AI is blowing up music. How should the Grammys handle it?

Today I’m talking with Harvey Mason Jr., who is CEO of the Recording Academy — that’s the outfit that puts on the Grammy Awards. I last talked to Harvey in 2024, when it was obvious that generative AI would upend the music industry, but still not exactly clear how that would happen. Well, it’s been 18 months since that conversation, and you’re going to hear Harvey say that AI is now “omnipresent” in music production. And Harvey knows what he’s talking about — he is himself a legendary producer who’s worked with everyone from Janet Jackson to Beyoncé. Harvey has said that every session he’s been in recently has had AI in it, and I really wanted to know what that meant — what kinds of tools are musicians using, in what way, and what kind of music is it making for us? Is it any good? Verge subscribers, don’t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. Head here . Not a subscriber? You can sign up here . Because, as it stands, there’s an exponential increase in the rate of AI music creation. Streaming platform Deezer reports that more than 50,000 AI-generated songs are being uploaded every day . All that AI-generated music is getting harder to identify and filter out, while at the same time, tools like Suno have become mainstream parts of the creative process for musicians of all kinds. So I really wanted to know how Harvey experiences all of that and balances his role running the Grammy Awards, especially since the Recording Academy’s rules say that AI music isn’t eligible for the industry’s highest honors. There’s a lot going on in this one. Harvey and I also talked about the Grammys moving to Disney after years on CBS and what it means to reach new younger audiences with award shows in the age of TikTok. If you’re a Decoder listener, you know that I’m always saying that whatever happens to the music industry happens to everything else five years later, and this conversation really underlined that for me. Okay, Harvey Mason Jr., the CEO of the Recording Academy, on the future of AI and music. Here we go. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Harvey Mason Jr., you’re a songwriter, you’re a producer, and you’re the CEO of the Recording Academy. Welcome back to Decoder . Thank you. Good to be here, man. I’m excited to talk to you. It’s been about a year and a half since you were on the show. A lot has happened in a year and a half. I actually just want to start with a lightning round of the Decoder questions. I ask every CEO the same question, but I have so much on my list that I’m just going to do a check-in on whether these things have changed. You’re the CEO of the Recording Academy, and that’s the organization that puts on the Grammys. You run MusiCares for Charity. It’s the social support system for most of the musicians in the United States. How is the Recording Academy structured? How many people work there, and has it changed at all in the past year and a half? It’s definitely changed. We continue to grow and progress and try to do more, reach more people. As you said, we serve music and all the people that make it in a lot of different ways through our Grammy organization, which includes the Grammy Museum, MusiCares, as you mentioned, our advocacy efforts in DC, working with state lawmakers around the country, and then of course the Grammy show. And so we’re a little over 300 people, so it’s not a massive organization, but we punch above our weight, and we do a lot of work, and we’re very active. The way that it’s changed is that I think we’re doing a good job of keeping up with the changes that are happening, and that is nonstop, especially with technology, new styles of delivering music, creating music, and consuming music. And then also trying to make sure that we’re staying in tune or relevant with what’s happening in music genres, things that are happening. New popularity comes up. People are consuming different styles of music, music from different parts of the world. All those are things that are ever-changing, and I love that our organization is moving quickly and staying ahead of a lot of those things. Are you investing more on the policy side, on the production side, where you’re saying you’re changing? What part specifically is growing? Well, one of the things that is really going to make a big change is our partnership with Disney at ABC. We were at CBS for 50-something years. And so, for the first time this year, we will be with Disney, on ABC. That gives us the ability to do so much more, as you said, investing in content and storytelling. We have more opportunities for using our Grammy brand and to tell music stories in different ways — documentaries, scripted, and other forms of music content, because Disney, as our partner, has an appetite for more of that than we had previously. So that will be a change. We’ve created Grammy