With AI-generated music becoming more and more common, it appears that country music and artificial intelligence have come together to form a perfect (?) storm.
In recent years, AI-generated music has become more widespread, and creating it has become more and more accessible. Music created with artificial intelligence is already running rampant on social media platforms like TikTok, and as AI continues to advance, music made solely by machines is becoming harder to distinguish from songs made by real people.
This might seem like a mundane issues, but there’s a lot of risk involved. A multitude of artists have already spoken out about AI-generated songs, with many showing concern that the technology can copy their own voices. The state of Tennessee even passed legislation to prevent “deep fake” songs and music creation from spreading. Though that’s certainly a step in the right direction, there’s seemingly not a whole lot that can be done with AI being used to create original music (rather than copying the voices of already established artists). And there’s not really a barrier of entry for AI-music… thanks to platforms like Suno, anyone with a computer can do it.
And it’s all turning out to be very lucrative for those behind the AI artists, and a new study from Kapwing finds that country music artists in the artificial intelligence space are really landing with listeners… whether those listeners realize they are listening to a fake artist or not.
Kapwing used Songstats to analyze streams, Spotify earnings, and chart entries for the most popular AI artists out there right now. Three country “artists” popped up all over those three categories, and proved to be some of the most successful AI-generated artists out there.
As far as the charts go, Owen James was at 494 chart entries, Breaking Rust (who we’ve covered on a couple of different occasions) had 407, and Cain Walker boasted 399 chart entries. As you can see in the graphic below, they accounted for three of the top six AI music artists on the “Most Chart Entries” list:
In other words, it seems like AI artists that lean towards the country genre are having an easier time breaking through on the charts.
And I mentioned earlier that it’s become a lucrative endeavor for the people behind the AI artists. Of those three aforementioned “country artists,” two of them are doing exceptionally well on Spotify.
Kapwing was able to estimate the earnings for both Breaking Rust and Cain Walker based upon their Spotify and YouTube listenership alone, and together, they are making just shy of $750,000:
“Breaking Rust has generated 79.4 million Spotify streams and 71.7 million YouTube views, equating to estimated earnings of $469,963 across the two platforms. Cain Walker has generated 41.3 million Spotify streams and 45.5 million YouTube views, with estimated combined earnings of $261,888. Together, Breaking Rust and Cain Walker alone have generated more than 166 million streams and views, worth an estimated $731,851.”
Pretty wild times we are living in, eh?
The worst part of it all is that AI music is only going to continue to get better and better. That’s kind of how artificial intelligence works. It continues to learn and build off what it has already done. And let’s be honest, the easiest way to spot AI music is by the terrible cover art or social media presence when you finally look up the band.. but just hearing by ear? It’s getting increasingly difficult to differentiate.
Considering that AI is also still in it’s infant stages (in the grand scheme of things), it’s going to be scary to see what the relationship between the music industry and AI is here in five years or so. And this study showing how AI-generated artists are already making hundreds of thousands of dollars isn’t going to help the fight against it.
We could soon live in a world artificial intelligence music really is indistinguishable from songs made by real people… some argue that we’re already there.
