AI music revolution? Tools reshaping the music industry

Let’s start at the beginning: learning music. AI is starting to have reverberations in the field of music teaching and looks set to change how people learn to play music. Forget old-school, one-size-fits-all lesson books (like the ones I had to use) — AI learning platforms are already out there making music education more interactive and adaptive. Let’s take a look a few of them.

AI-powered music tutors: a better way to learn?

Many music learning apps are already using AI to analyze performances, detect basic mistakes, and give some real-time feedback. These tools can be great for beginners, but they lack the depth and interaction of real instruction or interaction. Here are some of the prominent ones out there:

• Simply (Piano, Guitar) – Recognizes notes played on a real instrument and helps users build skills gradually.

• Yousician (Guitar, Piano, Bass, Singing, Ukulele) – Uses AI to provide real-time feedback and personalized lessons across multiple instruments, adjusting difficulty based on progress.

Reading through the reviews, opinions on the AI components are a bit hit-and-miss, with their main function appearing to be spotting wrong notes and adjusting to your level. But learning music is about more than this. A real teacher guides you — showing why something went wrong, how to fix it, and customising each lesson just for you. This is exactly why I'm so excited about the upcoming app from ArtMaster:

• ArtMaster’s Artie. Not only does Artie listen and interact just like a human teacher, it instantly spots if your finger strength, rhythm, or dynamics need work. It then provides clear explanations and personalized exercises right away. It will even take into account your musical preferences.

Future tools, such as ArtMaster’s Artie app, will be much closer to the experience of learning with a real teacher. And, although never a replacement for a human tutor, it will become invaluable, especially for beginners.

For me, AI in education is about enhancing the learning process, about making high-quality affordable music education that’s accessible to anyone, not matter where they live.

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AI-enhanced instruments 

But it isn’t just apps, AI can be used in conjunction with specially adapted instruments or attachments. Here are some I recently came across:

• ROLI’s Piano Learn – a system that works by combining their propriety touch-sensitive keyboards with AI-powered analysis in the app. 

• Fret Zealot – an LED accessory for guitar necks that integrates with an AI app. Users can select from a library of songs and follow the illuminated LEDs on the fretboard to play along. 

Once you’ve got started you'll want to focus on different skills for practice, there are also some interesting AI apps out there.

AI practice tools

• Chordie AI (formerly Chord AI) helps beginners play their favourite songs without prior knowledge. It uses AI to recognize chords and provides real-time feedback, making the learning process interactive and personalized.

• Hyperwrite’s Musician Practice Scheduler creates personalized practice schedules based on your available time, skill level, and focus areas. By inputting these details, the AI generates a structured plan to optimize your practice sessions.

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AI for jamming & improvisation

For musicians, jamming is where creativity happens in real time — a moment of musical chemistry that can’t be planned. Now AI can also provide you with a responsive bandmate (although these projects don't seem accessible to the public yet):

• ReaLJam lets you improvise with an AI-powered band, instantly matching your tempo, key, and style.

• SongDriver and Antescofo generate real-time accompaniments, enhancing live performances naturally.

This is where AI truly supports musicianship — it’s still the artist leading the performance, but AI can enhance and expand their creative possibilities. For example, a guitarist who plays solo can have an AI “band” to experiment with.

The downside? If AI becomes too good at improvising, will we lose that special human connection between bandmates?

AI as a creative tool? Great. AI as a replacement? That’s where it gets murky.

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AI in music creation is where things start to get more complicated. AI-powered composition tools can be an incredible resource, but when AI starts generating entire songs on its own, we need to ask: where does human creativity fit in?

AI as a creative assistant: where it helps

Some AI music tools are designed to assist musicians without replacing them. These are tools I can generally get behind.

• Orb Producer Suite helps generate chords, melodies, basslines, and arpeggios, providing a creative spark.

• Hookpad suggests harmonic progressions, making it easier for songwriters to experiment with new chord structures.

• InstaComposer 2 creates MIDI sequences, acting as an idea generator rather than a full songwriter.

• RhymeZone assists lyricists by generating rhyming words and synonyms, helping refine song lyrics without writing them outright.

• ChatGPT can brainstorm lyric ideas, suggest themes, or generate rough drafts, though the final song still depends on human creativity.

These tools don’t write songs for you — they offer starting points, helping musicians break through creative blocks or explore new styles. At the end of the day, it’s still the artist making the music — AI just gives them more options, not a finished product.

