Sounds of Silence

As governments give AI more power, musicians fight back

A music lesson featuring teacher and students on an ancient “hydria,” or large water jar

“We are in a golden age of music. There will be a time when technology becomes so advanced that we'll rely on it to make music rather than raw talent...and music will lose its soul.”

This quote is often attributed to Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. Though this was supposedly said decades ago, during the height of twentieth century experimental and progressive rock, its words ring eerily true today.

I often come across sources during research for articles that are obviously erroneous. Not only am I able to easily tell the difference between an AI generated article and a humanly created one, but I can easily trace the sources the AI bot used for content scraping by following the pattern of errors backwards.

It amazes me how much incorrect information, down to last names, dates of birth, and key historic events, can be found even on Google’s most popular links. I often go to original sources and official documents to find correct information because journalistic integrity now sits at an all time low.

Humans have the ability, though many don’t often use it, to discern between truth and falsehood. AI doesn't. What happens when AI scans, repackages, and uses incorrect information over and over again, while no human discerning eye comes across to correct it?

We are seeing the early stages of that now.

When it comes to journalism, the rampant use of AI by publications means the spreading of fiction versus fact. With music, it becomes a matter of art versus regurgitation.

“The very soul of our cultural heritage”

As the United Kingdom attempted to pass a bill regarding the use of AI in music, guitarist and Led Zeppelin bandmember Jimmy Page took to his Instagram to release an official statement condemning the government’s actions.

According to the Data (Use and Access) Bill, tech firms harnessing AI technology would be allowed to scrape large swaths of music in order to teach it how to repackage that music into repurposed songs and melodies. Music company and publication Ultimate Guitar stated the bill expands “the ways developers can use copyright-protected work to train the various artificial intelligence models in use.”

In order to avoid this unauthorized use of original material, musicians would theoretically have to opt out of AI technology agreements in the future as they manage their catalogs. But according to musicians like Page and many others, that is easier said than done. Between the wording of the bill and the already murky waters of copyright law, musicians believe this only makes an already complicated situation more unfair to the ones creating the very material AI will use.

As government officials like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer work to make the UK “an AI superpower,” musicians are fighting back, saying giving AI carte blanche will be devastating for songwriters and artists who produce original music.

In his official statement voicing his concerns of AI’s increasing shadow in the music community, Page said:

“Today, as artificial intelligence seeks to mimic and monetise creativity, we stand at a crossroads. AI-generated art and music, synthesised from existing human works, lack the visceral essence that comes from lived experience. They are but hollow echoes, devoid of the struggles, triumphs, and soul that define true artistry.

Moreover, the ethical implications are profound. When AI scrapes the vast tapestry of human creativity to generate content, it often does so without consent, attribution, or compensation. This is not innovation; it's exploitation…

In defending the sanctity of human creativity against the encroachment of AI, we safeguard not just the rights of artists, but the very soul of our cultural heritage."

He also stated that when humans get together to create music, it produces “a synergy that no machine can emulate."

“Is This What We Want?”

While Page used his sizable social media following to voice his concerns, others took a creative approach. Musicians like Kate Bush and Cat Stevens were a part of over 1,000 musicians who jointly released an album truly like no other, a silent record. The next-to-noiseless album features echoes of uninhabited studios and performance spaces. The artists say that this is what the future of real music sounds like should AI continue to gain more and more control.

The album, plainly titled, Is This What We Want?, features a series of tracks that ultimately spell out their reasoning for releasing the project:

“The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies.”

Recently, writer and musician Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker also pointed out the tragedy that happens when humans are further removed from the process of artistic creation. In his article, “Classical Music Got Invented with a Hard Kick from a Peasant’s Foot,” he brilliantly argues that music isn’t so much a mathematical process (many serious musicians and music educators teach that math is the core of music), but a bodily one. The physicality of the human experience is what drives rhythm and time signature more than numbers. He makes note of the dance of peasants’ feet that inspired some of classical music’s pioneering musicians.

