If AI replaces musicians, does the entire plugin industry die with them?

[ghettosynth]

Even Mozart has joined AI, now music will never be what it .was.
YouTube showed me some stupid ad some AI production software called Mozart AI.
How could someone even dare use this name?!
The world is completely decadent

Mozart was /is one of the most famous and greatest and most talented musicians and composers ever. He composed for a lot of different genres from sonatas, concertos, symphonies to operas for all kinds of instruments and a great pianist.
It is a shame to use his name for an AI product.

it's a surname even today.
the ai might be owned by dave mozart or trudy mozart.

just like sebastian bach is a rock vocalist.

Yes, but, you're justifying the framing in the first place. Mozart, with respect to the composer, is not a protected trademark. Parent is just fueling his own anger.

Einstein Bagels, Freud's Café concepts, Tesla, Franklin Covey Co, Lincoln National Corporation, Newton Investment Management.

It's a tale as old as time.

im justifying nothing, i just think dave mozart deserves some love.

Dave's ok, but I don't like square burgers. At any rate. The actual story is on topic because it is an 11 Labs product/collaboration that will compete in this space.

https://mozartai.com/

The players in the space are seeing music production moved to a subscription model for compute. The pressure here will be real, I predict that this will be the trick that moves significant sections of the market towards subscription. Creating music will be based on your available credits.

Note that this also makes the licensing model for Suno/Udio a moving target. I'm not convinced that these players will need to go that way long term.

It's actually very on topic for this thread and this forum.

In Studio sessions on Mozart AI, users can generate clean, isolated stems and treat them as editable components rather than final outputs. These stems can be extended, rearranged, and refined alongside MIDI generation, real-time MIDI and audio recording, and low-latency playback.

The workstation includes mixers, effects, and synth generation, with VST support planned. This gives creators the ability to work at a very granular level, shaping individual elements of a track while keeping the experience fast and approachable.

By building on ElevenLabs’ music models via the API, Mozart AI focused on workflow design and creative control, resulting in a DAW that feels intuitive without sacrificing depth.

[DCrown]

Even Mozart has joined AI, now music will never be what it .was.
YouTube showed me some stupid ad some AI production software called Mozart AI.
How could someone even dare use this name?!
The world is completely decadent

Mozart was /is one of the most famous and greatest and most talented musicians and composers ever. He composed for a lot of different genres from sonatas, concertos, symphonies to operas for all kinds of instruments and a great pianist.
It is a shame to use his name for an AI product.

it's a surname even today.
the ai might be owned by dave mozart or trudy mozart.

just like sebastian bach is a rock vocalist.

Oh I sorry, I thought this product would refer to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart born in Salzburg/Austria.

[DCrown]

There are different ways to create a song.

You can start writing lyrics and then create a song. AI probably can already do it, just tell AI to write a song about an elephant that has fallen in love with a tree and how the elephant got jealous when he saw a bird nest on the tree. He tried climbing up the tree, almost reached the nesting bird, but fell down and died (too much information, keep it simple, don't use your brain too much, let AI do the job!).

You can start with a beat and create a song around the beat. AI might already be able to do that.

You have some chord progression on piano or guitar or some bass line and create a song around it. AI probably already can ...

But the following methods to create are the most inspring to me and were common back in the day.
Not sure whether AI can already do that?

You have a melody in your head. You start writing lyrics to this melody, either verse first or refrain and then create the song around it.
Well, probably AI already could make melody examples, ok.

But! You are improvising, just playing on your piano without knowing what will happen and all of a sudden you repeat playing a cool melody or chord progression. Not sure, whether AI can already do it.

Or you jam together with your band. The bassist starts with some cool bass, the drums and the rest of the band joins, you play for two hours always with some new ideas and all of a sudden a cool idea of a song is born.
Well, probably AI will do that, too.

But if you produced songs by using AI only, you won't probably ever experience how cool improvisation or jamming with a band is, the vibe, entering a world of new ideas or the birth of a song created by yourself coming from a melody in your head or from words you wrote down.

But even if that kind of experiences will be less and less in future probably, the world might still exist, if you don't know that experience, you won't miss it.

