The fear is justified: professional mixing can sterilize a song. Where the energy of a recording actually lives, and how to choose a mixer who will protect it.

There is a moment in the recording of Heroes where David Bowie steps back from the microphone. He had been singing close in, quiet and controlled. Then he moved back further, past the point where most engineers would have considered the microphone usable. Then further again. By the third position he was standing near the wall of the room, twenty feet from the microphone, almost shouting into the space of the studio rather than into the capsule directly. What Tony Visconti had

AI can now make music sound finished very quickly. Tools like Suno can create complete songs with vocals, lyrics, and production from a text prompt. Streaming platforms are also seeing a major rise in synthetic music. Deezer has reported that fully AI-generated tracks now make up a large share of its daily uploads. That does not mean human music is becoming less important. It means the opposite. When polished music becomes easier to make, the value moves away from simple poli