The conversation around AI in music has shifted from curiosity to concern. Machines can now replicate melodies and production styles with remarkable speed, but the real question is whether AI can coexist with us without diminishing music’s true value.
As an A&R professional with over a decade of experience working with numerous artistes across different stages of their careers, Wemimo Folorunsho (Winqy) has witnessed firsthand how true creativity is born. Throughout his career, Winqy has helped shape sounds, refine artistic identities, and guide talents toward records that genuinely reflect who they are. The process has never been purely technical, it is emotional, instinctive, and deeply personal.
No two musicians play the same way. Even with identical sheet music, interpretation changes. A guitarist bends a note because of emotion. A drummer shifts timing because of the room’s energy. These micro decisions define artistry. AI, by contrast, reflects what already exists. It predicts based on the past, it doesn’t imagine new emotional realities.
The real issue isn’t AI itself, it’s how we position it. When machine generated work sits on the same pedestal as human craft, we risk devaluing the time, sacrifice, and vulnerability behind real art. Platforms like Spotify and Apple have a responsibility to clearly distinguish and fairly compensate AI-generated content so human creators aren’t forced to compete with machine volume.
AI should remain a tool, one that supports creativity, not replaces it. The future of music depends on protecting the soulful, imperfect, and deeply human elements that made it powerful in the first place.
