JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Brian Austin Whitney Blog A.I. article published June 4th

Music A.I.: Friend or Foe, Amazing Tool or Cheating?

(The following 2000 word article was NOT written with any A.I. if that matters to you).

There is a LOT of negative press and concern over A.I. across every sector, but in the case of music, it isn't all a bed of tears.

Suno, in my view the "Chat GPT/VEO" of music A.I., just released an upgrade that allows you to upload entire finished songs (yes, 100% YOUR work up to 8 minutes) and then allows YOU to direct any upgrade, addition, or improvement you can think up. Nearly every artist, who isn't a studio level producer themselves, goes where they have the processing gear to finish off your compositions. This is either off your guidance or from a producer you've chosen who brings the composition to a marketable level. Most label and wealthy artists do this for every project. But most of us are not wealthy. We also must pick and choose between our creations, often choosing commercially attractive songs over meaningful, interesting or innovative approaches. A.I. is the great equalizing upgrade. You use it to force multiply your creative ideas for pennies a song.

This is NOT about pushing a button and a song coming out. Can that be done? Sure. But it has been done forever with more and more features on instruments down to kids toys that produce music doing most of the lifting. Programs have been out there for decades to assist writers with backing tracks for example. There has never been a shortage of bad songs using any method that great songs have also come from.

If you are a lyricist or composer without the corresponding skills, yes, you can use A.I. to create either half for you which may be your only option, especially if you are just learning. Not many people want to work with novice songwriters, unless they are also novice. And not all musical talent is equal so you can spend your life with serial mismatches when trying to find someone patient, and willing to let you try, fail and try again. For those folks, A.I. solves that problem for you. But most of our Just Plain Folks members are pro's who put out their own CD's (about 85% have released an Album) and the other 15% are often lyricists who can't write music. For the pro's, there is a stigma against A.I., saying it is cheating. Well, if we had the budget and hired a high-end producer, high end session players, high end engineers, and a mastering expert, isn't THAT a crap ton of "cheating?" After all, once you have set your words to a melody, you've finished the songwriting portion and there are countless successful composers who do not take their compositions on the road.

Instead of scraping by to afford one album every few years, you can turn ALL your compositions into finished songs if you want, as if you have unlimited studio budgets and first-class facilities, players, producers and engineers. A.I. will NEVER be less helpful than it is right now. I know of studios who ALREADY use crazy tech to produce music and soon, many of those studios will be using (if they aren't already) A.I. tools to produce projects for money. Why wouldn't they?

But YOU can learn the skills through trial and error with little risk at all. I strongly suggest you do. I traded my own music career for the time and freedom to run Just Plain Folks. I did not ever charge musicians for anything we offered, instead I worked hard to find sponsors to pay the costs. I also learned how to get by with pennies rather than millions. The only downside was I left my own career midway. I couldn't do both well, so I had to choose. I made the right choice, but now, near the end of my 40-year run with Just Plain Folks, I can go back to the thousands of songs I wrote but never fully produced and finished them. In fact, that is what I have been doing since September when I got the opportunity to work with two A.I. companies and test this stuff out. I have been expecting this for decades.

I wrote about my predictions hundreds of times going back to Pre Internet days. I was an early adopter of BBS systems, using my Mac SE computer to run the first version of Finale in 1988! I have been waiting ever since for a tool that could do what these new A.I. companies are doing. It allows me, as an artist, to produce as many songs as my mind can dream up with the professional results as good as any studio I could have ever afforded. The astronomical improvements these companies have made, just since September, are breathtaking. But when I hear it played back, I hear MY words, MY melody, MY counter melodies, MY production/arrangement choices, played by a high end team of external helpers.

But what about...

Humans. Yep, this allows me to do these things without additional humans, that is of course if you IGNORE the thousands of human programmers who have sunk years into making these tools. If I pay for THEIR expertise I am cheating, but if I hire A list Producers, Engineers, Studio Facilities, Session Players and hire world class Mastering engineers to put the final touches on my songs, that isn't the same thing? Really?

If I hired these pros, I am hiring their musical input. With A.I. I am often getting LESS help, not MORE help. It is just a DIFFERENT help. I just don't have to buy all the gear and learn how to engineer using that gear, but I still must determine if I am getting what I want from them, no different than asking for more takes in a studio. But with A.I. I can get 100 new takes on demand without overworking humans in the process. Instead of spending a year and all my money to get an album full of produced songs, I can get 10 or more times that in half the time, because that is exactly what I have done. Over 200 songs in 8 months!

