Paul ‘Gripper’ Flannery 💙

Just read that 34% of all tracks uploaded to Spotify etc every single day — around 50,000 songs — are now fully AI-generated. 97% of listeners literally cannot tell the difference between a machine prompt and a human being who spent a lifetime learning how to say something that matters. For my sins I have been writing, recording and releasing music for over forty years. I’ve lived through vinyl, cassettes, CDs, Napster, MySpace, SoundCloud, every algorithm shift, every format war. Musicians like me know they have lost the battle but they still continually get in the boxing ring because it is who they are. I have kept going because I am a dreamer. I am someone who needs to believe in something. Life is short and I have spent mine trying to connect with songs and meaning. Now someone types “dreamy 80s new wave ballad about lost love” into Suno or Udio and in 90 seconds they have something that 97% of people think is very listenable and very good. My new single is now competing with 50,000 ghosts uploaded before breakfast. It seems that over forty years of human devotion is equivalent to ninety seconds of clever code. This is not a woe is me post. This is just to point out the interesting reality that we live in at the moment and the huge challenges facing creatives. I don’t care how invisible and swamped I become I will always do my best to make something that means something.