Light Box

A year ago, I was driving my daughter home from preschool when Spotify autoplayed a song that cut out mid-note. It was AI, and whoever made it hadn't bothered to fix the ending. So I tracked down the 19-year-old behind it. That was just the start of a trip down the rabbit hole. It turns out there's a lot of slop out there. Is it going to ruin everything? Or am I looking at it all wrong?

Write us: [email protected]

In this episode

Cherie Hu, founder of Water & Music

Kristin Robinson, Billboard reporter and host of Billboard On the Record 

Romain Hennequin, head of research at Deezer

Kate Knibbs, senior writer at WIRED

Caitlin Canty, musician, and one half of Down Like Silver 

Tracy Chan, CEO of Splash

Light Box is reported, written, and produced by Mark Henry Phillips at Windhill Studios. Our Producer is Drew Thurlow & our Assistant editor is Ryan Seaton. Light Box is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

Marc Ribot has played guitar for Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Norah Jones, Robert Plant, and about a thousand other people. He's also one of the most outspoken critics of AI music. He calls Suno and Udio plagiarism machines. And for him, the whole thing comes down to consent: nobody asked the musicians.
I caught him on the phone somewhere between Milwaukee and Minneapolis, driving to a gig. Of all the conversations I've had about AI music, his might be the one I keep coming back to the most.
Sign Marc's "We Need a Union" petition. 
Music in this episode:
Marc Ribot, Map of a Blue City
Marc Ribot, Saints
Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos 
Also mentioned: Liz Pelly, Mood Machine
For more info go to www.LightBoxPodcast.com
Email us! [email protected]

Light Box is reported, written, edited and produced by Mark Henry Phillips at Windhill Studios. Our producer is Drew Thurlow and assistant editor is Ryan Seaton.

We make this show completely independently, so PLEASE support us by sharing the show with a few friends. Light Box is a proud member of the Radiotopia network from PRX.

A producer with 13 billion streams posts on Reddit about how much he loves making music with AI and... gets banned. We have the conversation that wasn't allowed there.

In Part II of our hitmaking story, Mickey Shiloh and David Phelan say the quiet parts out loud: everyone's using it, nobody's admitting it, and if it's happening anyway, you might as well get on the trolley.

Also, Mark plays his own AI experiments for his old mentor Jad Abumrad (Radiolab, Dolly Parton's America), who does not react the way either of them expected. Along the way: a $3 million record deal for an "AI music designer," a hip-hop hit built on a soul singer who never existed, and the argument that if you steal from everyone, you've stolen from no one.

For more info go to www.LightBoxPodcast.com.
Email us! [email protected]
Light Box is reported, written, edited and produced by Mark Henry Phillips at Windhill Studios. Our producer is Drew Thurlow and assistant editor is Ryan Seaton.
We make this show completely independently so PLEASE support us by leaving a rating and review.
Light Box is a proud member of the Radiotopia network from PRX.

There's already a #1 hit made with AI. You just don't know which one. In this episode, we go inside the world of professional songwriting camps -- where hits for the biggest artists are assembled by rooms of strangers. And we meet two hitmakers with billions of streams -- Mickey Shiloh (Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Iggy Azalea) and David Phelan (ZAYN, Charli XCX, Jason Derulo) -- who are starting to use AI in their process. The question is... why? Why would successful songwriters need AI? The answer has as much to do with the songwriting industry as it does with AI.

For more info go to www.LightBoxPodcast.com.
Email us: [email protected]

Light Box is reported, written, edited and produced by Mark Henry Phillips at Windhill Studios. Our producer is Drew Thurlow and assistant editor is Ryan Seaton.

We make this show completely independently so PLEASE support us by leaving a rating and review.

Light Box is a proud member of the Radiotopia network from PRX.

Composer Mark Henry Phillips logs onto an AI music generator expecting slop. Instead... he has an existential crisis. What it made wasn't slop -- it was good. Really good. This plunges him into a year-and-a-half long rabbit hole. He discovers -- with help from Sonarworks' Helmuts Bēms -- that professional musicians are secretly adopting AI like performance-enhancing drugs. Mark also digs into how these tools actually work with AI researcher Maya Ackerman. And he confronts an uncomfortable question: if a machine can replicate your creative instincts, were they ever really yours to begin with?

For more info go to www.LightBoxPodcast.com.
Email us: [email protected]

Light Box is reported, written, edited and produced by Mark Henry Phillips at Windhill Studios. Our producer is Drew Thurlow and assistant editor is Ryan Seaton. 

We make this show completely independently so PLEASE support us by leaving a rating and review. 

Light Box is a proud member of the Radiotopia network from PRX.