He stated, “These considerations explain why my views on music aesthetics have deviated so widely from the current consensus—especially in recent years when more research on the physiological impact of rhythm and music has been published. I now believe that any approach to musical aesthetics that doesn’t give full and close attention to its embodied qualities is deeply mistaken.

This has implications for many subjects—and I can’t even begin to address them here. But just consider the obstacles faced by AI when it attempts to control the musical arts, if in fact these are intimately built on the brute reality of having a physical body.

Or what about the impact of streaming platforms on our musical culture, if they treat songs as intangible, little more than data?”

He continued, “Everything else might change in music, but the dominant genre always pleases the feet.

Even our understanding of animal behavior is enriched by a grasp of embodied rhythms. You can detect rhythmic activities everywhere in the natural world, many of them obviously linked to survival traits. And by studying these phenomena in other species, we gain many insights into our own.

These are subjects that I hope to return to another day. But the big picture should already be clear to you. The rhythmic drive in music—of every genre—cannot be reduced to a time signature or mathematical formula.

It’s driven by the hands and feet of the audience—and that’s just as true for Bach and Mozart as for the Afro-Cuban music of Havana or the ecstatic raves of EDM fans. This perspective helps us understand tango and disco, but also Beethoven and Haydn.

By accepting this—even better, by celebrating this—we not only gain a better understanding of the history and essence of our music, but perhaps a firmer sense of what we ought to do to ensure its healthy future.”

Counting Heartbeats

I have always felt the processes of the body fuel my musical compositions far more than math. Many who’ve recorded my music over the years or gave me music lessons most likely wished I paid more attention to the counting of measurements than heartbeats.

But I grew up in a dying tradition—the tradition of traditional poetry. So music, like poetry, always had a pulse to me. This is echoed in the popular use of iambic pentameter in formal poetry. The metrical feet of iambic pentameter mimic the heart hard at work inside one’s body.

But the human elements of the arts aren’t just found in music and her sister medium, poetry. Human elements are also found in literature, with physical books containing “spines.”

Now, the digital page has replaced the “spine” and free verse poetry with no pulse has replaced the heartbeat of iambic pentameter.

In our digital age, the human element of the arts is becoming more and more separated from the art itself. And we are currently at the precipice of this reality with the strong presence of AI in music.

The Values of Art

The conversation regarding AI and art of all kinds understandably leans towards economic implications. As important as it is to have conversations regarding music’s monetary value and how that relates to AI technology, it’s equally important to have conversations regarding music’s humanistic and spiritual value. Not long ago, Paul Musso at The Micro Philosopher pointed out that there are four different types of value. There is instrumental value which deals with economic or monetary value. There’s also intrinsic value, extrinsic value, and final value.

There is a great deal of intrinsic value in art in my opinion, due to the non-quantifiable value instilled within art during the creative process, giving the work significance and meaning regardless of interpretation or popularity. Skateboarder Rodney Mullen once said during a Ted Talk, “There's an intrinsic value in creating something for the sake of creating it.” Extrinsic value comes by way of outside factors—the meaning and value others bestow upon the art. And final value, an artwork’s purpose, is highly important due to its spiritual and philosophical nature. Books are meant to be read. Music is meant to be played or listened to. All art mediums contribute to humankind’s final value, happiness.

Good art is a selective recreation of reality. When one looks at art or listens to it or reads it, they aren’t simply engaging in a retelling of facts like one would with a news article or unbiased scientific study (does that even exist?). They are engrossed in a recreated world that not only shows how things are, but more importantly, how they should be.

Artists aren’t simply photographers of reality. They are visionaries of it. That isn’t to say they view reality as subjective. Their purpose is to show through their stories and songs all that reality can and should be. And they show how it’s possible through their characters, lyrics, and plotlines.

With all the focus on art and music’s outer economy, what is to happen to this essential, fundamental inner economy when algorithms versus human-inspired rhythms are at the helm of music production?