Generative AI – the real threat to musicianship

As a musician, this is where I think things get dangerous. Don’t get me wrong, these do have valid benefits — they too can give new musical ideas to musicians — it is more about how people are using them.  The use of AI music generators that don't assist musicians — they replace them.

• Suno AI – Generates AI-powered compositions and has quickly gained attention.

• Udio — An AI music generator that creates songs based on user-provided text descriptions, including genre and lyrics. 

• AIVA – Composes music in over 250 styles, allowing users to create original compositions quickly.

And there are countless numbers of these being developed all the time — you only need to do a quick google search

Don’t get me wrong, these do have valid benefits, such as providing creative ideas to songwriters or even inspiring someone to learn music. But the facts are grim: 

 🔹 AI can produce endless “new” songs without human creativity.
🔹 AI-generated tracks are flooding streaming platforms, making it harder for real musicians to get discovered.
🔹 Deepfake AI can replicate artists' voices without their consent (e.g., the AI Drake & The Weeknd song).

AI-generated music isn’t about artistic expression — it’s about mass production. And that’s a problem.

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So, as AI-generated music becomes more common, so does the risk of copyright fraud and royalty scams. Streaming platforms are now investing in AI-powered fraud detection in an attempt to prevent:

• Fake artists uploading AI-generated songs en masse to collect royalties.

• Deepfake vocals mimicking real musicians without consent.

• AI-generated compositions resembling copyrighted works, raising legal and ethical concerns.

Platforms like Spotify and YouTube are already using AI to track metadata, audio fingerprints, and ISRC codes to identify and remove fraudulent content. However, will there ever be a way that AI can reliably distinguish between generated tracks and created ones? I am not convinced.

One thing is for sure, finding a balance between protecting artists and allowing AI-driven innovation will be one of the biggest challenges ahead.

Let’s take a look at the use of artificial intelligence in the world of film and video game soundtracks.

Apart from generating entire soundtracks, AI is being used to create dynamic soundtracks that shift in real time to match action and mood. While the idea of AI-generated film scores doesn’t sit right with me, in gaming, where music serves the gameplay rather than taking cent restage it can be a useful tool rather than a creative replacement. Here area few examples:

• AI-driven scoring tools like MorpheuS and Jukedeck (now owned by ByteDance, aka TikTok) can generate adaptive music that evolves with in-game events.

• Opusmodus assists composers by structuring complex arrangements, making it easier to build soundscapes that adjust to interactive storytelling.

• Nvidia’s Fugatto takes things further, using AI to generate and modify sound effects in real time, expanding the possibilities for immersive game audio.

For indie developers and filmmakers these tools save time and budget, allowing them to create customized, interactive soundtracks without hiring a full orchestra.

I love the possibilities of AI enhancing gaming experiences by creating soundtracks that respond to player actions, mood shifts, and real-time events. It will really make worlds feel more alive.

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Of course, AI is also helping musicians produce, restore, and enhance music in ways that were never possible before. I have even attempted to use them in mastering myself. 

Mixing & mastering using AI: instant pro sound?

Getting a song to sound professional used to mean hiring an experienced sound engineer. But AI-powered mastering tools have meant that people can do it themselves (although I still recommend hiring a professional).

• LANDR uses AI to analyze tracks and apply professional-grade mastering in seconds.

• iZotope Ozone applies AI-driven EQ and compression, helping independent artists get radio-ready sound without expensive studio time.

The way I see it is that AI isn’t replacing producers — it’s giving more musicians access to tools that can more easily create professional-quality production. That is not to say it’s easy. Sure, with Ozone (which I have tried myself as a bedroom mastering tool) you can to a degree simply press a button and have a professional sounding master but if you really want a decent job you have to learn. Needless to say, I have an even greater respect for professional mastering than I did before but it at least taught me a lot.

AI bringing old recordings back to life

Now, this is a cool use of AI — restoring classic recordings by removing noise, enhancing clarity, and even reconstructing missing parts of songs.

A notable example was the recent release of Now and Then by the Beatles, where Lennon's voice was extracted from the cassette demo using an advanced machine-learning-based audio restoration technology called MAL (machine-assisted learning). It was initially developed by Peter Jackson's WingNut Films for the 2021 documentary series The Beatles: Get Back.

AI used by the industry include:

• iZotope  —  Industry-standard software known for noise reduction, de-clicking, spectral repair, and eliminating distortion. Frequently used by professionals for audio restoration tasks.

