The Directors Are Playing Offense. Everyone Else Is Playing Defense.

Two things are happening simultaneously in AI music right now. Most people are only paying attention to one of them.

The first is the industry legal battle — lawsuits, injunctions, sledgehammers swinging at everything in sight. The second is the creators quietly building. The ones nobody's writing about. This episode is about both — and why the second group is going to win.

In the first segment I push back hard on the lazy narrative about AI music creators. The caricature of someone pressing a button and collecting royalties. The reality is composers mapping chord progressions measure by measure. Guitarists recording real strings and using AI to fill the production gaps they can't afford to hire out. Lyricists with decades of words on paper finally hearing them as finished songs. A woman whose every word was her own — AI just gave her the studio she was denied for 40 years. AI didn't make these people musicians. They were already musicians. AI made them producers.

In the second segment we look at why the sledgehammer strategy doesn't just fail — it actively accelerates the thing it's trying to stop. Mureka is built by a $6 billion Chinese company. Google owns the Lyria model. ElevenLabs just launched a full music platform. The pipeline is overflowing. You cannot sue a foreign corporation into U.S. copyright compliance. You cannot file an injunction against a platform that hasn't launched yet.

The directors are playing offense. The sledgehammer crowd is playing defense. And defense doesn't win this one.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Hello and welcome to the AI Music Revolution. I am your host, Josh Gillaland. On this episode, I want to talk to you about a few things that are happening simultaneously in the AI music industry, in the AI music landscape. Most people are only really paying attention to one of these things. That's the first thing. It's the industry legal battles. People want to talk about the lawsuits and the injunctions and the court orders and the copyright litigations. And they just want to keep swinging, swinging the sledgehammers at these evil AI music moles that keep popping up. So they're playing the sledgehammer whack-a-mole game. And it gets a lot of publicity. People like talking about it, they like talking about the legal battles of it, how all these things are going to be made illegal at some point, and we'll get our comeuppance here, those of us who are creating AI music. But here's the other thing that is also happening right now, and this is where I luckily spend most of my time, and that is working with these creators who are quietly building phenomenal music. These are the people that nobody is writing about. These are the people that are out there creating art, using AI as a tool in that creation of art. And they are being slightly ignored right now because they are not the shiny object. They are viewed as the problem, but the focus is on how the sledgehammers will beat that problem down. This episode here is about both of these groups. But more importantly, this is about why I firmly believe the creators are the group that is going to win. So, first let's talk about who these creators are. There's this false narrative out there. They're lazy. They're just somebody pressing a button, collecting royalties. The real musicians, they're the ones that are fingers on the strings and hands on the drumsticks and fingers on the keys. They're the ones that are really the artists, really making music. And these lazy, lazy AI producers, AI frauds, AI slop generators, all they do is they push a button and music comes out the other end. And let me tell you, that is such a disastrous caricature of who these people really are. I see these people firsthand. I talk to these people every single day. I have hundreds of them as Red Lab members inside of JG Beats Lab. So I know who these people are. And let me tell you who they are. Let me give you some very specific examples of people that I work with, people that I work with through JG Beats Lab, people who are members of the Red Lab Access. I have a member who's mapping out complex chord progressions right now, measure by measure. And then he's taking this harmonic vision that he has created, and he is feeding that into style prompts and going generation after generation to try to force the AI to follow his structure. Generation after generation, and he has the vision in his head. He has mapped this out, and he is working with AI as a tool to actually create this composition. So what is that? That is composition. That is not the easy button. That is actually the opposite of an easy button. Let's talk about the guitarist who is recording on real strings, real fingers on real strings. And then he takes that file that he recorded and then he feeds it into AI to get the drum and the bass to get those gaps filled that he can't afford to hire out. He wants to have that control, to have that tool inside of his home-based studio, so he can be in control of his artistic vision. What is that? Is that the easy button? No, that that's a studio workaround for somebody who is putting in the effort for somebody who is talented. There are people that inside of the Red Lab access who are deep inside of experimentation with STEM separation. They're pulling these AI tracks apart, and then they're replacing sections of these with live recordings, live instruments, live voices. They're rebuilding these songs from the inside out. There is a lyricist who has decades and decades of words, of lyrics