MUSIC ROW WAS AI BEFORE AI WAS AI
What a fucking statement to make right out of the gate, right? If there’s anything or anyone I love most in this godforsaken wasteland that is the Music City industrial complex, it’s the creative boots-on-the-ground, rise and grind people. The ones with families to support, mortgages to pay, health insurance, all that grown-up adult shit that I don’t have yet. If you write songs for a living, I can have a conversation with you. Here’s where we can start.
MUSIC CITY’S INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
Epicenter: Music Row.
Upon arrival here in town, it was sold to me as a “song factory” and I was intrigued by that. As a bitter twenty-something, failed punk rock musician, newly transplanted from the Rust Belt trying to “make it the right way,” I found myself performing with and writing songs for modern country music artists. After all, that’s what you do here, right? I was sold and enveloped in a world of publishers, publicists, lawyers, business managers, PRO reps - all cogs in this massive machine that is the country music industrial complex. This was all new to me and the “suits” (or more accurately, the Express clearance section blouses) didn’t really seem to be as scary as I thought they’d be in my head.
My first experiences writing in town were often with other midwestern creatives, fellow greenhorns, also trying to help their parents relax a little by playing it “safe” and “commercial” by squeezing into some god damn Wranglers and tripping up the stairs in Dan Post snake-skin boots. I really didn’t know any better, and I was fucking desperate to prove myself to people that didn’t believe in me, truly, or this process at all. I finally started to catch breaks after networking the midtown writers rounds and bar scene. I started to meet more “successful” writers who were getting decent looks and scoring cuts with signed artists. Wow. I was really doing something. Networking. Yay me. I even received invitations to play some of the more highly desired songwriter rounds [I’ll do a whole story on why I fucking despise what these have become].
What I began to notice is there’s a clear formula the industry desires. As you advance, that formula is fed to you via email from your publisher - Tempo. Feel. Words and phrases. Artists they want to pitch to (before you’d even strummed a fucking chord). Product placements. It felt like we were programmable organic vessels fed prompts from song structures that had proven chart-worthy from data mines or focus groups with the expectation of recreating magical viral moments or a win-fall pay-day for the team. Sounds eerily familiar.
When I witness people like Scott Borchetta, a Nashville elite and industry mega-donor, sit up straight on his pulpit like a high-chair, in his oversized, newly hemmed robes like a little boy wearing his fathers clothes, facing the next generation of creatives, leaders, and workers during a commencement speech spreading a dark gospel praising AI as the future, getting boo’d and snapping back with, “Deal with it… Hear me now or pay me later,” it all connected with me, finally. This is how Music Row has been treating their songwriters for decades. Now, they’re just cutting the middle-people out of the equation altogether to make their “waiting in line at the feed store” songs of the summer. [Editor’s Note: this is an offensively long run-on sentence that we won’t change because it’s conversational and effectively showcases the writer’s ire for mediocre men in positions of power].
Decades ago, scoring a Publishing Advance used to be in the Ten Year Plans of most hopeful professional-ish creatives. In 2015, getting a $25,000 advance would mean a good portion of your rent was paid for each month. This would free up time to write, produce, and perform instead of working a dead-end job for financial security. Of course, that money is recouped from royalties you generate from cuts you get from your catalog that usually won’t come close to hitting the principal of that loan. It is still a means to an end for being a professional. These deals are at risk as we see major labels inking contracts with AI platforms, seemingly testing the waters. Everyone is proceeding with caution because of potential blowback, yet it seems like the industry is pretty fucking invested in seeing AI shit take off to collect on an ROI from what has proven to be a consistent fucking slop factory with little creative upside.
As an artist and songwriter, now more than ever, I see how these suite-life goblins are moving, foaming at the mouth at the idea of cutting creatives out of creation, being able to prompt a massive hit from their freshly-healed Neuralink scarred brain matter. They see an overhead metric disappearing, and profitability soaring. We need to kill this initiative dead in its tracks.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
I will start by saying, I stand in solidarity with Music Row songwriters that rely on this income stream, career path, and creative outlet to not only feed their families, but to understand themselves and feel understood, no matter how adverse that experience is to my own. Some of my oldest, most real and loyal friends have deals at those publishing houses and they deserve security and freedom of expression. However, I need my people to see their complicity in how this has evolved into a problem for us all. Participating in the “song factory” business-model has seemingly been the precursor to their own automated replacement, as historically, we’ve seen happen in all factory settings in America. We Rust Belt Babies know this too intimately as we watched our parents’ jobs outsourced and downsized in the context of the automotive industry.