Romanticism versus Brutalism

To allow AI to generate music off of the backs of musicians and their private property, their original music, is to fundamentally change the essence of art because it fundamentally changes one of its foundational causes of existence, its efficient cause—that which brings it into reality, which is man.

Recently, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek referred to the music on the platform he represents as “content” during a discussion regarding AI. I had concerns then that a supposed steward of the arts would refer to music as “content.” I have even more concern now as governments give AI tech firms uninhibited latitude regarding people’s intellectual property.

What will we make of a future musical landscape in which soulless robots generate algorithmic “content” as opposed to soul-filled humans who create works of art? Others have pointed out, what happens to generations of future artists who grow up with art being driven by a technological-algorithmic output rather than human input?

I have long advocated that the government should not dictate the parameters of copyright law because they are utterly uneducated when it comes to its modern intricacies. Here in America, much of our copyright law was enacted in 1976 or prior, and many cases are still settled with outdated views. Minor situational revisions have taken place since then, but only one major revision has. In 2018, President Donald Trump signed a law that offers enhanced protections to creators in this digital age of music.

If one has to fight the government over issues regarding copyright law, it can be very hard to win. Few people who have challenged the government have won. The reason why AI and tech firms have such a heavy hand in the music world is because so far, the government has given them the permission to do so.

The concept of intellectual property is tied to the concept of private property. And in America, intellectual property doesn’t just serve as a protection from citizens stealing works of art. The implementation of the concept of intellectual property serves as a check against governments who have long banned art or have used it as propaganda for political gain.

Any look at a government building or government-sanctioned work of art shows not that they don’t value art, but that they use it to manipulate, instead of inspire. It is the difference between Romanticism and the divine creations of Europe’s Classical period versus the Brutalist art so popular now that originated during totalitarian governmental reigns like the Soviet Union.

Human intelligence gave us Hank Williams, who used poignant symbolism and metaphors to describe acute pain by way of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”—who showed us a path to redemption by way of “I See the Light.” Human intelligence gave us Beethoven, who taught us desperation can be beautiful, and how to turn anguish into beauty. Human intelligence gave us “Amazing Grace,” “Danny Boy,” and “Ode to Joy.”

Human intelligence gave us the theatrical fantasy, aching awareness, and melodic brilliance of Freddie Mercury and “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Human intelligence gave us the power, grace, and musical avalanche of Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin.

What will AI give us regarding the Western musical canon?

A Time We Were Made For

There is a Nature that runs through art just as art runs throughout Nature. From the Nautilus shell to the Golden Ratio, form, function, and symmetry have long been the foundations of history’s most moving human creations. Even though Nature naturally strives for perfection and harmony, its essence is found in making the physical world irreplicable versus impeccable. Because art and Nature are inextricably linked, this means that music that is unique, full of human emotion, and dotted with the occasional idiosyncratic blemish is what humans gravitate towards. Humans want a reflection of their identity, ideals, and experiences through art. They want to feel visible, to feel connected, to feel alive. No algorithm can ever accomplish this even as it takes the place of human creation.

This should not be a time when artists get discouraged though. This is exactly the time we were made for. The true artist is a gifted fighter. We first turned to our art forms in order to fight for ourselves. Now, we must use our artforms to fight for ourselves once more. And by doing so, we stand up for each other.

And we don’t do it by way of political activism, which inevitably will result in what it always does, a compromise.

Artists must not compromise.

We champion the human creation of art not simply by fighting against something, but by being unapologetically and persistently for something.

Today’s artistic revolution is not a war to be won but a state of embodiment. The transcendent existence of this state is made manifest in each artist’s unique, individual works.

As author Ursula K. Le Guin once stated, “You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”

Each new song, album, art work, novel, or essay constructed by use of one’s own mental fortitude, creativity, physical skill, and rigor is the revolution.

As the music industry attempts to make music more robotic than ever before, now, we must be more human than ever before.

Artificial intelligence is man-made. But it will never replace the intelligence, nor the soul, of man faithful to the muse of music.

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