Poll: AI Is Transforming How We Think About Music
A flood of AI slop is raging through our screens. By one count, there’s 50,000 AI songs uploaded daily to a major streaming service and 97 percent of listeners can’t tell when they hear a fully AI-generated track. In another survey, about 1 in 4 of all producers conceded to using AI tools, while others may quietly say that the tech allows them to produce dozens of ideas for a song, cutting the time it takes to work on a single track. AI-generated robot-bands with Mad Libs-style names (Burning Rust, Velvet Sundown) have inundated streamers, racking up tens of millions of listens by spitting out uncanny versions of country and rock songs that sound just a bit off — if a listener cares to notice.
This year is a pivot point for many working artists who make a living by recording songs, playing them live and possibly convincing other humans to seek out their work and buy their merch. As AI tools democratize music creation and reshape what productivity should look like for a singer or musician, things are starting to get weird, too. (In a rut? Upload your voice and stems and have AI make 20 versions of your “voice” singing new versions of your “work.” That sentence may produce creeping existentialism for some artists.)
To take America’s temperature, The Hollywood Reporter partnered with the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami on a nationally representative poll of 2,244 U.S. adults, with the aim to understand listening habits, willingness to embrace AI-generated music and opinions on key issues like streaming pay for artists. The survey, conducted by decision intelligence firm Morning Consult, highlights dividing lines on how AI is scrambling the industry. “It’s not much different between the 70-year-olds and the 18-year-olds: Some people are just very frightened, and others are very excited,” says Frost School of Music Dean Shelton “Shelly” Berg, on attitudes about AI on the campus. “There’s almost nobody ambivalent about it.”
A topline note from the THR/Frost School of Music poll: Just over slightly half of America isn’t interested in listening to AI music, even if their favorite artist made it. And more than 66 percent of the public say that they’ve never listened to AI music (that’s if they can recognize a song is AI-created). That still leaves a big 32 percent of America that is fine with getting tunes from the latest AI avatar of pop, rap, country or rock — a phenomenon that’s already starting to play out on the Billboard charts.
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U.S. adults are, however, reticent about the idea of AI creators ripping off Taylor Swift or Paul McCartney’s voice for their own AI-generated songs without permission from the original creator. (The Beatles leader’s stance is clear, he just released an anti-AI song as a protest gesture.) More specifically from the poll: 62 percent of respondents say that AI music creators definitely or probably should “get permission from the original artist when replicating their voice in AI generated music.” Lets go to the charts on the AI questions:
When looking at the data by demographic, GenZers are the age group most likely to say that they’re fine with AI being used to create music without human contributions. Baby Boomers, meanwhile, are the most likely to say that the original music creators should be paid when a creator uses AI to mimic their work. Or, slicing the data by political affiliation, there’s not that huge of a difference across party lines: 22 percent of Republican respondents are fine with AI music being created without humans contributing, as opposed to 18 percent of Democrats.
It’s worth highlighting that majorities in every single age demographic aren’t yet sold on the idea that AI songs should be created without human musical contributions. Maybe that represents the early stages of adoption of AI tools among musicians and producers. Or it’s something more fundamental. As in, what is a song if it doesn’t reflect the emotion, voice and lyrics of the person performing and producing it? (It could just be background music on a playlist that is hastily queued up without regard for the actual artists that comprise it.) Which leads us to those human artists. Many of them are saying the economics of the music industry are broken.
No, it’s not AI that broke the business model of the industry. But the rise of free, legal streaming — which helped the major labels bounce back but didn’t help many of the non-star artists who, suddenly, went from collecting $10 for album downloads to $0.003 royalty per stream — reshaped the landscape. Now there’s movements (think: the United Musicians and Allied Workers’ partnership with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on a “Living Wage for Musicians Act” that aims to boost per-stream pay) that are debated among artists as they figure out how to piece together an income.
While the goal of some of those campaigns (one slogan: “Pay us at least one cent per stream”) is to generate awareness, they haven’t really broken through to the mainstream, the THR/Frost poll shows. While not majorities, a plurality of Americans in every age group thinks artists are generally paid fairly by streaming services and from concerts and touring. Tell that to a touring artist and see what they say. Here’s how those attitudes break down:
A caveat, if you scrolled by this data point and noticed it: A majority of GenZers say they’d be willing to pay more for a concert ticket or streaming service if they knew that that money would directly go to the artist. Yes, per the THR/Frost poll, 32 percent of America never goes to concerts and the same figure never buys artist merch at concerts, but there’s a potentially interesting idea there for streaming services and venues to market themselves as artist-friendly. (A few platforms have tried this: Ten years ago Tidal had marketed itself as offering better streaming payouts than bigger rivals. Now it touts sound quality as a big differentiator.) Which leads the survey to…
A few side notes: The survey shows America’s favorite music genre is Rock, and also broke down listeners’ habits by political affiliation. Republicans’ favorite music genres are: 1) Rock 2) Country 3) Pop while Democrats favorite genres are 1) Rock 2) Rap/Hip-Hop 3) Pop and R&B.
Where do Americans listen? GenZers were the most likely generation to name Spotify, Apple Music and SoundCloud, GenZers and Millennials were likeliest to select YouTube Music, Millennials were the most likely to say they use Pandora among other services they use and Boomers were the age group with the highest percent of respondents who selected SiriusXM, Amazon Music and FM radio. (All age groups listened to most all of these services though, this isn’t about exclusive listening, just seeing some patterns.)
Then we get to music discovery, which is another era that’s been massively reshaped by the robots and algorithms. About 7 percent of Americans say they find new songs via music critics or blogs, far behind “streaming service suggestions” (27 percent) or “playing in the background while out” (31 percent). At least the radio (44 percent) is still up there for discovery as compared to the obvious leader, social media (45 percent). It may go without saying, but most Americans think the sound quality on streaming services is pretty good for the price, too. Here’s the details:
Even as AI disrupts the music landscape like Godzilla, haphazardly clobbering anything in its path, there’s a silver lining in this THR/Frost Poll. GenZers are the most likely generation to say that they’ve actually picked up a real-life instrument, with 67 percent of that age group saying they’ve learned one.
GenXers, at 42 percent, were the least likely generation to say that they’ve learned an instrument. “That’s when music was really being cut from schools,” Frost’s Dean Berg notes of the GenXers’ school era arts funding woes. “Those of us who are in advocacy in music education in higher ed, we worked really hard to bring it back into schools. That’s a very telling data point, because you can see the result of music being taken out of schools.”
Looking to go in-the-weeds on the THR/Frost School of Music Poll? Here’s full the crosstabs document for the nationally representative survey conducted by Morning Consult:
This story appeared in the Nov. 19 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
