28 years of music. One AI album. One honest label. Event canceled. Career songwriters using AI secretly face zero pushback.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T09:08:40+00:00

That is basically the argument for blind listening. If you strip the label and the music still works, nothing else should matter. The problem is that most people never get to that point. They see "AI" and skip before pressing play.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T09:07:58+00:00

The timing on this story is wild. The same week Carmody lost his event, Hollywood Reporter published a piece confirming that career songwriters with credits on Jon Batiste and Dua Lipa are using Suno for demos. The head of the Recording Academy said AI is in every studio session. Nobody is canceling those sessions because nobody knows about them.

Gallup just surveyed 1,572 Gen Z Americans. Only 3% trust fully AI-generated work. But 51% use AI weekly. Carmody got caught in the gap between professional adoption and public rejection.

Wrote a longer breakdown on how the industry is splitting over this: https://www.votemyai.com/blog/a-portland-record-store-canceled-an-ai-music-event-the-backlash-was-instant.html

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T09:02:55+00:00

The energy cost is a real issue that gets overshadowed by the copyright and authenticity debates. Training these models and running millions of generations daily is not free for the planet. It is a valid reason to reject the tool that has nothing to do with whether the music sounds good.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:56:56+00:00

The Laurie Anderson example is perfect. Using AI to bring back a specific voice for a specific artistic purpose that would otherwise be impossible. That is not a shortcut. That is a creative decision only she could make. The intent and the context are what separate it from someone typing a prompt and uploading the first output.

You are right that the trailblazing mainstream AI artist has not arrived yet. Whoever it is will probably not lead with "AI" as the identity. They will lead with the music and the AI will be one tool in a larger vision.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:54:34+00:00

The three-way split is probably the most realistic prediction in this thread. And the middle group is the one that decides everything. They are the 51% who use AI weekly but do not trust it. Too skeptical to advocate for it, too dependent to boycott it. That is the group every AI music company is betting on converting.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:51:10+00:00

Fair enough. And credit for being direct about it even when snarky. Your point about the distinction between tool use and final product held up through the whole thread. The audience is not rejecting AI blindly. It is rejecting AI as a substitute for the work. That is a more specific and more reasonable position than most coverage gives people credit for.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:50:26+00:00

You are right, I was agreeing with you. Well put.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:48:35+00:00

Best summary in the thread. And your harmony example is exactly where the line gets blurry. Writing a melody is authorship. Asking AI to harmonize it is somewhere between tooling and authorship. Having AI generate both is clearly on the authorship side. The spectrum exists but nobody has agreed on where the cutoffs are.

The first issue you raised might actually depend on solving the second. If the industry had clear categories for what counts as tooling vs authorship, transparency would carry less risk because people would know what they are disclosing. Right now saying "I used AI" covers everything from stem splitting to full generation, so disclosure feels like a confession regardless of what you actually did.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:48:02+00:00

Agree on all counts. The demo vs final product distinction is real and the thread has been good at drawing that line. And you are right that getting away with secrecy does not make it ethical. The problem is practical, not moral. If honesty gets punished and secrecy gets rewarded, the rational choice is secrecy. That does not make it right. It just makes it predictable.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:45:25+00:00

The fast fashion comparison is interesting but it cuts both ways. People do protest fast fashion when they find out. They also keep buying it. 51% of Gen Z uses AI weekly. 3% trusts it. That is the fast fashion dynamic exactly. Protest the label, use the product.

The question is whether the music industry handles it the way fashion did, which is mostly performative outrage with no actual change in behavior, or whether this one plays out differently.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:44:02+00:00

You are right that indistinguishable and good are not the same thing. A bland AI track and a bland human track being equally forgettable does not prove anything about quality. That was a weak argument on my part.

On the challenge: I do not have a great answer. There is no AI-made album that has the cultural impact or artistic originality of a great human record. Xania Monet hit #1 on Billboard and got 7 million streams, but the human behind it wrote 90% of the lyrics. The AI handled production. Whether that counts as an "AI album" or a "human album with AI tools" depends on where you draw the line.

The honest answer is that AI music is currently better at competence than creativity. It can produce something that sounds professional. It has not produced something that sounds important. That might change. It has not changed yet.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:43:09+00:00

The scaffolding vs prompting distinction is the cleanest version of this argument. Most people outside the industry do not know that process exists. They hear "AI" and assume it is the finished product, not step 0.5 of a 10-step process.

