Anthony Fantano
Music Critic
The internet’s most influential music critic (The Needle Drop) has made anti-AI-music advocacy part of his brand, publishing an essay titled “AI Music is Evil” and calling uncompensated training “laundering plagiarism.”
In his words
This is evil. This is callousness. This is soullessness personified.
In a way, we’re kind of laundering plagiarism.
Biography
Anthony Fantano (born 1985 in Connecticut) turned a public-radio side project into The Needle Drop, the YouTube channel that made him — by his own half-joking billing — “the internet’s busiest music nerd” and, by most measures, the most influential working music critic. A Fantano score can move a young artist’s career in a way legacy publications no longer can.
“AI Music is Evil”
Fantano has been attacking generative music since the technology arrived. Speaking to KATV around the Senate’s 2023 AI forum on intellectual property, he described AI training on uncompensated artists as plagiarism-laundering, and he has repeatedly argued that nothing has been worked out to get the artists whose music trains these models paid, credited, or even acknowledged.
He is trying to forge a new pathway for himself by cutting corners and selling music fans short by giving us a bunch of AI-generated slop.
His June 2025 essay “AI Music is Evil” aimed that charge at Timbaland, who had launched an AI “artist” named TaTa, and at executives who prefer performers that don’t talk back. Follow-ups like “AI Music Is Still Awful” and his coverage of the fake band Velvet Sundown’s Spotify rise extended the campaign to streaming platforms he says profit from flooding listeners with synthetic filler.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/anthony-fantano