The only way forward is to acknowledge that the standard practice has always been two-stepping with data-mining and analytics. Creating a “formula” led to creating an “algorithm” which has lead us to label deals with bloated, artificially propped-up AI platforms mining catalogs to regurgitate more monotonous, unexciting “hits” for the payola train. [See: Luke Bryan becoming a meme by hollowly declaring, “CLIMB TREE.”] I’m not gonna pretend to have all the answers here. I’m a creative trying to find my way through this sloppy, muggy, bog of a digital hellscape the best I can, trying to understand my own perspective and that of those around me. I see a path forward, collectively.
AUTHENTICITY WILL ALWAYS BREAK THROUGH.
There is no shortcut. Stop participating in the formula, or better yet, use the formula to break down the box and do something brave. Couraagous defiance, creative outrage, avant garde expression - all of this. My time on Music Row taught me how songs are written in the context of the machine. I’ve used that knowledge as a hack in the system to either apply it in an unconventional way, or even to attempt the antithesis of this and see how it works in my expression and people’s interpretation of that.
Your voice matters because your journey is your own. Your experiences are inherently interesting and will connect with someone looking desperately to find you and hear your voice. Trust in that process. It is so necessary to experience the slow build, especially in a time where shortcuts are sold as cutting edge.
CREATE FOR YOU, NOT FOR YOUR AUDIENCE OR YOUR PUBLISHER.
Are you contractually obligated to write hits? Of course, but the word “hit” is subjective. When something hits, it is actively striking something unexpectedly in someone, hopefully lots of people. Do something that hits for you or challenges your process or creative belief system. Write modern country exclusively? Cool. Don’t for a minute. Write a pop song with analog synthesizers and drum machines. How can you grow your creative muscles if you’re skipping the proverbial leg day every session and focus on the parts you’re good at? Creative process is comparable to health and fitness. Feed your brain healthy experiences and install the routine in which those events can be burned like calories in your mental Orange Theory session. You will feel better.
BE BOLD IN YOUR ATTEMPTS, NOT SAFE AND EXPECTED.
A trope I remember learning early: “If you’re hearing it on the radio, writing it now means you’re already three years behind.” Songs sit in stasis and on shelves in this world. Great songs. Great films. Great books. They’ll sit dormant either out of spite, to gatekeep one artist to prop up another, or because often times the person tasked at packaging it and selling it just… doesn’t fucking get it. That is a risk, but it’s an important risk. The movers and shakers we study were the ones that were the most disruptive during their time in the industry. Nashville is no stranger to alienating its own.
As outlaw country artists, Waylon, Willie and the boys were not shy to share their thoughts on this subject. Nashville will send you out to pasture and retroactively package any success after the fact as a family success. [See: Johnny Cash renaissance with Rick Rubin]. Music Row, CMA, Nashville was done investing into Cash because they could only see him through the lens of a farmer not heeding the yield of the same crop over and over and over again. It’s pretty universally understood his piece of land is sacred to americana. Rubin and his crew of outsiders saw the potential to plant something else with this soil, something that ended up as the most plentiful yield the land had ever provided. Remember this analogy, because YOU are the magic and the yield, not the farmer.
YOU HOLD ALL THE POWER.
Nashville’s energy has been in a state of flux for over a decade (over two decades, depending on who you ask). There’s finally semblance of a return to settlement in some communities, mainly the rock community here. The days of Bang Bang (later Cadillac Three), Diarrhea Planet, and Kings of Leon felt so long ago even in 2019. In 2026, that era seems more meaningful and impactful than ever as the next generation of Nashville rock artists and counter-culturers have planted roots firmly in these gentrified streets [that will never have sidewalks]. Professional songwriters - you belong here. You belong in this process. Take a moment to reflect on the growth, the process, the effectiveness of your work and how good you fit into the system in place. Songs and catalogs are being bought for billions of dollars by dark entities like BlackRock because they’re considered by capitalists as “uncorrelated assets.” This means, songs and music aren’t affected by economic turmoil and are valued outside that system. It’s an independent wealth measurement technique these goblins use to make quick cash on creativity. Capital investment is necessary to create in the system we have in place, whether we like it or not.
REMEMBER: YOU ARE THE ASSET.
Embracing procedural change will attract abundance to you in its own time. Hold strong to self. Take this system and turn it on its head. Strive to discover what else you can use these tools for to truly understand how they work. Be the acid jazz, the protest inherent, in a system of creation you adore. Push the process forward and keep human expression… human.
-sR