Nicholas Arter dedicated himself to making AI music full-time when he was laid off from his job in government consulting amid federal workforce reductions. But while “AI is making the job market for consultants in particular more difficult and more competitive,” he says, “when I was laid off, I actually doubled down on AI.”
Arter “went in 100%” on his AI music brand AI For The Culture — which now has 155,000 subscribers on YouTube, 110,000 on Instagram and 250,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. AI For The Culture also boasts over 250 Patreon subscribers, paying $5 monthly for full access to his catalog; across his income streams, he estimates he makes thousands each month.
Arter, who also releases music under the name “Nick Hustles,” is one of many musicmakers who now earn significant income from releasing AI generated (or assisted) songs online. And although the visibility of these creators is growing, thanks to a number of viral AI hits — including, most recently, songs by The Velvet Sundown — most of them still have had little to no affiliation with the music industry establishment. They do not tour. They are not offered record deals. They do not issue physical releases.
Instead, their careers more often resemble those of content creators, making money largely from social media creator funds, YouTube views and paid subscription platforms, like Patreon. And as this growing cohort increasingly posts AI music to official streaming services like Spotify, too, they’re pioneering an emerging and controversial career path in music — one that increasingly competes for royalties with traditional artists.
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Much of AI music content started as a joke. Around late 2022, as AI voice models improved, parody covers of popular songs — where a celebrity or popular character’s voice replaced the original artists’ — became more common. Then, in May 2023, Ghostwriter, an anonymous songwriter/producer, posted his original song “Heart On My Sleeve,” which used AI to deepfake the voices of Drake and The Weeknd without their permission.
The song made headlines and Ghostwriter became the poster child for a new, polarizing type of creative. “Heart On My Sleeve” was also confusing: many believed that the song was generated entirely by AI, even though the emerging tech was actually only used to swap out Ghostwriter’s own vocal performance for Drake and The Weeknd’s. (AI music generators already existed, but typically couldn’t compose a song start-to-finish.)
This technological window was short-lived. In December 2023, AI music companies Suno and Udio debuted, enabling the creation of songs that were nearly indistinguishable from human-made music to be made at the click of a button. Soon, AI musicmaking evolved from voice swapping pre-existing or original songs to an explosion of fully AI generated content. (The two companies have since been sued by the major music companies, which allege Suno and Udio are engaged in widespread copyright infringement by training their models on copyrighted sound recordings without consent or compensation to artists).
Comedians-turned-AI-musicmakers like Will Hatcher, who releases under the moniker King Willonius, and Glenn Robinson, the creator of popular social media account Obscurest Vinyl, each tell Billboard they signed up for these new AI music platforms to help take their jokes to the next level. Soon after, in March 2024, Hatcher released his viral smash “BBL Drizzy,” an Udio-generated song (with lyrics written by Hatcher) that mocked Drake at the height of his rap beef with Kendrick Lamar. Remixed and popularized by Metro Boomin, the track became another key moment in the development of AI music.
Meanwhile, Robinson was building an Instagram page where he posted funny, photoshopped album covers. Once he tried Suno, he started posting AI songs to pair with his self-made artwork. “I start with the album cover and think, ‘What would this sound like?’ and I just write some lyrics and prompt accordingly,” says Robinson, who, like Hatcher and Arter, had a background in making music before AI. “It takes a few tries, but if I can’t get something I like, I’ll record a demo myself.”
Obscurest Vinyl now has grown to 295,000 Instagram followers and its top song on Spotify, “I Glued My Balls to My Butthole Again,” has over 3 million streams to date. Robinson says his biggest moneymaker is merchandise based on the music, but he earns royalties — sometimes hundreds of dollars a month — from YouTube and Spotify, too.
“I think we’re still in the phase of AI music as comedy,” says George Karalexis, co-founder/CEO of Ten2 Media, a YouTube content strategy firm that works with AI For The Culture and Hatcher along with artists including Benson Boone, BigXThaPlug and Lil Tjay. “There will always be some type of comedic music in this field, but I think we are entering the next phase, as this stuff gets really good, where people just enjoy the music for what it is.”
Now, it’s clear that AI music is good for more than a laugh — it’s an increasingly popular option for listeners. JPEGMAFIA, for example, prominently sampled one of AI For The Culture’s songs in his 2024 single “either on or off drugs.” The Suno-generated doo-wop tune “A Million Colors,” released by Brazilian AI music content creator Vinih Pray, became the first-known AI song to chart on the TikTok Viral 50 in June, peaking at no. 46. And just a month later, a Reddit controversy around The Velvet Sundown made the AI band go viral worldwide — and its Spotify monthly listenership swelled to over 1.4 million.
