Last Updated on July 24, 2026 by Christian Adams
Part 1 of a three-part series on the influence of AI and digital technology in music and the rise of push-button monoculture in the arts.
The only sounds in my apartment right now are the Vornado fan on high, the buzz of the fridge, vague construction noise from five floors above, and my cat meowing for no reason except more attention. I’ve come to a point, naturally, I think, where I don’t really listen to music anymore. And I have no desire to make music again. Writing about music is as close as I want to get.
It’s been three years since I’ve listened to music for pleasure or played a musical instrument. Maybe once a month, I’ll get an urge to hear music while cooking or cleaning, and it’s always something old like I Just Can’t Stop It by the English Beat (1980). Otherwise, I listen when it’s necessary (for work) or when one of my friends puts out a new record.
“Musicians don’t quit. They stop when there’s no music left in them.”
– Louis Armstrong
This form of “audio exile” is incredibly common among musicians and artists who spent most their lives dedicated to intensive creativity. We don’t “quit” because quitting implies a dramatic decision. Instead, the desire runs out, the room is so much better when it’s quiet, and we simply stop. If anybody asks, we say, “I just don’t feel like doing it anymore.”
Musicians Don’t Quit
As a self-taught musician who spent 40 years of his life playing in bands, writing and recording songs, trying to “make it” in the industry, I’m done.
Easily one-third of the musicians I know from 30 years ago are still making music. Most of them never stopped. They had ebbs and flows.
I haven’t touched a guitar except to move it across the room. Multiple albums worth of demos from 2020–2023 sit in a folder on my hard drive. Nobody’s ever gonna hear those songs. Another 30–40 ideas linger in the background. All the gear is boxed up and stored out of view. Earlier this year, I sold a bunch of stuff: several guitars, amps, and the drumset. In the past, a sale would have marked a cycle of rebirth. The gear I sold would be replaced with different gear. Not this time.
Throughout the last 35 years or so, I’ve gone through long phases of absolute silence, not unlike this one. Correspondingly, there have been periods when I listened to music all day, every day. Sometimes, I wanted to avoid being influenced by other artists. That’s normal. Sometimes, I felt a general malaise than often crossed over into mild disgust. A lack of inspiration. Also normal.
I’m not saying there’s empirical data available, but there’s something different this time. I understand, with zero ambiguity, that this instance of “audio exile” is not necessarily about me, and I saw it coming from too far away. That’s not normal.
I Don’t Want to Hear It
On the 10th of every month, a calendar event titled “Check the Charts” reminds me to spend half an hour perusing the streaming services and the Billboard Hot 100™️ and the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs charts. I’ll listen to at least 30 seconds of all the latest hot tracks. Today, I heard music by Ariana Grande, Olivia Rodrigo, Ella Langley, Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga, sombr, Taylor Swift, Jason Aldean, Da Baby, Noah Kahan, Temper City, Tame Impala & JENNIE, Malcolm Todd, and Dexter and the Moonrocks.
Last month, the acts included Beartooth, A Perfect Circle, Greta Van Fleet, Sleep Theory, Shinedown, Autumn Kings, Poppy, Five Finger Death Punch, Architects, and more.
I follow this routine because I want to be 1,000% certain that I’m not losing my mind. It’s a form of confirmation bias and my “Grandpa Way” of staying current. I want to be certain that I’ve heard the latest single from The Warning (“Kerosene”) and that’s indeed a wash of overwhelming sadness in the space of my heart where joy used to frolic. And I wonder if I ever really loved music, how could I just stop making and listening to it? How can I tell everybody that I just don’t want to hear it, without a good reason?
The Value of Friction & Limitations
I’m trying very hard not to come off as a “grumpy old man” who hates everything new because it wasn’t made the way he used to make it.
The value of art has always been found in the struggle or the friction and the limitations of the songwriting, musicianship and recording process. By friction, I mean the chemistry and interaction between musical personalities like the competitiveness between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Or the bad juju between David Lee Roth and the Van Halen brothers. Likewise, technical limitations force musicians to work with what they have. Some great lo-fi records were made on 4-track cassette recorders because that’s all they could afford.
When the friction and necessity of resourcefulness are removed, you don’t equalize or liberate creativity—you commodify art into zero-value background noise. You enable people to treat art like ordering a six-piece Chicken McNuggets with BBQ sauce. And it’s been headed in this direction for 35 years.
Bring on the Ambient Noise
I’m turning off the noise because the music industry stopped treating music as art and started treating it as chicken nuggets.1 Modern music has been stripped of everything original and organic. There’s no friction, only crafted perfection. It’s no longer an economy of expression, it’s a fast-food franchise where you roll up on the drive-thru for ready-made slop. Therefore, I’ve decided that silence is becoming the only premium option left.
Ninety percent of my day is ambient noise, especially and specifically in public. I fuckin’ love it. The sounds of the city soothe my soul. And even if I were to hear music intentionally, I rarely if ever use earbuds or headphones because (a) they compromise our situational awareness, and (b) my ears are fried from years of listening through the cans. Anyway, I go to the gym and I’m forced to hear what’s played on the P.A. Sometimes, they play some cool shit, like “X Gon Give It To Ya” by DMX. It’s a jam if you’re gassed on the treadmill.
Sometimes, they play horrific shit like Brendan Boone’s “Beautiful Things”. And that’s when I stop and think, what the fuck happened? How did we get here?
I know what happened.
A 35-Year Trip to the Drive-Thru
The shift from analog to digital recording equipment at the consumer level in the early 1990s is exactly when shit started going south. Digital editing tools like Sound Designer (the ancestor of Pro Tools) and early digital sequencing began dominating the recording process. Suddenly, music was visualized on a computer monitor like a scoreboard. Perfection became cheap. Drums were quantized; every snare drum hit sounded identical. Minor vocals flaws were auto-tuned; performances were chopped and looped. I hated it because the industry began treating music like software. The human x-factor was being systematically flattened or marginalized, and it applied specifically to me and my career in music.
The internet brought the dawn of the MP3, the iPod, and early streaming piracy (Napster/Limewire). And God help us, social media. Music went from a physical artifact you held and respected to a weightless folder of files on a hard drive. Perhaps even worse, anybody could upload their tracks to MySpace, Soundcloud, ReverbNation, et al. and manufacture a “presence” or “following.” When the sheer volume of new “chicken nuggets” exploded on social media platforms, I retreated to the old stuff. I couldn’t run far enough from modern music. The older music still contained the physical air of a room, a band playing together, and actual human limitations.
The No Coincidence Zone
It’s no coincidence that my current phase of audio exile started right around 2023. That’s when generative AI and algorithmic hyper-optimization became unavoidable in nearly all forms of our digital landscape. Consequently, the music industry completed its transformation from a business of art distribution into a dopamine-delivery loop. “Does this hit the exact note you were reaching for?” is the new “Would you like fries with that?“
Part 2 of the series covers the transition from analog to digital technology in the recording industry and the proliferation of the internet and its impacts on the marketplace and artistry.
Footnotes
- The average chicken nugget contains about 40% chicken meat. Weight of Chicken Nuggets Dataset | McDonald’s vs Wendy’s ↩︎
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