I’m nearly finished with the first draft of my next novel. (High fiving myself.) It’s a time travel story partly set in the year 2054. Because the main character is a musician and singer/songwriter, one aspect of the story deals with how popular music has changed. In this fictional take on the future, AI has become a major influence in music. So much so, that listeners seek out live shows to try to avoid the “synthetic” sound of a lot of recorded music.

We’ve already experienced a developmen...