How Royalty Free AI Music Is - and Isn’t - Changing Music for Video

For those following along at home, AI is by far the biggest news story of the year for content creators of all types—and not just content creators, but really everyone. In a few years, AI might end up being the biggest news story of the century.

However, while we’ll just have to wait and see how AI ultimately changes the world altogether, one area in which AI is already starting to stretch its legs is music—specifically music for video. And royalty free AI music is indeed starting to become more of an option, and copyright free AI music and AI playlists are also on the rise.

But before you sign up for any AI musicgen apps with their promises of endless song options, here are some of the reasons for—and against—AI changing the music industry overnight. We also offer our honest take on why royalty-free music options like Soundstripe will always be the best for your music for video and content needs.

3 examples of how AI is changing the music industry

Let’s first look at how AI is already being used to change the music industry and share some examples of how new AI technologies are improving music for video in particular.

1) AI-powered search and curation

One of the first, and actually quite helpful, ways in which AI has impacted the music and royalty free music world is by helping to improve and speed up search and curation. Even here at Soundstripe, we’ve already added AI-integrated music search, which you can try out yourself on our app—as well as read our blog post to learn more about our AI music search tools.

2) Speed up the music recording process

AI is also perhaps best used these days to speed up workflows and processes. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has already vastly improved all types of writing and scripting processes, and there are tons of new tools out there that can assist songwriters and musicians in their music recording process.

Of course, while a few of these AI music tools might help with the writing side of music creation, most will be more for the post-side of music recording. This trend can be found across all of AI’s uses for many different art forms, as its first implementations almost always seem to help speed up digital workflows.

3) Better integration with video editors’ needs

Perhaps the best examples of how AI is already shaping music come from the different ways in which AI technologies are already changing the art of video editing. From text-based editing controls to AI-powered remix technologies built into video editing apps like Adobe Premiere Pro, AI is rapidly speeding up the video editing process.

And in truth, for many content creators, this is a good thing. If you can save time by using plug-ins and app additions like our Soundstripe Premiere Pro or Twitch extensions to quickly browse and upload music, you’re going to like the new AI-powered options coming your way as well to help you more quickly find, add, and edit music tracks into your videos.

3 reasons AI will NOT change the music industry

Now, let’s examine some of the reasons why AI will not immediately change the music industry overall, and in particular, how editors and content creators find and license the royalty free music they need for their videos.

1) Questions about the music being used to train AI models

While we’ve all seen the impressive images and videos generated by AI technologies like Midjourney, Runway, and OpenAI’s Sora, we haven’t seen too much about how these apps source and train models. And, in large part, that’s a debate that's been brewing for some time and could be coming home to roost sooner rather than later, affecting the future of AI overall.

For a few of the new generative AI music apps that have been released (or at least announced) so far, there are certainly questions to ask about what music is being used to train these models. Who are the musicians? What are the songs? Do they have all the rights they need to train AI models on them?

There’s a lot still to be said about how these companies are training their AI models, and we don’t have all of the answers about the rights and qualities associated with them just yet.

2) The efficiencies of humans versus AI

This brings up one more point concerning the future of AI: What is the quality of the music being used to train and create these new AI-generated music tracks? If AI models are only allowed to train on music found in the public domain, how attuned will these new tracks be to current musical trends and standards?

Furthermore, if these AI models are only being trained on a small number of songs and tracks that have been fully cleared for these sourcing purposes, what quality is this music? And how assured can you be that these newly generated music tracks will sound better than what a seasoned, professional musician can write and record themselves in a still short amount of time?

3) An understanding of music for video

We should also mention that when music is recorded with a specific purpose, like in the case of Soundstripe’s library, which is primarily composed to be best for content creators looking to use music in their videos, it’s actually a much different process than just writing a song for the sake of the song itself.

This brings in a whole different debate about how AI music is going to be generated and what these AI models will be able to understand when asked to create music for a purpose, as opposed to just creating music to sound like a reference song or track.

There’s still a lot more to be said and eventually heard about how AI-generated music will be able to handle intentions and understand the needs of content creators who use music as the sonic backdrop to videos created for their online and social audiences.

The future of royalty free AI music

That said, AI will undoubtedly change the music industry overall, and royalty free music will most certainly change as well. AI is already being incorporated into how everyone searches and curates music, and it’s only a matter of time before it creeps further into how music is written, recorded, mixed, and mastered.

However, despite the hopes and fears of many in the industry, it could take longer than many might think for AI to reach the quality of what real-life, Grammy-winning musicians can produce. So, if you’re looking for music for your video projects today, tomorrow, or anywhere in the near future, you can rest assured that you’re getting the best music for your videos currently available.

And if things do change over the next few months, or more likely years, you can rest assured that music will most likely only be sped up by AI and its efficiency improvements for musicians and recording artists worldwide.