America's most-downloaded country artist? AI
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Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios
The most-downloaded country song in America is written and sung not by a human, but by AI alone.
Why it matters: This is twilight-zone stuff, folks. For the No. 1 and No. 3 paid downloads, the artists, the music, the lyrics — the songs — aren't by real people. But real people love them.
The big picture: Artists of all types should be rattled that early, deeply flawed, work-in-progress AI is already cranking out country hits ... and knocking humans down the music charts.
- The success of "artists" Breaking Rust and Cain Walker pits AI technology against humans who earn their living as songwriters, artists and music business professionals
Breaking Rust, a computer-generated outlaw blues-country singer, has the No. 1 song on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart with the single "Walk My Walk."
- Cain Walker, an AI R&B singer, is No. 3 on the same chart with "Don't Tread On Me."
Threat level: The AI chart invasion is ringing alarm bells in Nashville — Music City — one of the songwriting capitals of the world.
- Songwriting and music publishing are the cornerstones of the city's music industry. Countless singer-songwriters flocked to Nashville over the decades.
By the numbers: Breaking Rust boasts 2.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Cain Walker has over 842,000.
- By comparison, ascending singer-songwriter Jackson Dean, whose single "Heavens to Betsy" is climbing the country radio charts, has 1.6 million monthly listeners.
Reality check: Billboard's country sales chart only tracks paid downloads — a small piece of the music market today. It doesn't reflect streaming and radio airplay, which are factored into Billboard's more influential Hot Country Songs chart.
Zoom out: "In just the past few months, at least six AI or AI-assisted artists have debuted on various Billboard rankings," Billboard reports. That figure could be higher, as it's become increasingly difficult to tell who or what is powered by AI — and to what extent."
- Many tracks, spanning every genre from gospel to rock to country, arrive with anonymous or mysterious origins, sometimes with AI elements mixed into rerecordings of old school hits, Billboard adds ($).
Sign of the times: Billboard uses an AI tool to sniff for AI fingerprints.
- And there's a London producer who "humanizes" AI tracks.
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