What happens to the actual working musicians when streaming platforms turn into infinite vending machines for AI-generated filler? Streaming already pays artists fractions of a cent per stream. Now you want to dump unlimited, algorithmically-produced songs into that same pot? Every stream an AI track gets is money and attention pulled away from someone who actually bled for their art. It's not about whether the songs sound good enough — a lot of them will. It's about whether we're okay turning music into a content farm where human livelihoods are competing against software that can output a million tracks overnight. That's not innovation, that's cultural erosion.

The other side is worried about sentient AI taking over someday, but that misses the point entirely. The harm isn't in some future robot uprising, it's happening right now, today, with dumb, non-sentient algorithms spitting out infinite tracks. Streaming already pays artists fractions of a cent, and we're supposed to let software flood that same pool with unlimited filler? Every AI stream is a human musician's paycheck disappearing. The sentience debate is a distraction. We don't need to wait for AI to become conscious to recognize that turning music into a content farm erases the culture we actually care about.

So the idea that AI helps artists get a cashflow is exactly backwards. If human artists are already getting paid fractions of a cent, flooding the platforms with millions of AI tracks just dilutes that pool further. The listener might not know it's AI, but the money still gets spread thinner, and real musicians still lose. The fact that artists aren't paid what they're worth isn't a reason to hand the job to software — it's an argument to fix how streaming pays humans. AI doesn't solve the pay problem; it makes it worse by competing with people for scraps.