Thanks to the rapid rise in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the music industry is seeing many great benefits. From making composition easier to ensuring entire beats can be created from scratch, various tools exist today that can make your musical life more magical. One tool that has come on the market recently is called Google MusicLM.
Given that it has backing from Google, users expect this tool to be extremely powerful. In this review, we will break down our general view of Google MusicLM and whether or not we feel it is ready to be used as part of your musical creations.
What Is Google MusicLM?
Much like the writing and image industries have been rocked by the rise of AI, the music world faces a similar trajectory. New tools are appearing all the time that are designed to make life easier for artists. Well, Google MusicLM is one of the latest tools on the market to offer to do just that.
The tool is part of the Google AI Test Kitchen system, and it first came on the scene in early 2023. In less than a year, Google MusicLM has evolved from a basic prototype to a fairly impressive piece of software.
What is Google MusicLM? It is a tool that can take text prompts and create music. It can quickly create singular sounds, beats, riffs, and (potentially, in time) full tracks by reading your instructions. A text-to-music generation tool sounds like it would be a match made in heaven for many time-strapped artists. Thanks to a database of music that is thousands of hours long – over 280,000 hours - Google MusicLM can take a pretty generic prompt and create interesting samples quickly.
Pros & Cons
PROS | CONS |
100% free to use | A Google account is needed |
Massive variety of sounds created | Not always accurate re: prompts |
Great for producing experimental ideas | Vocals are extremely hit-and-miss |
Ideal for more ‘outside the box’ samples | Lo-fi audio quality can be annoying |
Rapidly improving in accuracy | Lacks fluency for more advanced ideas |
How Does Google MusicLM Actually Work?
Of course, many AI tools are appearing on the market that purport to provide advanced features for free. Does Google MusicLM live up to its stated aim, or is the reality less impressive?
In our view, Google MusicLM has the potential to one day be a polished AI music tool. It can provide a base to work from simply by providing some pretty basic musical prompts. For example, if you were to ask for a “slow, romantic theme”, you would likely receive something rather interesting. All within a matter of moments. Like most AI tools, work is needed to improve accuracy in relation to the request. Sometimes, the end result sounds nothing like what you asked for!
What you are provided with are two 20-second audio clips based on your instructions. This means that you will not be able to spit out a full album of music with a few clicks.
What you do receive, then, is a pair of clips that are royalty-free. This could one day be great for background music in social media content or video games.
What Google MusicLM is not doing is producing production-ready songs. If you’re a musician looking to use AI to create production-ready tracks you’ll need to stick with tried and true tools like Staccato, Fadr, and Landr.
Is Google MusicLM Accurate?
Like most AI tools, at the moment, there is a fair gap in what you ask for from Google MusicLM vs what you get.
After running several tests using numerous prompts, we found that most of the creations were somewhat wide of the mark. For example, simple things like asking for a set number of beats per minute can often feel inconsistent. One sample might meet expectations, but the next will not.
A significant limitation of Google MusicLM is that it cannot create audio that sounds like a real-life artist. So, if you asked for the audio to create vocals that sounded like The Weeknd, for example, it would be impossible for you. Ask for any vocal inclusions, and the results are pretty awful!
Another thing to note about Google MusicLM is that, at the moment, everything feels a touch lo-fi. You might be disappointed if you were hoping to use Google MusicLM to save yourself all the hard work of creating quality music. If you want to create high-quality and crisp audio samples, Google MusicLM is not really ‘there’ yet.
If you are looking for a tool that can create rather unconventional samples – the kind you would not normally create– then Google MusicLM is very useful. If you were hoping to save yourself from having to pick up an instrument or create music from scratch again, you might feel let down.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is MusicLM Available To Use?
A: Yes! Members of the public are able to start using Google MusicLM today. You can access it using the Google AI Test Kitchen website or app. In there, you can find Google MusicLM.
How Can I Use Google MusicLM?
A: Access the Google AI Test Kitchen app for your chosen platform – available on Android and iOS – and you can start using Google MusicLM. You can find a link to the Test Kitchen here.
How To Use MusicLM For Free?
A: Yes, you can start using Google MusicLM for nothing. You do not have to pay to use the Google AI Test Kitchen platform; it is 100% free to use. We are essentially testers for Google, so it should be free!
Is Google MusicLM Available To The Public?
A: The public can now use the Google AI Test Kitchen and, thus, the Google MusicLM app. If you want to use this AI program, log in to your Google account and access MusicLM on the Test Kitchen.
Conclusion
Can Google MusicLM Create Impressive Samples? At the moment, we are not sure. It seems hard to read our prompts if you become even more than slightly specific. It is useful for creating random samples that might offer some inspiration, though!
Basically, think of Google MusicLM – at the moment – as a tool that you can use to pick some random sounds out of thin air. What it produces rarely matches exactly what you have asked for. The approximations, though, can still be pretty impressive. Just do not expect to use Google MusicLM to make your day-to-day music production a minutes-long experience.
The limitations in what Google MusicLM can create are, at present, holding the tool back. Given that it is less than a year old, we fully expect to see Google MusicLM evolve further.
For now, though, Google MusicLM is an interesting addition to the musical world. It won’t put people out of a job anytime soon, but it offers a great place to develop whacky samples and ideas outside of traditional thinking quickly. If nothing else, it is worth trying out!
Dr. Jeffrey Lupker - Co-founder, Staccato
International Speaker & Published Author on Deep Learning & Music.
Dr. Lupker has published peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and has given lectures internationally in the fields of deep learning, machine learning and music. Beyond Staccato and his own research, Dr. Lupker is an active performer on guitar and keyboards and has played across Canada and USA with award winning artists.
