The AI-positive crowd will tell you this is evolution, not extinction. Berklee President Jim Lucchese frames it as artists exercising 'high level of individual creative agency,' using the tech as 'a composition tool to just pushing your skills.' Progress! Innovation! The future of music!
Except the American Federation of Musicians just dropped a lawsuit on Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group alleging these giants 'have refused to compensate the musicians whose work is fed into AI machines for profit.' That's not evolution—that's exploitation wearing a tech-bro costume. And 52% of fans already said they don't want AI-made music from their favorite artists.
The Berklee study surveyed over 1,000 industry professionals and found 33% use AI for initial ideas that get reworked, while 26% put AI directly into finished tracks. Mark Ethier of BEATL told THR: 'Had we done this study 18 months ago, these numbers would have been a lot lower... it's pretty shocking.' The AFM lawsuit was filed Friday against UMG and Warner over their Suno and Udio settlements.
The music industry keeps telling us AI is just another tool—but tools don't file lawsuits. When the Federation of Musicians goes after billion-dollar labels over stolen work, we're not talking about innovation anymore. We're talking about who gets left behind when the machines take over.
The music industry'sAI revolution just got a terrifying new data point—and it's uglier than anyone wanted to admit. A groundbreaking study from Berklee College of Music's Emerging Artistic Technology Lab (BEATL) reveals that 33 percent of musicians now use AI to generate "initial ideas, melodies, or reference tracks that are later reworked" for release. Even more striking: 26 percent are using AI for full backing tracks in finished products.
That's not experimentation—that's integration. Mark Ethier, BEATL's executive director who helped run the research, didn't sugarcoat it. "Had we done this study 18 months ago, these numbers would have been a lot lower," he told The Hollywood Reporter.
"And from that perspective, it's pretty shocking." The study was conducted among more than 1,000 professionals across the music business—artists, marketers, music supervisors, and video creators—at Berklee's AIMS: AI Music Summit. But here's where it gets really interesting—and genuinely messy. Jim Lucchese, Berklee's president, said he sees the numbers as evidence of "sharply divided opinions on AI among artists" with wildly different approaches even among those embracing the tech.
Meanwhile, a THR/Frost School of Music poll found 52 percent of respondents were "not interested" in listening to music from their favorite artists made with AI help. You want an audience problem? That's an audience problem.
The timing is brutal. On Friday—the same day this study dropped—our tea got scalding. The American Federation of Musicians filed a lawsuit against Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group over settlements the labels made with AI music firms Suno and Udio, alleging they "have refused to compensate the musicians whose work is fed into AI machines for profit." That's not innovation talk—that's theft talk.
And it involves some of the most powerful names in the business on one side, and working musicians on the other. The irony running through all this? Contrary to conventional wisdom about young artists being more tech-forward, Berklee's own numbers show newer musicians were actually LESS likely to use AI than established pros.
Artists "just starting out" used AI in some capacity at a 56 percent rate, while "full-time creators" hit 92 percent. The people with the most to lose from AI are using it the most. That's either adaptation or desperation—possibly both.
The past year has already seen entirely synthetic acts climbing charts without a human instrument being played: Breaking Rust's country smash "Walk My Walk" and Saxboy Billy's electropop TikTok sensation "The Puerto Rico Song" both bypassed traditional musicianship entirely. Supporters will tell you technology and sampling have always been part of music's soundscape. Critics—now including the AFM in federal court—will tell you releasing music derived from what someone else wrote is neither original nor ethical.
Berklee's study also found 31 percent use AI for lyric generation, presumably in finished work, and more than 75 percent believe video "directly shapes career outcomes." The industry's trying to figure out how to value AI-generated contributions while lawsuits fly and audiences threaten to walk. Ethier's own shock at the numbers suggests even the people tracking this closely didn't expect the floodgates to open this fast. The question isn't whether AI is in music anymore—it's who gets paid when it stays.
