KUT’s Miles Bloxson and Elizabeth McQueen discover how Austin musicians are adapting to AI and the altering music business.
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Austin, Texas is called the reside music capital of the world. And the podcast Pause/Play from member station KUT explores town’s reside music scene. Its newest season seems at Austin’s music future and the way musicians are adapting to our altering world. The pod’s hosts, Miles Bloxson and Elizabeth McQueen, are with me as we speak. Hello, to each of you.
MILES BLOXSON, BYLINE: Hello there.
ELIZABETH MCQUEEN, BYLINE: Hey, thanks for having us.
PFEIFFER: You launched your podcast in 2020, when COVID was nonetheless wreaking havoc on reside occasions. Now that we’re previous that shutdown stage, what sort of future points are you ?
BLOXSON: Nicely, proper now, nobody actually is aware of what the longer term holds. A lot is altering so quick, and superior musicians are going through uncertainty round AI and frustration with streaming platforms. And these are points which might be related to musicians in all places.
MCQUEEN: Yeah, I imply, proper now, there are music era platforms like Suno and Udio the place you possibly can create songs utilizing written prompts. And Udio – they signed a cope with Common Music Group to launch an AI music era and streaming platform. So now an AI music firm is partnering with the biggest document label on the planet.
BLOXSON: And we needed to know the way Austin musicians have been feeling concerning the rise of AI. Have been they for it or in opposition to it?
MCQUEEN: I imply, most individuals are within the center, like Zeale. He is an Austin-based musician and an interdisciplinary artist.
ZEALE: I actually needed to have a transparent understanding of what’s this doing? What’s it impacting? How are artists utilizing this of their workflows to, you recognize, get from level A to level B? And I try this as a result of I wish to perceive my – I do not wish to say enemy, however I wish to perceive this new, very impactful know-how as a lot as attainable.
BLOXSON: Though he makes use of it, he is aware of, like, it additionally poses a risk to musicians within the artistic sector. And Zeale has this concept about why that’s.
ZEALE: We have already been taken benefit of traditionally, from dangerous distribution offers, publishing offers, document offers, et cetera. And that simply leans extra into that theme of all proper, nicely, let’s discover a option to monetize on this in the identical format that labels did prior to now.
PFEIFFER: Miles and Elizabeth, you’ve got touched on this, however are you able to speak a little bit extra about ways in which AI is being utilized by musicians?
MCQUEEN: Nicely, proper now, there are AI bands and artists. So one instance that individuals might need heard of is The Velvet Sunset. They’ve over 750,000 month-to-month listeners on Spotify.
BLOXSON: They usually’re not the one ones. Simply final week, Xania Monet grew to become the primary AI artist to land on the Billboard charts.
MCQUEEN: Yeah, I imply, it was already exhausting sufficient for musicians to make cash on streaming platforms earlier than AI artists entered the fray. Like, most individuals solely make a 3rd of a penny per stream.
PFEIFFER: So return a second. I wish to make clear. If you speak about Xania Monet and Velvet Sunset being AI artists, you imply not actual human beings, not actual bands, however music and musicians generated by AI know-how.
MCQUEEN: Sure, precisely.
BLOXSON: That is precisely what we’re speaking about.
PFEIFFER: All proper, so that you talked about streaming, and as I used to be your pod in current episodes, I noticed that there is one about an artist in Austin who needs to construct a substitute for Spotify, which actually dominates that area now.
BLOXSON: Yeah, her identify is Lauren Bruno. And she or he needs to construct an artist-centered streaming platform. She needs artists to receives a commission higher charges, and he or she additionally needs them to have higher management over their information.
LAUREN BRUNO: When an artist uploads their music to a platform like Spotify, you recognize, Spotify – what they use that information for, in easy phrases – the granule uncooked information is to incur extra income by way of sponsorship and advert placement. And that granular information holds a variety of energy as a result of that is all about your viewers as an artist.
PFEIFFER: You understand, it is all the time been exhausting for musicians to make cash, most of them, and it looks as if streaming and AI are presumably not serving to with that. Are there some other survival methods being developed for the music scene?
BLOXSON: Yeah, completely. In Austin, our metropolis authorities is attempting to assist Austin musicians by giving them cash to place in the direction of their careers. Now we have a grant program referred to as The Stay Music Fund, and this yr, musicians can apply for grants of $5,000 and even $20,000. They usually can use that cash on all the things from selling reveals to creating data.
PFEIFFER: Type of a subsidy strategy – how frequent is that within the music world?
MCQUEEN: It is really not that frequent. We are the first metropolis to do it within the U.S. We is perhaps one of many first on the planet. However it’s a plan that is working, and it is one thing that additionally different cities may reproduce.
PFEIFFER: That is Elizabeth McQueen and Miles Bloxson, hosts of the podcast Pause/Play from KUT and KUTX Studios. Because of each of you.
BLOXSON: Thanks.
MCQUEEN: Thanks.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Go to our web site phrases of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for additional data.
Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts could differ. Transcript textual content could also be revised to appropriate errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org could also be edited after its authentic broadcast or publication. The authoritative document of NPR’s programming is the audio document.
