New Delhi, Oct. 6 -- THE MUSIC industry is no stranger to technological upheaval. From vinyl to cassettes to CDs to streaming, the recording and selling of music has been in a state of constant revolution. The shift to streaming shook the industry hardest. After the rise of illicit file-sharing in the Napster era, which eventually gave way to legal streaming, it took more than 20 years for revenue to return, even in nominal terms, to the level of the 1990s (see chart 1). Generative artificial intelligence brings a new age of disruption. It threatens to transform the whole process of making music itself.

Music made by AI is already making its presence felt, in the zeitgeist as "slop" as well as in the charts. There is more dross than ever...