Music generative AI and ‘The Hegelian Wound’

Abstract

Since late-2023, digital audio workstations (DAWs) have increasingly introduced AI tools amongst the features (or ‘plugins’) they provide to music producers to create and edit their music and audio. Throughout the history of music production, particularly digital music production, musicians have embraced new tools and technologies as a means of innovating their aesthetic outputs and for enhancing or automating their workflows. New tools often lead to the creation of new sub-genres or music cultures centred around sounds that were previously not imaginable before. Despite the long tradition of optimism and appreciation (by most producers) towards new production tools, before these AI tools hit the music production mainstream, reactions and the discourse amongst producers to the future prospect of AI tools for production varied more drastically. Now with the recent emergence of music generative AI platforms that redefine the production process completely, the appreciation of new tools has begun to morph into anxieties towards new automation that diminishes creativity. Who would have guessed that control over the artistic process matters as much to the artists as their art itself?