Music Appreciation

After decades in the industry, Corabi has been a part of the various changes in the entertainment industry, and the explosion of social media. Name and likeness are out there, so anybody can just go in and create content or music that can be mistaken as real online, and it takes away from the authenticity and connection that true artists write and perform. Corabi describes his thoughts as a double‑edged sword. “I recently heard about an artist called Breaking Rust dominating country streaming charts—but the artist didn’t exist. That bothered me. Artists like Chris Stapleton and countless others spend hours crafting songs, and meanwhile, a computer-generated act tops the charts. That’s frustrating. But my wife pointed out that it might push fans toward live shows. People question everything online now—whether it’s real or AI. Maybe audiences will crave authentic performances more than ever. That perspective made sense to me. I’ve used AI for small things, like designing a logo and it was incredible for that. But creating entire fake artists who rack up millions of streams? That feels unfair. Real musicians pour hours into perfecting a hook or lyric, and AI can siphon income away from them. That’s the part I struggle with,” Corabi says. “But then my wife made a point. We were talking about all this AI stuff, and she goes, ‘You know what, though? I think this is going to make people want to go see live shows.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ And she goes, ‘Because everything you look at now, you question. Whether it’s on Instagram, Facebook, any social media—whatever. Even when they report something on the news, they’re like, ‘Well, we haven’t checked yet to figure out if this is AI or not.’ You know what I mean?” And she goes, ‘Yeah, I think it’s going to drive up ticket prices because people are going to be so tired of the AI that they’re going to want to see a real live band.’ And I was like, ‘that’s awesome.’ I never thought of it that way, but okay—I’ll take that. That makes perfect sense, ultimately. I used it to create my logo. It was hilarious because somebody called—my agent called me—and went, ‘Hey, we need a logo for your John Ian & Friends.’ And I go, ‘What do you mean?’ And he goes, ‘Just something I can put up on the website for anybody that wants to book you.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, okay. Give me a couple of days, and I’ll figure it out.’”