Will AI Ever Make Good Music?
The Sam Sanders Show
KCRW & Sam Sanders
4.9 • 709 Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Solomon Ray is the hottest new voice in Gospel music, but there’s a catch. He’s not real.
Sam chats with Andrew R. Chow, a correspondent for Time where he covers technology. They break down the rise of AI in the music industry and how human artists are fighting back. Are streamers doing anything to filter out tracks made by machines? What can listeners do to avoid AI slop? Plus, why it’s getting harder to identify if a song is human made or not.
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The Sam Sanders Show is a production of KCRW and Sam Sanders Productions.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey listeners, it is the season of giving. |
| 0:03.0 | Get that warm, fuzzy feeling. |
| 0:05.1 | Make a donation, pick out some cozy KCRW merch, or send meals to local food banks. |
| 0:11.1 | Donate now at kCRW.com slash give. |
| 0:15.5 | Hey, y'all, Sam Sanders here. |
| 0:16.9 | Thank you so much for checking out my show. |
| 0:19.3 | Let's start this episode with a song. |
| 0:22.3 | Soul to the world, let the rhythm roll. |
| 0:26.9 | Let that light down deep in your soul. |
| 0:31.4 | This song is called Soul to the World. |
| 0:34.6 | It's by a Christian recording artist named Solomon Ray. |
| 0:39.0 | Catchy, no? A little soul to the world. It's by a Christian recording artist named Solomon Ray. Catchy, no? So late last month, Solomon Ray became the number one artist on iTunes top 100 Christian and Gospel albums chart. |
| 0:58.9 | That's a big deal. |
| 1:00.5 | So big of a deal that the outlet Christianity today covered the story with the following headline. |
| 1:07.4 | Quote, the current number one Christian artist has no soul. |
| 1:12.5 | Yeah, they said this guy has no soul because Solomon Ray is an AI artist, not a real person at all. |
| 1:21.7 | I keep seeing stories like this, more and more AI artists making AI music and that AI music is getting more and more popular. |
| 1:30.3 | I wanted to figure out just how scared of this stuff I should be as someone who loves and admires real music and real musicians. |
| 1:38.0 | So I called up Andrew R. Chow to talk all this out. |
| 1:41.7 | Andrew covers AI for Time Magazine. |
| 1:46.7 | Andrew, hi, how are you? |
| 1:48.6 | Hey, Sam. It's good to be here. |
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