Been pondering this question for the last few days in light of all of the ‘AI is going to ruin music’ stories.
And I got thinking about how auto tune is sort of AI
But I couldn’t think of an answer that’s the inverse of this
Home recording software obviously democratised things but hasn’t it also created a problem of abundance?
Is it maybe, rather than something like the synth or the guitar or something that made records sound better or easier to make, something like iTunes or Bandcamp that has made music sustainable during a time of streaming?
It’s 100% the rise of the DAW making music creation available to everyone. The barrier to music making has never been lower which has completely democratised the concept and taken it from essentially a protected thing that normal people could never dream of to something anyone can do. Has also smashed the concept of the musician as genius which can only be a good thing.
The advent of ProTools and other modern DAWs aside, the Roland TB-303, TR-808 and Akai MPC3000 are hugely important bits of kit for a lot of my favourite music.