So my conclusion is that we think music is more important than it really is, so don't waste your money on too many plugins, buy Waves Diamond or Horizon, 5 softsynths, 3 drum plugins, you won't need a lot more or re-sell them all, use AI only, it is only about music anyway.

Will AI make the whole plugin industry die?
As far as I am concerned I will buy way less plugins in future. Probably Zebra3 the only one in 2026.
First reason is the fact that my most used plugins are those that I bought 12 or more years ago, second reason is that obviously more and more plugins with AI will be developed and I am not interested in them. I remember when I demoed Sonible plugins, they are simply crap, completely useless for me. I decide where I want a compressor's ratio or threshold or gain reduction to be, only I decide on my mixes where to cut or boost with an eq by using my ears only and in about 67% of cases I would do exactly the opposite of what sonible EQ suggests, what a stupid plugin! What a shame that SSL has a collab with that dev.

[BONES]

You have a melody in your head. You start writing lyrics to this melody, either verse first or refrain and then create the song around it.

Melody? We're not really interested in melody, it's surplus to our requirements. We look for the three "R"s - Rhythms, Riffs and Rhymes.

But! You are improvising, just playing on your piano without knowing what will happen and all of a sudden you repeat playing a cool melody or chord progression.

So sheer, dumb chance trumps directed thought? Interesting.

Or you jam together with your band. The bassist starts with some cool bass, the drums and the rest of the band joins, you play for two hours always with some new ideas and all of a sudden a cool idea of a song is born. Well, probably AI will do that, too.

Yeah, you don't need a band, you work with the AI instead. It's a lot easier as you don't need a rehearsal space, you don't have to wait until everyone is available and up for it, you can get stuck in whenever the notion takes you or when you feel like you're in your creative zone. But just as your bandmates may not always "get it", the AI can be a bit obstinate when it comes to giving you something you can use. It's still very random.

But if you produced songs by using AI only, you won't probably ever experience how cool improvisation or jamming with a band is, the vibe, entering a world of new ideas or the birth of a song created by yourself coming from a melody in your head or from words you wrote down.

I've done that literally hundreds of times, it's old hat. I find jamming, in particular, to be a huge waste of time. I've never got anything from it. Everyone's got their own ideas, none of them interest me in the slightest. It might work if you're into mainstream pap but it's never been productive for me. Even with my bandmate, we work separately and pass things between each other. I'll come up with an idea and turn it into something, then pass it to him and he'll add is bits and pieces to and send it back. Or he'll send me an idea, I'll whip it into shape and send it back. He'll play with it some more, send to me again and I'll do the final mixing and mastering. We each have our input but we tend to work in different ways so we do our own things separately, bringing our own strengths to the process.

As far as I am concerned I will buy way less plugins in future. Probably Zebra3 the only one in 2026.
First reason is the fact that my most used plugins are those that I bought 12 or more years ago, second reason is that obviously more and more plugins with AI will be developed and I am not interested in them.

This suggests to me that you don't evolve, that you're stuck in the past. I was a bit the same, I clung on to the old things - Orion and it's native generators and effects, plus the SynthEdit plugins I'd made over the years. We made four decent enough albums that way but it wasn't until we broke out of that cycle that we really hit our stride and from there we have gone from strength to strength. Working with AI is just the next stride forward for us.

only I decide on my mixes where to cut or boost with an eq by using my ears

Which is why your music will never be any better than you are. Is that why you don't share it?

[Touch The Universe]

Two fronts - ai making software - possible threat to industry and two, AI can make your songs as you'd want them to be through prompting and speaking, the end result itself might not require software. If you can make that engaging enough and not just, make song like x or y but trial and error and specific music theory prompt formulas or what not, it could conceiveably be unique from anyone elses in depth prompts. A song is ideas at the end of the day. Specialize in ideas themselves. Just need to get around to that type of mentality on where to implement that strategy. What about the tactile fun of playling and filter tweaking stuff, i love that! Yeah, me too, just learn/play the finished results of your own idea for live use. You learned bach and need to practice it. Learn yourself and practice it, filter tweaks and all, if that makes sense, haha.

[Aloysius]

If TTU replaces BONES, what will happen to kvr?

