A University of Alberta study of 263 working Canadian musicians describes a profession squeezed from several directions, with generative AI high on the list of grievances. Of the 142 respondents who addressed tools such as Suno, which produce whole songs from a prompt, 87% viewed them negatively, according to the university's release of the findings.
Popular music professor Brian Fauteux, who led the research, says many musicians simply do not count AI output as art. Some raised environmental worries about land and water and doubted the industry would take them seriously; others said they felt personally and professionally offended by the tools, seeing them as part of a longer pattern of copyrighted work being taken. There is also a money fear: AI songs from non-musicians could flood streaming services and bury human artists. Fauteux thinks most users are hobbyists making joke songs for social media, but expects AI has already cut into the income of people who write jingles and background music for ads.
He reads the hostility as a symptom of something bigger. Musicians, he says, never saw the benefits of the move to streaming a decade ago, then lost live work to the pandemic, and now face AI arriving from a tech industry that seems uninterested in music as a craft, on top of a long history of artists being underpaid or losing their rights to labels.
Respondents described a forced, uneasy dependence on Spotify and social media. Some had found listeners through a big playlist, but many complained of low pay, the weight the business puts on Spotify numbers, and an opaque algorithm that replaces friends' recommendations. Fauteux says a common thread is frustration at having one dominant streaming service and one dominant tour booker.
The same narrowing shows up offline. Many small and mid-sized venues have closed, the rest book further ahead, touring is harder to plan and newer acts get fewer chances. Fauteux says the business increasingly feels like a monopoly, and musicians feel they have lost control.
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