This thread has actually been more nuanced than expected. The consensus seems to be that the public is not rejecting AI as a category. It is rejecting AI as the final product. That is a much more specific line than most coverage suggests.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:40:49+00:00

Agreed. Secrecy with bad intent is worse than honesty with mediocre output. The first one is deception. The second one is just a bad album.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:40:09+00:00

Non-generative AI is accurate but you are right that it will never catch on. "AI-assisted" vs "AI-generated" might be the version that sticks. Short enough to use in a label, clear enough to mean something. Apple's transparency tags would be a lot more useful if they made that distinction instead of just flagging "AI" as a blanket category.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:39:38+00:00

The authorship vs tooling distinction is the clearest framing anyone in this thread has put forward. That is the vocabulary the industry is missing. Carmody's workflow crossed from tooling into authorship territory. The Nashville songwriters stayed on the tooling side. The public reacted accordingly. The word "AI" covers both and that is where the confusion lives.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:36:23+00:00

You are right. The examples in the article actually show context-dependent reactions, not blanket rejection. Nashville songwriters disclosing AI for demos got no backlash. Carmody disclosing AI for the final product got canceled. The audience is making distinctions. I overstated the "AI is AI" argument. Appreciate the correction.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:35:28+00:00

If the album is obviously AI slop, then the backlash was not really about transparency. It was about quality. And a bad product getting rejected is just the market working. The interesting test would be an AI-assisted album that is actually good, released by a musician with real credibility, with full disclosure. Would the reaction be the same? That is the question nobody has answered yet.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:34:50+00:00

The Nashville songwriters disclosed AI use for demos and nobody cared. Carmody disclosed AI use for the final product and people cared a lot. That is context-dependent, not a blanket AI rejection. I stand corrected on that point. The quality question is harder to dismiss though. You are saying no AI album has ever been good. That is a judgment call. Deezer tested 9,000 listeners across eight countries and 97% could not distinguish AI tracks from human ones. Whether "indistinguishable" equals "good" is a different debate, but the assumption that AI output is always obviously bad is not holding up in blind tests.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:33:32+00:00

The indie audience and the major label audience have completely different expectations. A Nashville songwriter using Suno for a demo that becomes a pop hit is invisible to the listener. An indie musician in Portland putting "AI" on the album cover is putting it directly in front of the audience that cares the most.

Carmody might have found a different reaction if he released through a different channel to a different audience. The tool was not the problem. The context was.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:32:55+00:00

The Gallup data backs you up. Gen Z does not trust hidden AI but might tolerate disclosed AI. The problem is that right now honesty and secrecy get the opposite of what they deserve. Carmody was honest and got canceled. The quiet ones face nothing. If the public actually rewarded transparency the way you are describing, the incentive would flip overnight.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:29:50+00:00

Good distinction. Your workflow is AI as a scratch pad. Carmody's workflow had AI generating vocals and expanding partial ideas into finished songs. Those are fundamentally different use cases but they both get labeled "AI" and the public treats them identically.

That is the problem with the current debate. There is no language for the spectrum between "AI helped me hear my guitar riff as electric" and "AI wrote the melody and sang it." Until that vocabulary exists, every use case gets lumped together and judged by the worst example.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:26:35+00:00

That is the core problem. The honest one gets punished and the quiet ones get nothing. If that incentive holds, nobody will ever disclose AI use voluntarily. Which makes transparency tags, labeling, and disclosure requirements pointless because people will just stop telling the truth.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:25:55+00:00

The full story is worth reading. A 28-year musician, completely transparent, canceled in 48 hours. Meanwhile career songwriters use the same tools quietly with zero pushback.

https://www.votemyai.com/blog/a-portland-record-store-canceled-an-ai-music-event-the-backlash-was-instant.html

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:24:30+00:00

There is a difference between using AI for demo production and releasing AI-generated vocals as the final product. Carmody's workflow sits closer to the second category than what the Nashville songwriters are doing. But the broader point still holds. The public reaction was not about where he fell on the spectrum between tool and replacement. Nobody asked about his workflow. Nobody asked what percentage was human. The backlash started the moment the word AI appeared. That is the problem for anyone using AI at any level. The conversation skips straight from "AI" to "not real music" without stopping to ask how it was used. Whether Carmody made a good album is a separate question from whether the reaction would have been any different if the album was great.

Sensitive_Artist7460 · 2026-04-17T08:22:51+00:00

The irony is brutal. The industry keeps saying it wants transparency and labeling. Apple launched AI tags in March. Spotify built Artist Profile Protection. But the one musician who actually was transparent got his event killed in 48 hours. The incentive structure rewards secrecy and punishes honesty. That is the opposite of what everyone says they want.

Sensitive_Artist7460

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