UMG’s Michael Nash Called the “AI vs. Artists” Narrative a Lie. Here’s the Case He Made

Nash also pushed back on the assumption that technically superior AI music tools will automatically produce better music, framing the idea as a category error. “Would Bob Dylan’s music be better if his vocals were perfect?” he asked, before extending the question to Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash, Kurt Cobain, Courtney Barnett, Lana Del Rey, and punk rock generally. The argument cuts to something fundamental about why music resonates with listeners, and Nash grounded it in both poetry and anthropology, referencing poet Robert Creeley’s idea that “art is triumph of content over form” and citing academic research suggesting that music preceded language in human development. “It all relies on the artist and the creative process and their artistic intent,” Nash said.

Srivastava added a practitioner’s perspective that reinforced Nash’s point from a different angle, drawing on direct feedback from Splice’s user base. One of the most striking signals she cited was that artists told the company its tools were “too easy” and that they wanted more creative control, not less. Her broader point was that the right creator tools for AI-assisted music do not yet exist, at least not in the way artists actually need them. “We do not have the right creator tools yet in market that truly allow musicians to tell their stories well, at least in the AI space; we don’t have them,” she said, a frank acknowledgment that the UMG and Splice partnership, announced in December 2025, represents a starting point rather than a finished product. Under that agreement, UMG artists are expected to bring their own sounds directly into Splice’s AI workflows and play an active role in shaping how the tools are built.

Both Nash and Srivastava offered five-year forecasts that converge on the same conclusion from different directions. Nash compared the current moment to the electronic revolution of a century ago and the digital transition of the early 2000s, predicting that AI will produce “a paradigmatic change” in music and the arts. He described a future where artists “populate intelligent ecosystems with incredible, navigable, hyper-personalized experiences for consumers,” driving significant growth in the overall music economy. Srivastava’s prediction was simpler and perhaps more clarifying: within five years, the question of whether music “was made with AI or not” will stop being asked entirely. “It just will be how it’s done,” she said, “just like we don’t talk about ‘is this electricity powering these lights.’” The conversation will move on. What remains to be settled in the meantime is which companies get the business model right, and on whose terms.