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SubmitHub Just Drew the Line on AI Music - And I’m Glad They Did

SubmitHub is officially putting its foot down on predominantly AI-generated music, and honestly, as someone who still enjoys the sweat, frustration and occasional accidental feedback of making music the old fashioned way, I’m pretty happy about it.

By Chris RoditisMusicngear Lead Editor

Well, Well, Well... Look Who’s Drawing the Line

If you’ve spent any time in a home studio lately, you probably know the feeling. You spend three days tweaking a snare, moving one stupid note two milliseconds at a time, and then you open your feed and somebody has apparently made six synthwave albums before breakfast.

So when an email landed in my inbox from Jason at SubmitHub saying they’re officially banning tracks that rely heavily on generative AI, I thought, well, fair enough.

Spotify recently announced it’s cutting “AI Personas” out of its algorithmic recommendations, and now SubmitHub is basically saying they don’t want to become another dumping ground for completely AI-generated music either.

And I have to say, I like it.

We don’t normally stop the gear talk here at musicngear.com to celebrate platform policy updates. There’s guitars to talk about, pedals to argue over and approximately 14,000 people who will tell you your favorite microphone is wrong. But this one is actually worth talking about.

There’s a Difference Between Using AI and Letting AI Make the Music

Before the techno-optimists arrive in my inbox, no, this isn't a ban on technology.

Nobody is taking away your smart EQ, your AI noise reduction plugin or whatever clever little tool you’re using to fix the vocals you recorded at 2 in the morning. AI-assisted music is still allowed, and that makes sense.

The problem is music where the machine is doing basically all of it.

You know the kind. Type “sad indie acoustic song about a cat who misses his owner”, click generate, wait a few seconds and congratulations, apparently you’re a songwriter now.

There’s obviously a difference between using technology to help with your own ideas and asking a machine to come up with the ideas, perform them, produce them and then handing you an mp3 at the end.

A prompt is not an instrument. Well, at least I don’t think it is.

And that distinction is probably going to become more important, not less, over the next few years.

Because Curators Already Have Enough Music To Deal With

There is an absolutely ridiculous amount of music being uploaded to streaming services every day.

Curators, bloggers, playlist owners, radio people, everyone who accepts submissions is already dealing with a mountain of tracks. The last thing they need is an endless supply of music that can be generated almost instantly and submitted in bulk.

And this is where I think the issue gets a bit bigger than just “AI music is bad”.

Imagine you’re running a playlist and you get 200 submissions. You actually sit there and listen to them. Then you discover that a large chunk of them were generated by somebody who spent about 30 seconds making each one.

That’s a pretty crappy use of your time.

Meanwhile, there are artists recording vocals in bedrooms, musicians playing through cheap amps, producers spending a whole night fixing one mix, and bands recording their fourth take because the drummer messed up the ending.

That stuff takes time. Sometimes way too much time.

But that’s also kind of the point.

SubmitHub drawing a line here gives curators at least some protection from the coming flood. It doesn’t solve the whole problem, obviously. But it says that not everything should be treated as equal just because it can be uploaded to the same website.

A Small Win For The Flesh-and-Blood Musician

It’s pretty easy to get cynical about the music industry right now.

Streaming payouts aren't exactly making independent musicians rich, algorithms decide more and more about what people hear, and everybody seems to be competing for three seconds of somebody’s attention.

So seeing a platform say, actually, we don't want completely machine-made tracks here, is refreshing.

Not because AI is evil or because musicians should go back to recording everything onto tape.

I love technology. We all do. Half the gear we talk about on this site wouldn't even exist without it.

But there is something to be said for a person actually making something.

A singer doing another vocal take because the first one sucked. A guitarist trying to get that one riff right. Somebody spending two hours trying to find the source of a horrible hum in their signal chain.

It's messy and inefficient and sometimes incredibly frustrating.

And yeah, it can also be really good.

So if you're sitting in your studio right now at some ridiculous hour, trying to finish a mix, tuning vocals or wondering why the hell your guitar suddenly sounds like it’s plugged into a microwave, keep going.

That effort still counts for something.

The Bottom Line

At musicngear.com, our position on this one is pretty simple: we’re fully behind SubmitHub’s new policy.

We like gear. We like software. We like new technology and we’re certainly not going to pretend AI isn't going to be part of music production going forward.

But there’s a line somewhere between using technology to make your music and letting the technology make the music for you.

For now, SubmitHub seems to be drawing that line in a fairly sensible place.

So kudos to Jason and the SubmitHub team for taking a stand. Hopefully it gives some of the people reviewing submissions a little less junk to wade through.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a mysterious hum somewhere in my singnal chain to find.

I’ve already blamed three cables and one power supply.

It’s probably me.

Read more about it at Submithub

About Chris Roditis

Chris Roditis has been an active musician since 1995 in various bands and projects across a variety of genres ranging from acoustic, electronic to nu metal, british rock and trip hop. He has extensive experience as a mixing engineer and producer and has built recording studios for most of the projects he has been involved with. His passion for music steered his entrepreneurial skills into founding MusicNGear in 2012.

Contact Chris Roditis at chrisroditis@musicngear.com

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