It had to happen sooner or later. While organisations such as the Grammys and The Brits are yet to publicly come down on one side of the fence regarding the merits and legitimacy of AI in music, a new upstart awards ceremony has spotted the inevitable gap in the market and aims to claim the business of rewarding prompt-writers and cutting edge AI-powered music makers as all its own.
Step up The Future Sound Awards, a new spin-off from the World AI Creator Awards with high-profile sponsors and a panel of judges from around the AI music industry.
Real Vs… 'Less Real'?
Music’s battle against AI takes many varied and confusing forms. From enthusiastic big name endorsements embracing the game-changing ‘democratisation’ of music making, to demands from even bigger names that big tech keeps its hands off their life’s work, to entire streaming platforms waging all-out 24-hour war against ‘fake music’, it seems there’s countless ways that the debate is heating up.
The Future Sound Awards are, its organisers claim, “a true celebration of the democratization of music,” recognising that the days of musical talent being directly tied to being able to play, being able to compose, or being able to perform, are increasingly at an end. “We have big ambitions to grow the awards into the Grammys of the AI music space,” said Narcis Marincat, head of AI at Fanvue and one of the competition's judges.
Over 60 million people used AI to create music in 2024, according to an IMS report and over 60% of artists used some form of the tech to create music in the past 12 months, the organisers claim. “The Future Sound Awards is the first global, mainstream awards, for AI Music - committed to working with responsible operators, and raising standards within the sector,” they say.
Yes, just as there’s an Olympics-style tournament for athletes and weightlifters who embrace the use of drugs in order to boost their performance, now there’s a Grammy’s for musicians who prefer to let AI do much of the heavy lifting.
Powered by tech. Enabled by you
The competition comes powered by Soundcloud, whose service will be hosting the entry uploads and TwoShot, an AI music making platform who’s tech will be vetting the entries for the potential use of worrisome copyrighted material. Any track featuring copyrighted material will be disqualified, while at the other end of the process three winners will share $10,000 in prize money.
All you need to do is head to the competition page here and use TwoShot’s tools to create your own original AI-powered work.
The competition states that entries will be judged across a set criteria, including vocals, lyrics, beat and authenticity and their scores will be combined with the total number of listens that each track achieves on the Future Sound Awards chart, powered by SoundCloud.
And those entries will be judged by an all-star, AI-focused lineup. Joining Narcis Marincat is Jeff Nang, co-founder of the Controlla Voice AI voice-swapping platform and Tobi Akinyemi, the founder of TwoShot.
Also on board is Josua Waghubinger, the man better known as Butterbro, who scored a controversial number 43 German chart hit earlier this year with Verknallt In Einen Talahon (In Love With A Talahon) a song which posed something of a double whammy for good taste by not only addressing a fictitious protagonist’s love affair with an overly stereotypical (and therefore offensive) racial stereotype, but was entirely composed by AI music service Udio too.
Entries are now open, and close on the 22nd of July.
It's clear that AI isn’t going anywhere at this point and its introduction to the music business, and the impact that it’s going to have on struggling artists, will have to be carefully managed to avoid upset both to musicians and billions of lovers of original, trend-setting new music who famously won’t settle for anything ‘fake’.
Meanwhile as to whether big name music stars are seeking to prevent big tech from using their music to train AI in order to stop AI from making all music one day (thus protecting the livelihoods of upcoming artists) OR is simply the rich and famous preventing everyone from making music while putting their hands out for more yet more cash, remains a hot topic.
Best pick your side soon. This one is only going to run and run.
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