A position
I don’t label my music
anymore.
A small minority kept pestering me about why I don’t put an AI label on my music. A very few even hurled abuse at me by email and in the guestbook because I use AI as a tool and as an extra option. So I did it for a month, and at the same time I started a survey and an experiment: how many people does it really matter to – and what is an elaborate, 100% handmade production without any AI assistance actually worth to them? The results shocked me.
I asked who this matters to
In September I put two questions to 990 users. The first: does it matter to you that music is made by a human? 223 said “completely without AI”.
The second question put the price next to it: fewer songs, maybe one a month, but without AI. Of those 223, 133 were left.
Of those 133, 29 had downloaded nothing but handmade music across their entire download history. The rest carried on taking whatever they liked. The stated demand was far more widespread than the matching download behaviour.
Every bar measured against all 990 participants
Survey from 2 to 13 September 2026, downloads across the entire recorded history.
Then I asked for a voluntary donation
Anyone who downloaded a song marked as handmade got a voluntary donation question: zero to a thousand euros. One euro was allowed. Zero was allowed. Nothing was preselected. Anyone who didn’t answer got the download anyway. For the analysis I then separated the people who had explicitly searched for handmade music beforehand from those who hadn’t.
I let it run until 1000 people had downloaded something. Then I stopped.
And the one person who paid hadn’t even explicitly searched for handmade music. He never demanded anything. He simply donated.
Who demanded, and who paid
Both groups got the same question. The one who donated had never searched for handmade music. In my test, not a single euro came from the group with the loudest demand.
From here on I stopped making allowances.
These numbers made me angry. I have been putting music out there for free for years, and the loudest demand came from exactly the people who were least willing to donate anything – not even one euro.
This experiment doesn’t prove that criticism of AI is wrong. It answers a different question: should I maintain extra filters, labels and documentation for this small group? Nobody owes me a donation – free means free. But equally, I owe nobody this special treatment. After these results, my answer is therefore: no.
AI has long been part of everyday media production
The biggest item is research.
Reading into a topic, summarising sources, clarifying terms, thinking concepts through, proofreading texts, carrying something over into another language. Many of these steps are supported by AI tools as a matter of course today. And nobody writes under their video who they worked the topic out with.
Sept 8, 2026 · Blackmagic Design
The built-in MCP server lets external AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT Codex analyse projects, organise material and carry out working steps inside Resolve.
Sept 12, 2026 · Reuters
An assistant searches for material, cuts, mixes the sound, corrects colour and sets subtitles. Reuters doesn’t call it “AI-generated news”.
Two examples from music
“Now and Then”, The Beatles —Machine learning lifted John Lennon’s voice out of an old cassette recording. Even so, hardly anyone talks about an AI-generated Beatles song.
Alan Braxe and Fred Falke —The two of them describe how they use Suno for loops, musical fragments and arrangement ideas. Something a later listener cannot hear in the finished track.
And nobody even mentions this anymore
- Programming
- Website design
- Magic Mask in Resolve
- Cutting out subjects in Photoshop
- Generative Fill
- Noise removal
- Stem separation
- Automatic subtitles
- Translating subtitles
- Mastering assistants
- Transcribing interviews
- Multicam editing
- Upscaling and sharpening
- In-between frames for slow motion
- Colour matching between cameras
- Reframing for portrait and landscape
- Rotoscoping
And none of it carries a label.
If every contact with AI triggered a label, the word would no longer tell you anything about a work. It would be an ingredient list of the software used.
When AI is in the hands of a musician, the piece turns out flawless. In the hands of an amateur, the piece has no meaning. Thank you.
A label doesn’t tell you whose hand was on it
- Nobody writes Edited with AI.
- Nobody writes Subject cut out by an AI.
- Nobody writes Interview transcribed by an AI.
- Nobody writes Research for the documentary done with ChatGPT.
But with music I’m supposed to?
Ten percent decide what the other ninety are called. And it makes no difference what those ten percent did. Removed noise or contributed a melody: the same label.
Judge the music. That is a standard I accept.
It’s my hobby.
I’ve learned this much: the ones who demand the most are the least willing to give. Not even one euro, that is.
I earn nothing from it. For my music I use the best tools that exist right now, and I do what I enjoy – no matter how and no matter with what. Fun is the only standard.
Anyone who doesn’t like that is welcome to download somewhere else. This is my website, my rules apply here.
From now on, here there is simply music. Music that I like. Music made with love – sometimes entirely on my own and sometimes with AI assistance. Deal with it or shut the fuck up :D
Anyone who, on a completely free site that does not even ask to be credited, demands that every aid and every tool be given up, only to then use the music in their commercial project, should perhaps generally rethink their life and their attitude to life.