We’ve written about plenty of tech-startup accelerators in our time, but the Prose AI Music Creators Accelerator is a different kettle of fish.
It’s for people – yes, humans – who are making music with the help of GenAI tools in various ways. The eight-week program held its first demo day on Friday (27 February) to showcase the work of its inaugural cohort.
The accelerator is the work of a company called Prose Ventures, founded by veteran investor and founder Jules Miller, who decided to make the demo day a public event on Twitch (and then an on-demand video on YouTube) to counter some of the current narrative about AI musicmakers.
“There’s a lot of noise around AI music, and the only way to understand it is to listen – to the music and to the real people behind it doing serious creative work,” said Miller.
“There’s a difference between content generated at scale and artists building with intention,” she added. “This isn’t about replacing artists – it’s about unlocking new dimensions of human creativity by using modern tools and processes to make art in ways that weren’t possible before.”
Music Ally tuned in to the demo day, and it was genuinely interesting. The music was varied, and the stories of the people making it were engaging – ranging from K-Pop played on ancient instruments and “Victoriandustrial Folktronica” to our new favourite genre: Tired Dad Core.
Yes, there were a few uncanny avatars on display, but the humanity of the work and the songwriting intent was clear – and all of the artists featured have music available on streaming services.
The event reminded us of some of the nuances around the music industry’s current debates around GenAI technologies.
There ARE creative humans making creative human music with AI, and it often goes hand-in-hand with thoughtful, inventive world-building for their virtual personas. It’s far from slop.
The elephant in the room, though, is that some of the tools these artists are using may have been trained by hoovering up the work of countless other creative humans without permission or payment.
That wasn’t a decision made by the people using these tools, but it can take the shine off any excitement about the results – at least until fair licensing (including fair distribution of any payments to musicians by the rightsholders signing deals) is standard practice.
Still, the Prose AI Music Creators Accelerator demo day did provide some optimism for a future where we can refocus on what humans can make and so with these technologies.
“This is not push-button music. This is iteration, refinement, artistry, learning new skills, combining AI with traditiona instruments, producing AI video, mastering social media, and so much more,” said Miller during the livestream.
“These artists are building real intellectual property. Brands that go beyond music into licensing, gaming, immersive experiences and more.”
“While this may have started as a little bit of an experiment for me to see if there were venture-style opportunities in AI music, it ended as kind of an obsession! I am now 100% convinced that AI creators are the future of media, of brands, and of the creative industries… passionate humans who are creating real art.”
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