I Used AI to Write Background Music for a Month. It's... Complicated.

March 11, 2026 · by Jamie Park

I run a YouTube channel that needs 3-4 pieces of background music per week. Stock music subscriptions run $15-30/month and everything starts sounding the same after a few months. So I tried AI music generation for a month. Here's what actually happened.

The good part

For background music — the kind that sits behind a voiceover at 20% volume — AI is perfect. I type "calm ambient electronic, 90 BPM, no vocals" and get something usable in 15 seconds. It's not winning any Grammys, but it doesn't need to. It needs to fill silence without being distracting, and AI handles that well.

The variety is also better than I expected. Stock music libraries feel repetitive because they are — the same session musicians recording in the same style. AI generates something genuinely different each time, even with similar prompts.

The bad part

Any time the music needs to be the focus — intros, transitions, emotional moments — AI falls apart. It doesn't understand musical tension and release. It can't build toward a climax. It just generates pleasant sounds that go nowhere.

Loops are also a problem. AI tracks sound fine for 30 seconds but start to feel aimless beyond that. Real music has structure — verse, chorus, bridge. AI music has... continuation.

The copyright question nobody can answer

Can you get a copyright claim on AI-generated music? Theoretically no, because it's not copying any specific song. In practice, I've seen zero claims on any of my AI-generated tracks across 40+ YouTube videos. But the legal landscape is still evolving, and nobody wants to be the test case.

My approach: I use AI music for YouTube and podcast background. For anything commercial (client work, paid content), I stick with properly licensed stock music. Better safe.

The verdict

AI music saved me about $20/month in stock music costs and maybe 2 hours/month searching through libraries. For background and ambient use, it's a no-brainer. For anything that needs to actually be good music, hire a human.