[DCrown]

You have a melody in your head. You start writing lyrics to this melody, either verse first or refrain and then create the song around it.

Melody? We're not really interested in melody, it's surplus to our requirements. We look for the three "R"s - Rhythms, Riffs and Rhymes.

Who is we? Oh I see, that's why The Beatles are one of the most successful bands ever. You hear a Beatles song and you won't get the melody out of your head. It is all about melody as far as The Beatles are concerned, that was the magic and key to success of that band. I remember when I started with music, I heard a Beatles song for the first time and could immediately sing the melody.
Of course some music has focus more on rhythm like James Brown, but he often also had a message with a song, so lyrics are important, too.

Best example is Beethoven's 9th symphony, considered by many many many musicians one of the greatest pieces of art ever. Guess how deaf Beethoven created that piece? - he had that simple melody of Freude an die Ode in his head!

But! You are improvising, just playing on your piano without knowing what will happen and all of a sudden you repeat playing a cool melody or chord progression.

So sheer, dumb chance trumps directed thought? Interesting.
That's how a lot of songs were created whether Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Clapton, Stevie Wonder or Prince (masters of improvisation!). And before you try to be smart, I read hundreds of books about these artists, even all letters by Mozart and Chopin, so I am very familiar to their nature and workflow. Susan Rogers said that Prince would sometimes play at Sunset Sound Studios piano for hours or in his home studio and suddenly a new song was born. The ability to improvise was one of the most important things for a musician, Chopin would attend a Mozart Opera, some melodies would remain in his head and he would improvise on a catchy melody and one of his first pieces were variations of Mozart's La ci datem la mano - pure improvisations.

Or you jam together with your band. The bassist starts with some cool bass, the drums and the rest of the band joins, you play for two hours always with some new ideas and all of a sudden a cool idea of a song is born. Well, probably AI will do that, too.

Yeah, you don't need a band, you work with the AI instead. It's a lot easier as you don't need a rehearsal space, you don't have to wait until everyone is available and up for it, you can get stuck in whenever the notion takes you or when you feel like you're in your creative zone. But just as your bandmates may not always "get it", the AI can be a bit obstinate when it comes to giving you something you can use. It's still very random.

Of course you don't necessarily need a band , but jamming can create new songs. Sometimes it is random, sometimes a band member has a new new idea, maybe just some bass line and a song together with the band is created by jamming to the bass line. You pretend not even to know or not to be able to imagine that songs were created like that.

But if you produced songs by using AI only, you won't probably ever experience how cool improvisation or jamming with a band is, the vibe, entering a world of new ideas or the birth of a song created by yourself coming from a melody in your head or from words you wrote down.

I've done that literally hundreds of times, it's old hat. I find jamming, in particular, to be a huge waste of time. I've never got anything from it. Everyone's got their own ideas, none of them interest me in the slightest. It might work if you're into mainstream pap but it's never been productive for me. Even with my bandmate, we work separately and pass things between each other. I'll come up with an idea and turn it into something, then pass it to him and he'll add is bits and pieces to and send it back. Or he'll send me an idea, I'll whip it into shape and send it back. He'll play with it some more, send to me again and I'll do the final mixing and mastering. We each have our input but we tend to work in different ways so we do our own things separately, bringing our own strengths to the process.

Yes, there are different way to create.
Waste of time? You already sound like an AI robot, omg. Playing, jamming, improvising or rehearsing with the band are the best experiences of my life, nothing comes close, even sex is a boring , uncreative, repetetive waste of time compared to that experience. You call it waste if time? What do you need so much extra time for, to stare at the sky? I can play 3 or for hours guitar, just improvise or play something I know in a different, it is the purest form of joy

As far as I am concerned I will buy way less plugins in future. Probably Zebra3 the only one in 2026.
First reason is the fact that my most used plugins are those that I bought 12 or more years ago, second reason is that obviously more and more plugins with AI will be developed and I am not interested in them.

This suggests to me that you don't evolve, that you're stuck in the past. I was a bit the same, I clung on to the old things - Orion and it's native generators and effects, plus the SynthEdit plugins I'd made over the years. We made four decent enough albums that way but it wasn't until we broke out of that cycle that we really hit our stride and from there we have gone from strength to strength. Working with AI is just the next stride forward for us.

