May 25, 2026

Is AI the future of music?

In response to a fairly damning video exposé about Berklee College of Music shoehorning Suno into the songwriting curriculum, a musician buddy of mine wrote in to say:

I’m ready to call it: The AI industry has completely and irrevocably fncked up the entry, and the well is poisoned (for any reasonable foreseeable future, and possibly permanently).

It seems pretty clear that AI has a big PR problem but I think my friend’s bet hinges on something else.

IMHO, the real Achilles heel of the consumer LLMs (the ones designed for b2b and b2c users) is simple economics.

So far, consumer LLM platforms have been propped up by mountains of cheap capital. If/when that dries up, they’ll be forced to raise prices, which will change the value proposition.

I know plenty of people - me included - who get lots of utility out of the AI tools they’re using. But if the price goes up to where hiring a decent assistant is a lot cheaper... Then what’s the point of the AI?

If nothing else, AI has revealed to me the value of having a decent assistant. If the AI asks for a big raise, I might finally give in and hire a human.

Wouldn’t that be ironic?

Yours,

—J

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