Xania Monet, a music artist created with artificial intelligence, has landed a record deal. Yes, you read that correctly. It was created by a Mississippi-based poet Talisha Jones; she’s has built a large audience on Spotify and even charted on Billboard. Now reportedly from several sources, the AI musician has secured a multi-million-dollar record deal. This has drawn widespread attention from both the industry and audience. There was even a bidding for the Artist that escalated to as much as 3 million dollars. The deal was eventually closed by Hallwood Media that is led by former Interscope executive Neil Jacobson. It’s reported that the contract is valued in the multimillion- dollar range. Talisha used the platform called Suno to transform her own poetry into songs. She then developed the persona of Monet. The AI artist Xania Monet has appeared on several Billboard charts with “How Was I Supposed to Know,” which is currently No. 1 on the R&B Digital Song Sales, No.3 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Digital Song Sales, and No.22 on the over Digital Song Sales chart for the week. It has 2.7 million views on YouTube. The Gospel song “Let Go and Let God” iOS No. 25 on the Emerging Artists Chart. So far almost 10 million streams in the US!!
While I am happy for this poet Talisha Jones like totally ecstatic. I listened to all of the songs today and they are really good . Like really really good. I even wondered how I could do the same thing that she had done. It would give someone like me, who chose family over the industry a second chance to contribute my music to the world without the constraints of being too old, not esthetically what the industry wants. You could do this from the privacy of your own home and do it your own way without influence of others.
The money would be all of yours. It can help you overcome writing blocks, speed up music production, experiment with different genres, multilingual content creation, and much more, and all of this right at your fingertips. It is genius if you really think about it.
Everything changes, nothing stays the same right? It has been a known fact that human voices have been enhanced in the studios for years, but it is still a human! With that said, I am very very sad for the tens of thousands of other artists who have been grinding all their lives to secure a record deal. There have been artists that have had overnight success, but it often takes years of work, including building a significant online presence and a dedicated fanbase. I don’t even want to talk about the artist that started before social media. There is so much human talent in this world. I get it though, who wants to deal with so many entities when you can just use AI. It scares me because AI is already expected to dramatically change the workforce now it’s changing the music industry. Human talent will be a thing of the past if we keep allowing AI generations to be so successful.
Maybe this is just my fear talking, my fear that AI will take over the world, you can blame that on the movie iRobot. There’s also the elephant in the room that the platform Suno is being sued by major labels. That is another story for another day.