For the humans who are displaced by this, that certainly will be a challenge. But in my case, no humans will lose a penny because I had no budget to hire them in the first place. But there is good news for many of these talented people. First, there will STILL be plenty of demand for polished pros to assist in music creation. If you are a sideman, you can now produce your own music or offer up your talents worldwide to a giant new wave of music makers.

This will EXPAND the overall market. It will be a huge asset for smart, talented players to get their unique talent out to the whole world. This is especially lucrative for all those session players and tour players who can now offer their work to the world. Need a guitar track by the guy who played with “Famous band?” now you can get it directly using a wide array of technology. Want your album produced by someone who played the guitar part in that song you loved? She’s available! The cost of production isn’t just down for the end user; it is a force multiplier for EVERYONE! I would love to have access to the professional ears, voice and fingers of a wide array of music professionals.

In the next 20 years, there will be lots of demand for people rooted in the former music industry. After that transition, so much new technology will be in existence, it is impossible to even guess all the possible new ways to make money from talent. But people with talent will ALWAYS have an advantage in any marketplace. The key is for musicians to embrace and use these new technologies and run circles over their less experienced competitors.

And as these tools improve, soon we will be able to mix in humans the same as if we flew in a vocal track from a singer from the other side of the world today (something my friends have been doing for decades already). It is also something I plan to do because I have a LOT of musician friends from our peak of 125K members in the early 2010s. Most are way too busy to come to my location and record. Now, they can send me a vocal track, a piano track etc. and I can match it up with the rest of the production, and that is all pre-A.I. tech! These features are still improving, but by next year when I am ready to put out a collection of songs that I have made with many of YOU, I expect it to be easy.

That is why I know humans are NOT being replaced. If I had unlimited money, I would LOVE to set up a studio, fly everyone in, and spend the rest of my years making music, not for commercial reasons, but for the spiritual reasons I have always made music. This tech will allow me to do this using other tools like Livestreams and newly perfected connected tech to do it without the cost. There is no downside.

As I mentioned, I have already produced over 200 completely original songs, most dating back to before I worked for JPF 80 hours a week. They are songs with my late vocalist and guitarist, or with another cowriter and guitarist who can no longer function musically due to mental health decline. Their contributions are being reborn with this tech. I have countless rough practice takes of songs nearly forgotten that I have brought back to life, with their intonations included. It has brought me to tears in a few cases. Hearing completed works with my friends. What can be more human than that?

This isn't any kind of paid advocacy. (I wish!) This is simply letting my friends out there know that there IS a place for every ounce of your HUMAN talent and contributions using A.I. tools. Nothing is lost. Instead of the limits of commercial music industry norms, we are now unlimited. And with the cost being less than your monthly Streaming services, wouldn't this be a better investment? Demos used to cost about $650 in Nashville for songwriters in the 80s just to get proof of concept versions. Now I can have a song idea and within an hour have endless proof of concept versions to consider and improve.

And nothing prevents you from doing it how you always did. But why? Get your instrument out, record your vocals, upload that song and by the end of the day you will likely have a finished version if you desire, with hundreds of edits and changes. Isn't that creating?

Now, you can even pull over, hum a melody or faux lyrics into your phone while hitting that great chorus you thought of while driving. (If only I had that during the cross country touring I used to do with JPF!) A.I. will help you produce it with a collection of test versions to listen to on the rest of your drive so you can work out the rest of your lyrics. It even produces dummy lyrics which I thought was something only I mostly did, it is that easy. When you arrive at your destination you can play a nearly or fully finished version for your spouse (which I have done)!

I have thousands of songs, but all this work has caused me to do some of the best new songwriting in my life. I wake up and within minutes I am buried in another new composition. These songs now play through my mind every moment like a radio station as new ideas spring up and become finished songs before bedtime.

I wrote a song half asleep this morning, and by the time we left for an appointment I had 10 versions I liked with slight variations that we listened to in the car on the way to and from the Dr.'s office.

A.I. is a tool. Good people will do good things. Bad people will do bad things. Lazy people will do lazy things. What is NEEDED to counteract the negative is for creative, talented folks like YOU to do amazing things! If you have questions, you know how and where to find me, as always!

Brian Austin Whitney
Founder/CEO
Just Plain Folks Music Org.
June 4th, 2025