How AI Could Change the Future of Music

46 snips

Mar 4, 2025

Mark Henry Phillips, a talented film and podcast composer, joins to discuss the rapid evolution of AI in music. The conversation dives into how AI tools can create songs, raising questions about the future of music composition. Phillips shares his experiences and worries that AI may replace human creativity. They explore the complexities of copyright law and the ethics surrounding AI-generated music. Ultimately, the discussion challenges our understanding of inspiration versus imitation in art and creativity.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

ANECDOTE

AI-Generated Songs About Luka Doncic Trade

Derek Thompson's friends were upset about a basketball trade.
He used AI to generate songs expressing their feelings about it.

ANECDOTE

Existential Crisis Moment

Mark Henry Phillips was initially impressed by AI music's ability to emulate styles.
Hearing an AI-generated reggae song similar to Toots and the Maytals was a turning point.

ANECDOTE

Human-Composed Soundtrack

Derek Thompson asked Phillips to score a romantic scene.
Phillips composed a piece inspired by John Bryan, resulting in a soundtrack with a quirky, romantic feel.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Artificial intelligence tools for musicians are getting eerily good, very fast. Their work can be maddening, funny, ethically dubious, and downright fascinating all at the same time. TV and podcast composer Mark Henry Phillips joins to describe his experience working with them. We talk about the job of modern music composition; why he's worried AI might eventually do much of his current job; the morass of AI copyright law; and the ethics of creative ownership.

But above all, Mark gets my brain whirring about the nature of creativity—how great new ideas, like songs, come to be in the first place. The line between stealing and inspiration in artistic history has always been blurry. Picasso famously said: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” And that is not just a memorable quote. Many of my favorite musicians were famous borrowers, to put it lightly. Some of Led Zeppelin's most famous songs—such as "Whole Lotta Love"—were such obvious lifts that, after years of court cases, the band agreed to add the plaintiff to the song credits.

But analogies to music and art history also fall short to capture the weirdness of this moment. Neither Picasso nor Jimmy Page had access to an external technology whose deliberate function was to slurp up musical elements from millions of songs, store their essence in silicon memory, and serve them up in a kind of synthetic stir fry on an order-by-order basis. Musicians have been writing music with partners for decades, even centuries. What happens to music when that partner is a machine: Will it open up new horizons in songwriting and composition? Or in a sad way, will super-intelligence make the future of music more average than ever?

Links:

WNYC: "How AI and Algorithms Are Transforming Music"

"In February's Cruel Light (Goodbye Luka)" Full AI song

"L.A. Luka (I Wanna Puke-uh)" Full AI song

P.S. Derek wrote a new book! It’s called 'Abundance,' and it’s about an optimistic vision for politics, science, and technology that gets America building again. Buy it here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Abundance/Ezra-Klein/9781668023488

Plus: If you live in Seattle, Atlanta, or the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area, Derek is coming your way in March! See him live at book events in your city. Tickets here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/p/abundance-tour

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices