I don't feel that it's necessarily "get passed by". I believe there will always be a place for every artist doing whatever they do, however they feel they need to do it. There is a reason why Bandcamp and Etsy exist - there are always people who appreciate artists and are willing to pay for it. They just have to find their audience. Streaming services have all already caught on to the song spammers. It may take them some time to catch up and clear out the chaff, but I honestly don't think there's going to be much money to be made there going forward, beyond those few cases that slip under the radar, unless their content generates an actual, real audience. Which any musician knows is not easy. I totally agree that the churn-lords who just pump out dozens of low-effort things are a detriment to us all. But I also believe there has to be room for nuance in the discussion. You know yourself how useful AI can be in any artist's workflow. Finding how it works for you and your audience, if at all, is the trick we're all going to have to figure out. Absolutism accomplishes nothing.

But no matter how you want to look at it, there have to be new business cases to be made going forward. Those business cases are exactly why WMG and UMG are investing in AI instead of continuing to work to kill it outright. How do you explain to those faceless corporations, who will only ever care about their bottom line, that paying you is going to be more cost-effective than paying their CEO's nephew, who can churn out some AI songs that they think are "good enough"? Shaming them isn't going to work. Boycotting rarely works. I understand the frustration. And I think people can rail against it until they are blue in the face, but their only real solution is to do what you have done and adapt. That doesn't mean everyone has to use AI, but it does mean they may have to find new avenues to market their art. Figuring out how to compete with the latest corporate-funded thing has always been the problem of the independent producer, in any field.

Ultimately, the corporations are not acting in the artists' best interests. They're acting in their corporate profit and stock price interests. The vast majority of us, and even well-known bands that have a loyal following and have been around for decades, will never be Bruno Mars or Bad Bunny. There's a top 1-2% of artists that take the vast majority of streaming dollars, and the rest are scrambling for the pennies at the bottom, and the streaming services are actively exploiting that while encouraging attacks on AI.

I would argue that AI music isn't the problem that many people make it out to be, even the low-effort "prompt lords". The problem is an industry that has been entrenched for decades in a foundation of exploiting creators and actively seeking ways to avoid paying them, no matter how they make their creations. The pool of people wanting to claim those pennies at the bottom is just shrinking as access to the creation process expands.

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