AI can now master your music—and it does shockingly well
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)
It was just a stray remark at the end of a guitar lesson last fall.
My teacher is a veteran musician whose band has had both major label and indie record deals, and he loves the analog, the human, the vintage, the imperfect. So it didn't surprise me to learn that he still likes to mix tracks with an old analog board or that he has a long-time "mastering guy" who finalizes the band's albums.
What did surprise me was the comment that he had for some time been testing LANDR, the online music service that offers AI-powered mastering. Pay a monthly fee, upload a well-mixed track, and in a minute, the system spits back a song that hits modern loudness standards and is punched up with additional clarity, EQ, stereo width, and dynamics processing.