Noel King

Breaking Rust's Walk My Walk topped Spotify's viral 50 songs in the U.S.

Zania Monáe debuted on the Billboard charts.

And yet, many people cannot tell the difference between AI music and music music.

And if, to paraphrase Taylor Swift, that makes you want to die, son, do we have a show for you.

Coming up on Today Explained, should music lovers take AI music seriously?

Ian Kreitzberg is the AI correspondent for Puck.

He writes a newsletter called Hidden Layer.

And this year, like many of us, Ian encountered Velvet Sundown.

Reminiscent of a little something from, who was it, Kansas?

Yes.

We've spoken to people for this show who really love music, and some of them, you're not going to be shocked to hear this, some of them are really kind of appalled by the idea that people are listening to AI-generated music.

It has no heart.

It has no soul.

There's no real connection between the quote-unquote artist and the listener because there is no real artist.

It's artificial intelligence.

But here's what I wonder.

Your average listener is a person who is not a super music nerd.

Your average listener is a person who's on a platform and stuff maybe is getting fed to them.

And they're like, oh, I like this.

I don't like this.