on paper, finally hearing them as finished songs. So this lyricist has lived with these songs only in his head for decades. And now, thanks to the power of AI and the power of these tools, he is able to take that vision, that creativity that has been jammed into a drawer for years and decades, and he's actually able to bring it to life. How amazing is that? Are we going to call that lazy? I have somebody in the Red Lab Access who talked about how their songs actually make people cry. Every word was written by them. They wrote it all. AI just gave them the studio. They were denied for 40 years. So now they are able to take this heartfelt music that has lived inside of them, that has lived inside of their head, lived inside of their soul, and they're able to bring it to life thanks to the tools that exist. AI didn't make them musicians, they were already musicians. AI helped make them producers to actually bring these songs to life. So think about that. Think about this narrative of them being lazy, of them being lazy button pressers who are just flooding the market with low effort music trying to siphon the pennies from the royalty streams. What I just talked about is do any of those fit that mold? And these aren't these aren't the exceptions. These are the rule. This is the rule of the people that I work with on a day-to-day basis inside of my business. So there's there's this bridge versus crunch crutch that I want to talk about. So the crutch replaces the work. The bridge gets you to work you could not reach before. Ask a critic: have you ever spent three hours tweaking a prompt word by word, meticulously, until the output matched the stem that you have in your head? 15 iterations. Not just generating, but generating and then listening to 15 iterations, hunting for that right emotional pocket. That isn't pressing a button. That is engineering. If you're one of these creators, you already know this because you're doing it, you're living it. You don't need me to defend you. But I am here. I want to be a voice that actually is saying this out loud. I'm passionate about these creators. I'm passionate about the art that is being created. We are only in the early, early stages of this technology, the early, early stages of its development, of understanding what is actually possible. And I love the fact that we have so many artists out there that are now given a platform to bring the music that has been in their head, in their souls, in their desk drawers, and bring it to life. How great is that? Is that lazy? Let's talk about the whack-a-mole problem now. So the lawsuits, there's so many lawsuits everywhere you turn around, lawsuits. When I was at NAM, somebody quipped that AI stands for attorneys incoming. And let me tell you, this person was really excited that there were attorneys incoming. There's lawsuits against Suno, Yu Dio. The music industry is continuously swinging these sledgehammers with everything that they have. This will fundamentally not work. Look at who's actually building these platforms. I've spent a lot of time with Murika. Now, Suno is my platform of choice, but I've spent a lot of time with Murika. I'm very impressed with Murika. Murika is owned by a$6 billion Chinese company. They do not answer to US court orders. Google. Google just acquired producer.ai and they'll they're a model. Do you think that the industry is going to be able to litigate Google into a corner? Good luck with that. Look at 11 labs. 11 labs who I've tested inside of the Red Lab. They just launched a full music platform. This is world-class quality. World class quality. Another mole that just popped up. And I know firsthand because I have talked to creators who are building the next generations of platforms. There is an invisible pipeline. Platforms are being built right now in China, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Berlin. I test new tech constantly. The pipeline is overflowing. So if you think that the way to prevent this from occurring is through playing litigation whack-a-mole, you're going to lose. Spending millions of in legal fees to fight these two companies, Yudio and Suno, while dozens of more are emerging every quarter, is a losing proposition. You cannot sue a foreign corporation into U.S. copyright compliance. You can't file an injunction against a platform that hasn't even launched yet. There are platforms being built right now on people's servers inside of their own homes. These platforms are going to be everywhere. And every platform that gets knocked down just teaches the next 10 what to avoid. This isn't a legal battle. This is an arms race. The sledgehammer strategy that the legacy industry is pushing forward, it will fail. And it doesn't just fail. What it is doing is actively accelerating the thing it is trying to stop. The creators that I talked about in that first segment are the answer to the problem that I talked about in the second segment. Those creators are not one waiting for the legal battles to resolve. The sledgehammer crowd is playing defense, and defense does not win this one. So you have a choice. If you're listening to this podcast, obviously you have some level of involvement or curiosity in the AI music space. You have a choice. Keep swinging that sledgehammer until you are exhausted or put down the sledgehammer and start directing.com is where serious creators learn all of the workflows that we teach. Thank you for listening to this. Go out there and create. Go be a director. Go get your creativity out there into the world. The world needs to hear it. I will chat with you next time.