music As We Know It? Hear What Two UVA Darden Musicians Think.

Artificial intelligence is everywhere in the music business, whether you recognize it or not. Every Spotify recommendation is the product of AI-driven algorithms, for example. It’s being used to compose music based on its knowledge of previously published works, breathing new life into the long-gone voices of performers like John Lennon while at the same time igniting worries around copyright infringement and the debate around what authentically can be called “music.”

For perspective, we checked in with two musicians at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

Ed Freeman, a Darden professor and expert in business ethics, composes and arranges music, plays keyboards and sings. Some 20 years ago, he founded Blues Jam, a rock and blues band that includes Darden faculty, students, staff and alumni.

Skyler Clark-Hamel (MBA ’23), a current Darden PhD candidate, earned a music degree from the Berklee College of Music. Before joining academia, he worked as a touring and recording artist, entrepreneur and agent in Nashville. Clark-Hamel plays guitar and is a lead singer in Blues Jam.

Here are their reactions to three provocative thoughts on AI’s influence on music:

AI will destroy music as we know it

Freeman: AI will undoubtably change music but it won’t destroy it. Making music is part of who we are as humans. There is always room for great music no matter where it comes from.

Clark-Hamel: AI will not destroy music as we know it. It will be used as a tool to create, much like the drum machine didn’t destroy opportunities for drummers, and instead opened new avenues for creativity. It is difficult to find a top tour or album today where a drummer doesn’t utilize samples, pads, triggers, or loops of some kind.

AI will create new opportunities for musicians

Freeman: Most technologies have created opportunities at least for some. I don’t know what they will look like and I don’t know what other skills musicians will need. We have to make AIs work for us, helping us to make better music.

Clark-Hamel: Some new opportunities will inevitably arise, but AI will also destroy a lot of the training ground that up-and-coming musicians have traditionally relied on. While AI might lower the barrier to entry for some musicians, reducing the required skill, it will also allow many people to be more creative. It is too soon to tell whether the new opportunities that AI creates will be better or worse.

AI will lead to an era of flourishing for live performances

Freeman: I hope this true. Drum boxes and multi-instrument recordings on keyboards, etc., were not great for ensembles but they did create some opportunities. If AI music is not great then more human opportunities will exist. Overall, I am hopeful.

Clark-Hamel: Listeners will crave the real, the authentic, while also enjoying immersive, previously impossible-to-execute performances. Both of these things will be available in live performance, but the only way to really experience “the real” and know that it is real is to see it in person. Not only will AI lead to a new era of flourishing for live performances, but people will crave performances that are untouched by AI as much as they enjoy performances that are enhanced by it.