Aja@100

 

Patti Mitsui, the model for the Aja cover (1998)

Imagine it's fall 2077, and you're a songwriter and you're going to record an album that's going to use session players. 100 years ago, the band Steely Dan started to record their album Aja using all session musicians. Now, all the session musicians are AI, and you have hundreds of different players that you can choose from. The cost is about the same as it was 100 years ago, around a quarter of a million dollars. 50 years before that in 2025, in the early days of AI-generated music, there was a heated controversy about using samples and stems of players and vocalists without their permission. Ultimately, something was worked out, and anybody who wanted to use any kind of AI application had to pay either a blanket fee or performance royalties. But the question always remained in the early days who those people actually were. Was it Steve Vai playing on your record? Was the voice on your record Alanis Morissette, was it a Carly Simon sample, or was it an actress like Emma Stone? The other question for some people was that even if you could pay someone to play like Steve Vai on your song, is it the sound you really want? So if you subscribe to an AI music app and they have different levels of artists that you could use, perhaps none of the options really suit what you want to do creatively, and you're having to make creative decisions that you really don't want to make but you're forced to because it's a top-down environment: you don't really have a complete 360 view of the possibilities. You might have 90 or even 45. In 1977, when Steely Dan was recording Aja, they had complete creative control, and they could audition and hire as many session players as they needed in order to meet their creative objectives. Historically, it turned out extremely well; it's an album that people are still listening to in 2077. But it never could really be recreated because the old system couldn't be replicated because the skills weren't there. There are not many musicians in 2077 who can play like they did in 1977. Just like in 2025, there aren’t many musicians who could play like they could play in 1955, 1965, or 1975. So it's a continuous decline of skill while the technological development ramps up in the opposite direction. What goes missing is soul and creativity. It's unlikely that it could still exist in 2077 when everyone is wondering if we could make it to next year.