Timbaland Starting An AI Record Label Is Bad For The Music Business

At his best, one of the things that made Timbaland’s music so great was the way it oozed personality. 

Even now in 2025, his beats from the 90s and 2000s still sound ahead of their time. Splicing baby coos, Godzilla shrieks, and mouth-made percussion into his creations made for some of the most unique and unpredictable productions ever. So it’s disappointing to see him making decisions that will have a negative impact on the industry he’s spent decades making worthwhile contributions to.

Timbaland drew ire from music fans this month when he announced plans to launch an artificial intelligence (AI) record label, with the AI artist TaTa being his first project. The goal, he said, is to create a new genre called “A-Pop.” This announcement came after months of hosting livestream sessions where he’d encourage artists to submit their music, so fans quickly became suspicious. 

It initially seemed that he was sincerely seeking to help and collaborate with independent artists, but then, he was suspected of simply using these submissions as fodder for his algorithm, and it appears as though those fears have merit. A producer named K-Fresh claimed that Timbaland uploaded his music for a recent stream without giving him credit. Timbaland has since issued an apology on his Instagram page, with a statement accompanied by his legal counsel.

Technology has been used in music before, and to be fair, it’s been controversial in some of those instances, too. Sampling uses technology to help producers manipulate previous recordings to create new ones, and autotune allows artists to tweak the pitches of their voices to sound more on-key. But Timbaland’s business partner, Mikey Shulman, the CEO of the AI Music company Suno, offers a disturbing, pathetic explanation for why his company is making a positive contribution.

“It’s not really enjoyable to make music now. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice,” he said. “You need to get really good at an instrument, or really good at a piece of production software. People don’t enjoy the majority of time they spend making music.” When the interviewer compared music to running, and to the perseverance that comes with going through highs and lows before embracing it, Shulman retorted. “Most people drop out of that pursuit because it’s hard. I think that the people that you know that run, this is a highly biased selection of the population that fell in love with it.”

There’s a major difference here, though. More runners would contribute to a higher number of healthy people, and health is a major problem in America and around the world. Music is already incredibly accessible. There’s lots of free and inexpensive software to create your own music from scratch, and various outlets to get your art to fans and connect with other musicians. There have been plenty of artists who start out making music in their parents’ basements on free laptop software before ending up with sustainable careers in music. Thousands of songs and albums hit streaming services every week, and fans have more access and more choices than ever before.

There are definitely problems that the music industry has to deal with, but a lack of “enjoyability” isn’t one of them. If you don’t like making music or you aren’t dedicated to practicing to get better, it’s perfectly okay to just find something else that you enjoy doing. Music isn’t a life requirement for you to participate in. There are plenty of other activities and passions that the world has to offer, and finding the pursuits that resonate with you is one of the most gratifying journeys that life can offer. 

But make no mistake, this incarnation of artificial intelligence only helps the record labels and tech companies that stand to make money from it. It doesn’t help artists; it doesn’t help fans, and it doesn’t enrich the culture — whether that’s hip-hop or the wider world of music creation — at all. 

I’m not the person who tries to diss all labels indiscriminately, but many of these companies have already shown their lack of acknowledgment of artists’ humanity over decades by the way they’ve exploited their craft without concern for their well-being; this is just another example of them showing that they can’t be relied upon to actually protect the industry they need to be invested in. While I’m not surprised to see a corporation be heartless, it’s especially disappointing to see Timbaland, an artist and producer who has such a powerful cultural cache, take this stance. In an interview with Apple Music’s Rap Review Live, rapper Russ describes it all as “weirdly dystopian.” 

“From the conversations I’ve seen him have, it’s coming off like the motivation behind signing AI artists is control. You’re not looking for artists; you’re looking for machines to follow orders,” he said. “You’re trying to eliminate the messiness, aka the beauty of humanity, and you’re looking at artists like they’re inconvenient employees. You’re doing this because you want compliance, which isn’t collaboration, it’s not creativity, it’s control. At that point, you’re not building art, you’re building product.”

We all know that artificial intelligence isn’t going anywhere, so avoiding it in music altogether is probably unrealistic. In his IG Live conversation with Timbaland, Young Guru said that the important thing is to make sure that its use is regulated, so that the artists from whom these algorithms are stealing from are being properly compensated. Otherwise, not only is technology replacing human musicians, but the humans whom the algorithms are emulating are being cut out of the equation as well. Let Guru tell it, Artificial Intelligence can put the entire artist ecosystem at risk. 

The most inspiring idea that I’ve heard so far is regarding Beanie Sigel, one of the greatest rappers from the 2000s. After serving a two-year prison sentence that began in 2012, the former Roc-A-Fella Records signee was shot twice in 2014. In an interview from July 2023, he revealed that after suffering a collapsed lung in the shooting, he woke up from a coma and pulled a breathing tube out of his throat, permanently damaging his voice as a result. He’s spoken about using AI to recreate the old voice that fans fell in love with, while still writing his own lyrics. “Y’all want, what they say, the ‘old Beans’ back? ‘Cause the pen’s still there,” he said in the interview. “It’s just the voice.” 

That may still be controversial in its own right, because some fans will believe that it’d be better to use his current, authentic voice. But rap fans like myself would be open to uses like that. That feels closer to reconstructive surgery, an area where technology is solving a problem caused by tragedy. Beanie was one of the most authentic, soul-baring lyricists that rap had to offer, easily hanging with his label boss Jay-Z on their songs together. It isn’t only a blessing for rap to give him his voice back, but a legitimate opportunity to channel the humanity that made him such a powerful artist in the first place. 

But so far, there have been more negative examples than positive ones. FN Meka, an AI rapper project released in 2020 that sold NFTs, got “signed” to Capitol Records before being dropped from the label after playing into disgusting racial stereotypes. Two years ago, a song created by AI versions of Drake and Weeknd grabbed millions of views and could have garnered a Grammy nomination if the Recording Academy hadn’t decisively banned it from the field. 

Meanwhile, in March, Timbaland had the nerve to say that AI “is the only entity that embodies a genuine soul right now.” Even if artificial intelligence in music is on the way, Timbaland doesn’t look like he’ll be on the right side of it. 

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