“The AI music thing is weird in as much as that there's a front end for it, but there's no back end for it. There's no audience that's waiting on the other side going, oh my goodness, I can't wait to listen to this AI music. Because what's happening is you have all these kids running around with Suno on their phones and they're all going to their friends going, hey, look what I did… End of conversation.”
Mac Power Users · October 2026
Asked how professional musicians feel about AI-generated tracks on streaming services, the film and TV composer predicts two separate music economies. He expects the major labels to wall AI music off in its own sandbox to protect the royalty streams they've built their finances on.
Transcript
100%.
…so people know it's AI. But there's also a segment of people that, I mean, AI artists that have like thousands of listeners a month, sometimes millions of listeners. What is their response to that? Like, are we just like, okay with this? Is this like, how does that feel from your perspective?
…micropayments, you know, for plays that we've had for a long time because the labels have built their entire financial structure around the consistency of those payments. They have really, really turned those into an annuity. And the idea that something like AI music is going to come along and dilute the royalty pool makes them mad, like you cannot believe. So that's number one. Number two, the AI music thing is weird in as much as that there's a front end for it, but there's no back end for it. There's no audience that's waiting on the other side going, oh my goodness, I can't wait to listen to this AI music. Because what's happening is you have all these kids running around with Suno on their phones and they're all going to their friends going, hey, look what I did. Sure. End of conversation. So is there a business there or is there a front end for this being sort of like a novelty or a toy or that kind of thing? So I think what's going to happen is that Suno for professional musicians is going to be a way of demoing tracks, maybe a way of doing like, you know, some arrangements or something like that. But you're going to have to go through an enormous…
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All right. So, Michael, you teased us earlier that you're doing some film production now, and this is where AI is stepping in and roll for you. So, tell us, what are you doing?
So, I have a company called Artist Expansion, where I work with recording artists and I do marketing with them. I do social media with them. We talk about branding. We talk about all kinds of different things. And I have made in the last 10 years hundreds of music videos and behind the scenes…
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