Should AI artists be allowed to chart alongside human artists? In this heated and unfiltered debate, we dive into one of the biggest questions facing the music industry today.
Xania Monet’s manager Romel Murphy goes head-to-head with the Prophet, CEO of the Black Music Action Coalition, to discuss whether AI-generated artists belong on the same charts as human creators.
Kristin Robinson:
How should AI music be treated on streaming services and on the charts, whether that’s Billboard, TikTok, Spotify or anything else? That’s what we’re going to tackle here today with my two great guests. Prophet, Romel, thank you so much for being here. There’s a lot of nuance to this conversation, a lot of people at differing points of view. And so I wanted to bring both of you guys here, because I think you’ll come from two different very important vantage points on this issue. So before we get started in this, I want to have you guys kind of introduce yourselves to whoever’s watching at home.
Romel Murphy:
Thank you for having me. I am the president and founder of Daidream, which is a play off AI, spelling day D-A-I. So I got thrust into the AI music space with Xania Monet, that’s my artist. I manage her, and I manage her creator, Nikki Jones. And so it kind of thrust me in unexpectedly, and then I had to research and learn it fast. I’ve been in the music industry over 20 years.
Willie “Prophet” Stiggers:
I’m Prophet, co-founder, president, CEO of the Black Music Action Coalition, an organization that formed in 2020 in response to the show pausing after the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. About 200 of the most influential producers, artists, music managers, lawyers formed an organization that would first hold the industry accountable to the pledges they were making around social and racial justice. But then we quickly realized there was tremendous bargaining power, and this group that we formed, so this organization, for the past five, going on six years, have really been an advocacy group, sitting at the intersection of music and activism
And Romel, you’re working with perhaps the most well-known AI artist today, Xania Monet. I know Xania is backed by a real person who writes poetry and uses Suno to kind of take those poems into songs. I’m wondering, though, what was your first impression when you heard about Xania?
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