What was good yesterday , can still be good today. I also bought some newer plugins, but recent releases clearly show me, the best plugins were already released many years ago
Why should I buy a different guitar than Fender Strat?, I am used to it, like the sound, don't care about new guitars , I of course see new releases, sometimes I even test, but no, my guitar is the best guitar for me.Same with plugins, when UAD went native, most of their plugins I had from Waves already, tested them, was not tempted to buy even one.

only I decide on my mixes where to cut or boost with an eq by using my ears

Which is why your music will never be any better than you are. Is that why you don't share it?

I even share here, but I don't care about fame or something like that. I am in a group with 40 musicians, most of them I met in real life and only their opinion matters to me, cuz we are on a similar level. I played 1000 of hours with bands, I had street performances in different countries in my young years and even had the opportunity to jam with musicians (not in public) some people probably heard of ( John Lord, Clapton, John Blackwell). My roots are The Blues and I had luck cuz I could experience it together with people from US when I was a kid, jamming, improvising, singing for hours.
I don't care about social media and will never use AI, cuz I am not going to become brainless and just like Prince (my mentor and more successful than both of us ever could be) I don't care about quality of mix that much, of course the quality shouldn't be awful. It is pretty obvious to me that the main focus of music of the past 15 years was mix quality instead of good, creative, original songs, the results speak for themselves.

You talk about sharing your music.
I suppose you upload your music and you watch the whole day how many streams and likes it gets lol
For a musician the moment of creation is the most beautiful moment and you give that precious moment to ai. It can't get worse and more stupid. I would not be surprised if you let ai write the replies here. Enjoy the time you have not wasted, how many hours have you gained? lol

[BONES]

What about the tactile fun of playling and filter tweaking stuff, i love that!

You can shoot me if you ever see me "tweak" a filter. I can't imagine anything less entertaining or enjoyable for an audience.

I am in a group with 40 musicians, most of them I met in real life and only their opinion matters to me, cuz we are on a similar level.

So you are just looking for an echo chamber, people who'll agree with every stupid thing you say, no interest in learning anything new or being challenged? I'm the opposite, I like to get other points of view, it's how you learn and grow.

I don't care about social media and will never use AI

How are those two things related? Social media is all about people, aren't you big on humans? For my money, it's where you see just how completely f**king worthless most of them are.

... just like Prince (my mentor and more successful than both of us ever could be) I don't care about quality of mix that much

I'm pretty sure Prince was just a little bit famous for the drum sound he got on his records, which would indicate to me that the was very much focused on the quality of his mixes, or he had someone working for him you was.

I suppose you upload your music and you watch the whole day how many streams and likes it gets lol

Why would you think that? Do you even understand what kind of music we make? But I wouldn't even know how you could do it. We get two statements a year from our label and I don't even bother to look at those. It's not important. It's art, not a popularity contest.

For a musician the moment of creation is the most beautiful moment and you give that precious moment to ai.

We're not self-centred arseholes, we're happy to share it with AI, just as we share it with each other.

Enjoy the time you have not wasted, how many hours have you gained? lol

I'll remember that next year when we're playing in Germany to a couple of thousand paying customers. It will cost us thousands to fly half-way around the world and back but it's what we do (and we get to see a whole lot of bands who'll never travel to Australia).

[Touch The Universe]

No one stops to think of the feelings of the knobs. The knobs want to be tweaked. In fact, they just can't wait to be tweaked.

It is a deeply emotional intuitive engagement and interaction crafting out or expanding frequencies as one would use one's voice, that the filter "speaks".

I know what I like and what moves me, thank you, speaking nothing of an "audience" or "you".

[BONES]

My Lumi Keys are, very deliberately, a knob-free zone. The thing is, you don't need to tweak a knob to open or close a filter. It's a very unmusical way of doing things, there are far more expressive ways of achieving the same result - velocity, after-touch or my favourite, the good old mod wheel.

[Zeisner]

If TTU replaces BONES, what will happen to kvr?

It would raise the quality of the forum.