• Cedar  —  A specialised suite widely used in professional audio restoration, providing tools for noise suppression, de-clicking, and removing crackles or hum from vintage recordings.

This is AI at its best — preserving and enhancing music.

As we’ve mentioned, AI can enhance live jamming, but in large-scale concerts it’s being used in ways that are pushing performances toward automation rather than spontaneity.

• AI-generated visuals and lighting effects can sync perfectly with the music, creating high-energy, immersive shows.

• Some artists are using AI-generated holograms (e.g., ABBA’s virtual concert), making performances feel more like a digital simulation than a live event.

• AI-driven vocal correction and real-time tuning take flawless performance to an extreme, smoothing out human imperfections so much that it barely feels live anymore.

This kind of automation blurs the line between a real concert and a high-tech stage show. The raw energy of live music — the slightly off-beat fills, the spontaneous crowd interactions, the moments when a band plays differently just because it feels right — is exactly what makes concerts magical.

But if everything is pre-programmed, AI-assisted, and polished to perfection, does the human element start disappearing?

And last, but not least, we’ll briefly go over the current the way the final produced music gets to us (well apart from vinyl and buying albums online — the best option).

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AI-powered recommendation engines claim to help us discover new music, but let’s be honest — they also shape what we listen to far more than we realize.

As you know, Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music use AI to analyze your listening habits, tracking tempo, genre, lyrics, and even how long you listen to certain tracks. Based on that data, they curate personalized playlists like Discover Weekly or Your Daily Mix.

Sounds great, right? But how much is it reflecting your musical tastes and how much is it dictating it?

🔹 Algorithm bias: AI doesn’t just pick music you might like — it picks music that keeps you on the platform longer. That means songs that are similar to what you already listen to rather than introducing genuinely new sounds.

🔹 Big labels vs. independent artists: AI prioritizes what’s already popular. Major labels pay for placement in AI-generated playlists, while independent artists struggle to get heard. So while it feels like Spotify is showing you fresh new music, in reality, it’s feeding you what the industry wants you to hear.

🔹 The echo chamber effect: The more you listen to a particular style, the more AI reinforces that preference, narrowing your taste rather than expanding it. You end up stuck in a musical loop, hearing different versions of the same sound, instead of discovering something truly different.

And now, with the rise of AI-generated music, things are getting even murkier. AI isn’t just curating playlists — it’s starting to fill them. Some platforms have begun inserting AI-generated tracks alongside human-made ones, blending them so seamlessly that listeners might not even realize they’re hearing machine-made music.

In other words, you might not just be choosing from human artists any more — AI could be quietly slipping its own creations into your daily mix. 

Before we end, I have to mention AI in music marketing, and there are countless other areas we could explore (for example — AI written music articles, entire music websites for clickbait etc).

AI in music marketing 

I’ll only briefly touch on the subject because AI in marketing is a massive industry in itself, but its impact on music promotion is undeniable.

• AI-powered ads & targeting – Independent artists can use AI-driven tools to run hyper-targeted ads on social media and streaming platforms, but success still depends on how well they fit into AI-generated trends.

• Playlist domination – AI-driven playlists don’t just influence what people listen to—they decide which artists get exposure. Major labels have the resources to game these systems, leaving independent musicians fighting for scraps.

• AI-generated content – From automated social media posts to AI-crafted press releases, music marketing is becoming more data-driven and less personal.

• Fake Engagement & Bot Streams – Some labels and artists are using AI to artificially inflate streaming numbers, further distorting what’s genuinely popular.

AI can help artists reach listeners, but when algorithms control discovery, promotion, and engagement, it feels overwhelming.

So, what's next for AI in music? Honestly, it could go a few ways — and that’s both exciting and a bit scary. AI is here to stay, and it’s only going to get smarter and more capable. Personally, I like the idea of us musicians using AI as a creative sidekick — helping us to explore ideas we might never have thought of on our own, teaching us new techniques, and pushing our creative boundaries even further.

But we’ve got to be careful. If we’re not thoughtful about how we use AI, music could start feeling less human, less emotional, and more like mass-produced content. I don’t think any of us want that. The magic of music is in the human touch, the raw emotion, and the connections it creates between people.

Ultimately, the future is up to us. We can choose to embrace AI as a partner that enriches our musical experiences without losing what makes music genuinely special. AI doesn’t need to be our competition — it can be a powerful tool to help us become better musicians, better listeners, and better creators.

Want to learn music your way? Check out ArtMaster’s courses — designed by real musicians to help you play better, faster, and have more fun along the way.

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