The future of country music is here, and it’s artificial intelligence

When songwriter Patrick Irwin moved to Nashville last year, he entered the lottery. Every day there are hundreds of sessions where writers create a song demo to pitch to a publisher. Publishers then share those songs with labels and managers, who can share those songs with artists. Even if a major country music star recorded (“cut”) the song, it would still take a stroke of luck for that song to become a No. 1 hit.

The odds of winning are very low. Recently, Irwin was in a room where teammates Sam Fink and Duane DeRuyter tried something new. Instead of booking studio time or calling in a “track guy” to produce a demo, one writer opened Suno, an AI-powered music platform, uploaded a voice memo with just guitar and vocals, and wrote a prompt: “traditional country, male vocal, folk country, storytelling, 90s country, rhythm.” Thirty seconds later, he had two fully produced demos with drums, electric guitars, bass, and backing harmonies. There were no studio musicians and no bills.

“You tell him the genre and he does the whole thing, it’s crazy,” Irwin says. He was as surprised as he was annoyed. This wasn’t the Nashville, a city with a 200-year history of producing much of the greatest American music, that he imagined.

Irwin isn’t alone in feeling this way. In the background, artificial intelligence is taking over the city. At the start of 2024, only a few professionals had tried these tools, but in the past six months, songwriters and producers have adopted them to work faster, cheaper — and, for some, more brilliantly. No production company, major publisher or Suno will comment on this story. But after speaking with musicians, writers, and dozens of anonymous insiders, it became clear that Nashville is becoming an AI city.

Technology is everywhere, says songwriter Trani Anderson — who has written for Lainey Wilson, Dan + Shay and Reba McEntire. Although she doesn’t use it herself, she sees widespread use “from novice songwriters to top dogs.” She’s not exaggerating. Multiple sources have told me that even stars like Dustin Lynch and Jelly Roll are being sent voiceovers with their synthetic voices in demos, something that makes AI voiceover possible. Lynch’s manager, Brad Belanger, confirmed this, adding: “What a world we are moving into.” Jelly Roll representatives declined to comment on the record.

the Headlines may Stay focused on Breaking Rust’s “Walk My Walk,” an AI-powered song that recently topped the Billboard Country Digital Song Sales chart, but that story is largely smoke and mirrors. This scheme is a relic from the pre-broadcast era and can be easily played with. The real revolution isn’t on the charts yet, it’s happening in the writing rooms.

Nashville is known as the “10 Year City,” which reflects the amount of time you have to put in before you have any success. Even for established songwriters, it takes a long time between an original songwriting session and its arrival on country radio. “Two years is the fastest I’ve seen,” says John Sherwood, the UMPG writer who wrote the hit “Backup Plan” for Billy Zimmerman and Luke Combs. Sherwood still writes in the traditional way, without the AI, but he notes that speed is a game changer. In the past, writers would write a song, then pay a “track man” $500 to $1,000 to record a professional demo to show to the stars.

Suno is increasing efficiencies in its song assembly line in Nashville. Lyrics and melodies are still written by songwriters because the lyrics created by Sono are cheesy (although many sources in Nashville agreed that country radio hits can also be cheesy). They are using artificial intelligence instead to handle trial production. They record a voice memo, upload it, and use the “remix” feature to turn it into country, alt-country, or hip-hop in seconds. Maggie Reeves, an up-and-coming songwriter signed to publishers Dream 3 and Kobalt, recently had an assignment for a major artist with a one-day turnaround, so she wrote the song and “threw it at Sono.” Her publisher told her: “This is perfect. This goes straight to her.”

Reeves writes an average of 200 songs a year. It can be very expensive to showcase her songs. She used to save money to demo songs for $500 each — and demoing all of her songs supposedly costs tens of thousands of dollars every year. She now pays $96 a year for nearly endless attempts: “I saw right away that this could replace that.”

She’s not alone. Publishers also run catalogs through Suno to find new angles on forgotten tracks.

The sound is not perfect and can resemble a ‘dated’ overly compressed MP3 file: a little low, not very dynamic, low sample rate and bit depth. But the uncanny valley of Sono’s songs is undoubtedly the sound, offering a slightly grainy quality to over-pitch-corrected sound; The discharges are borderline Cylons. However, Reeves says 70% of the output is powerful enough to play in the car (traffic noise is enough to mask the low-quality sound) and gives a clear image of the finished song for the artist to show. These are demos, after all.

Suno isn’t just useful as an experimental tool; It also helps producers quickly brainstorm different creative approaches to a song or music clip. Independent songwriter Calen Nash usually produces songs the old-fashioned way, in his studio, track by track, but has recently embraced Sono for creative inspiration. He calls it “a band in your pocket.” He used it to turn diary entries into full songs. Jacob Durrett, producer of Big Loud, uses it to find alternative versions and “vibes” of songs. He can provide a “half-baked” idea for inspiration: just a riff of a guitar idea is enough for Sono to spin out multiple melodies and entire song ideas in any genre imaginable. “I’m in awe of it sometimes, how good it can be, you know?” He says Sonu gives him “more of a production boost than a creative boost.” As a skilled musician, he is equally capable of experimenting with a song in any style – it just takes longer. He hopes the AI ​​will take over the tedious parts of his job, like renaming files and preparing them for mixing, so he can focus on the creative part.

Music publisher Eric Olson, who encourages writers to use the tool, describes it as “an unlimited co-writer in the room.” He finds it helpful to get out With samples Without the headache of approvals, or concerns that someone else may have sampled the same part. For him, it’s about buying back time. “If I can give Sonu the last 20 per cent and spend more time with my kids, that’s huge,” he says.

However, it’s not just biscuits and gravy. Most people in Nashville wear multiple hats: songwriter, “track guy,” studio musician, touring guitarist. “There was a whole world where musicians were making six figures just by playing the demo scale,” says Ian Fitchuk, the Grammy Award-winning producer of Kacey Musgraves’ song. Golden hour. Fetchuk has moved away from Sono and is concerned about the musicians losing that income. Trani Anderson calls it “the final nail in the coffin” of the experimental studio system. If the “farm team” of demo players disappears, the industry may face a talent crisis in the future.

There are also legal and ethical issues: “If Sonu delivers a key line that an artist uses, what is the protocol?” Reeves asks. The Copyright Office does not protect AI works, which makes ownership of these hybrid songs messy; In addition, the AI ​​has been trained on existing music. “The AI ​​learns from my songs, my friends’ songs… and we don’t get compensated,” says Anderson. There is the “disease” factor. Dorrit hates it when the AI ​​makes a voice that sounds exactly like his friend’s voice. (He claims it happened numerous times.)

Despite the concerns, Sonu just… Got $250 million In financegenerates annual revenues of $200 million, and its adoption is accelerating. Wait about two years and you will hear the songs created with Suno’s help all over the radio in the country.

The question is what will they sound like? Anderson hears that “there’s an element missing,” she says. “Humanity and the Spirit… The Holy Spirit does not live in artificial intelligence.”