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Some streaming services, including Spotify, still do not have policies specific to AI music. As long as AI songs do not violate other rules, like ones against impersonation or spam, they are often allowed to accrue streaming money just like any human-made song. This lack of royalty differentiation was at the heart of the recent Velvet Sundown controversy, which prompted discourse about whether it’s acceptable for AI music to compete in the same marketplace as human-made music — and what streaming services could do to regulate the incoming flood of AI music, which French streaming service Deezer estimates accounts for 18% of songs delivered daily to its platform.
“There are a lot of misconceptions with AI music,” says Hatcher. “At the end of the day, I think there is still a craft to it. You have to have a great ear. You can generate 20 songs and not have the ear to decide which is actually good. You might get lucky and just have a random hit [with AI], but the people, like me, who are doing this sustainably are very dedicated, consistent and continually improving. I think AI just empowers people to be more creative.”
Arter says that he “firmly believes” that “the human element” of his songs, like writing his own lyrics and editing AI results in ProTools, is paramount to his success with the emerging technology. But he also credits the high quality of his songs to learning how to precisely prompt AI. “I’m at a point, since I’ve used it so much, where I can hear a melody in my head, and I can get the AI to get that exact melody based on how I word my prompts,” he says.
Still, while Robinson, Hatcher and Arter all stress their respect for human artistry and their belief that AI musicmaking is a skilled creative pursuit, Hatcher admits that there’s “a lot of AI slop” on the internet that doesn’t take such a thoughtful approach to creating with the technology. Experts believe much of this AI slop is even used with the intent to steal royalties.
Last fall, a North Carolinian named Michael Smith was indicted by federal prosecutors over allegations that he used AI to help create “hundreds of thousands” of songs and then used the AI tracks to earn more than $10 million in fraudulent streaming royalty payments since 2017. Deezer, which has become a vocal proponent for AI music regulation, also reports a significant link between AI music and fraudulent streaming activities, claiming that “up to 70%” of streams for AI songs are artificial, as of June 2025.
Even if an AI music content creator has good intentions with their work, voluntarily labels it as AI, and writes some of the lyrics themselves, the role is still stigmatized. This summer, Timbaland’s announcement of his new AI entertainment company, Stage Zero, which would release songs by AI artist TaTa, provoked outcry from creatives online, including one producer, K Fresh, who accused Timbaland of taking his song without credit and running it through Suno. Timbaland quickly issued an apology to the producer and clarified that “at Stage Zero…nothing happens without people. Our focus is on building tools with creators, not at their expense.”
Robinson says that while the reception was largely positive when he started adding AI music to his Instagram posts, he still upset some followers by doing it. “Of course, you do get people who are like, ‘You shouldn’t be using this,’ and they’re also completely valid,” he says. “I get why they’re upset; if I wasn’t doing Obscurest Vinyl, I probably wouldn’t go anywhere near AI. For me, it just serves the purpose of helping me match the album covers I make in Photoshop to music of all styles and voices which I couldn’t do effectively without AI.”
The stigma, paired with the lack of clarity around how copyrightable these works are worldwide and how streaming services will regulate it in the future, has kept traditional record labels, publishers, managers and agents away from the AI music content creation game — for now. But JVKE’s manager Ethan Curtis, an early adopter of AI tools, says he thinks it’s only a matter of time before the industry capitalizes on this growing field. “It’s not far off,” Curtis says. “Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if [record labels] didn’t start creating AI artists themselves. I mean, why not? You don’t have to share any revenue. You don’t have to deal with moody artists. You don’t have to fight for creative control. I imagine that is already on the roadmap.”
AI music may now be taking home part of the royalty pool previously reserved for just human artists, but Hatcher, Arter and Robinson all doubt that human-made music will go away because of projects like theirs. “I like to use the analogy of AI music being fast food,” says Hatcher. “There are people that will never, under any circumstances, eat fast food. They want a fine dining experience. And then there are other people who are like, ‘I don’t care where it comes from or who the chef is, give me that burger.’”
“If we are talking about pure output, there’s no way humans can compete with AI music,” says Karalexis. “But where artists can outperform is with meaningful connections with fans, live performances. There is a human element that people still want. I don’t think this is a competition where one wins and the other loses, it’s going to become two different games.”
This story is part of Billboard’s music technology newsletter ‘Machine Learnings.’ Sign up for ‘Machine Learnings’ and other Billboard newsletters for free here.
