Across social media echo chambers and industry forums, battle lines are drawn, opinions fly wildly, and nuance is frequently the first casualty. To many critics, the entire premise of creating music with artificial intelligence can be summarized in a single, dismissive word: cheating.
While it is easy to understand where this skepticism originates, reality is far more complex than the binary debates suggest.
The Reality of the Floodgates
Let us address the elephant in the room. It is not difficult to see the legitimate challenges facing the modern music landscape. Anyone can type a basic prompt into a generator, watch the machine churn out a finished track in seconds, and upload it directly to streaming services.
Indeed, I have done it myself. I have hastily cobbled together a prompt just to see what a tool spits out. But in my world—and in the world of serious creators utilizing these technologies—that is merely the starting line, not the finish.
Having spent over two and a half years working deeply with AI music production tools, my understanding of the craft has fundamentally evolved.
Beyond the Prompt: The Reality of Craft
The narrative that creators simply cough up a prompt, feed it into a machine, and indiscriminately spew out commercial releases simply does not hold water.
Behind every track that makes it to public streaming platforms lies a rigorous, time-intensive workflow:
- Iterative Prompt Engineering: Countless hours spent refining prompts to match the specific sonic architecture playing inside my head.
- Meticulous Curation: Hours spent tweaking, shaping, and scrutinizing every micro-element of a sketch.
- High Rejection Rates: The vast majority of generated attempts end up in the digital trash bin because they simply do not meet the bar.
The numbers speak for themselves. Across my workflow—utilizing platforms like Suno—I have generated roughly 15,000 drafts and sketches. Out of those, I have officially released approximately 250.
That means roughly 98.4% of what I generate is discarded.
A Creative Filter, Not a Magic Button
Those discarded sketches are not failures; they are part of a continuous creative cycle. They serve as raw material—stepping stones that might inspire a completely different direction, or elements that get entirely abandoned.
True production with AI is a process of curation and refinement. It mirrors traditional composition in its pursuit of quality, even if the tools and medium differ. Ideas are tested, the vast majority are discarded, and a select few survive a rigorous creative gauntlet to become finished works available to the public.
The debate around AI in music needs to move past the superficial extremes. The technology does not replace artistry; rather, it introduces a new medium where the creator acts as a curator, editor, and director on a massive scale.
And I strongly believe that my experience is shared by many creators who treat this medium with the professional respect it demands.