[BertKoor]

when BONES moves to 4chan, then that raises the quality both here and there.

[Touch The Universe]

I'm not an advocate entirely of the end justifies the means. If I can make AI spit out a song that is powerful and I have control of tweaking it, that just become another way of doing things or a tool. If nothing else, it poses these questions on the nature of creativity and even what a "song" is. The process or journey itself is often the more rewarding part. These days I'm content with just singing, not even recording or producing, atleast for now. Though there are times when I'm looking for new music, if I can specifically churn out music I'm happy with, I would never complain. At that point, what's wrong with just being a dj, playing good music? Does anyting really need to be "produced"?

If you didn't need money, or what if everyone on earth learned to make music. Would people have such great interest in "your" music? At that point, it'd just be friends sharing what they have been doing, similar to someones fashion or design choices, not so "identity" based. I am a musician because I make music, would become less prioritzed in the psyche. Who goes around saying, I am a clothes wearer, or I paint my walls red, etc.

It's about ideas and taste to be honest, at its core, which is interestingly enough, not seemingly contigent on software or even producing. That's quite interesting, imo.

[DCrown]

Bones:"Melody? We're not really interested in melody, it's surplus to our requirements. We look for the three "R"s - Rhythms, Riffs and Rhymes."

Maybe learn from someone who will always be a million times better than you.



Oh, I see, you can't even have a melody in your mind as starting point for a new song, your brain has been replaced by AI haha
AI is not art, it is just AI-(f)art!

[twal]

I'm not an advocate entirely of the end justifies the means. If I can make AI spit out a song that is powerful and I have control of tweaking it, that just become another way of doing things or a tool. If nothing else, it poses these questions on the nature of creativity and even what a "song" is. The process or journey itself is often the more rewarding part. These days I'm content with just singing, not even recording or producing, atleast for now. Though there are times when I'm looking for new music, if I can specifically churn out music I'm happy with, I would never complain. At that point, what's wrong with just being a dj, playing good music? Does anyting really need to be "produced"?

If you didn't need money, or what if everyone on earth learned to make music. Would people have such great interest in "your" music? At that point, it'd just be friends sharing what they have been doing, similar to someones fashion or design choices, not so "identity" based. I am a musician because I make music, would become less prioritzed in the psyche. Who goes around saying, I am a clothes wearer, or I paint my walls red, etc.

It's about ideas and taste to be honest, at its core, which is interestingly enough, not seemingly contigent on software or even producing. That's quite interesting, imo.

The point about taste I see is correct. We already have chord generators, samplers, and drum machines. I am not saying these are the same as AI, but my taste for what I choose to create with the before mentioned tools is how I apply taste. The same can be said with AI, but AI has less limitations (AI is different as a tool than all previous tools, because it removes the path of time, removing the moment element; conversely, if I use a well known hi-hat, I skip the time it would take to create one, ultimately narrowing my field of choice, but the manifestation of sound is more segmented in the moment rather than fluid in the case of AI). The limitation of not using AI are the choices that catalyze how my music sounds because the process is what determines a sound. For example- if I ask AI to make me a pop beat with a prompt containing X, Y, and W, it will take all data and previously made sounds, as well as use its imagination to create a result that will be Z. If I do everything manually using older tools, the process will take me down a different route based on my individual taste in choices, so the result will be different. If I know every single choice I want to make before exploring the music process itself down to the exact Hi Hat and AI can translate it, then the result will be whatever I input in that moment removing any imaginative choices during the process; and will result to something different than would of been created if I didn't use AI (although i can keep running the AI to get a result I would of gotten anyway- hence AI is ALSO a tool, and not just a means to an end conserving the musicianship, so I want to get that straight since it is simlar to using loops in this manner). Now, if I keep running prompts over time until it creates something more of my "own", now the result will be more to what I would create if I didn't have AI, but it would still not match entirely what I would have created. So AI music will lack the human elements of ideas in the moment, tendencies, actuality, the process of inspiration of sounds, and the literal manifestation of the avenue of MY thoughts. Can AI do it's own thing in regards to this? Sure, but the output will always be a translation, never a living breathing output of my personal being. So is what I said right or semi-accurate or am I completely off?