A Critical Review of Charlie Puth's AI-Powered Music Production Course

gabi belle

Summary:

This video critically reviews Charlie Puth's updated AI-powered music production course. The course, now an app-only experience, has significantly increased in price to $449/year, with a deceptive "80% off" discount. The original course's peer-reviewed feedback has been replaced by an "AI coach" that provides generic, unhelpful, and often inaccurate feedback, failing to understand musical terminology or the submitted audio. Charlie Puth's public stance on AI in music is contradictory, as he endorses AI tools like Moises while simultaneously emphasizing the irreplaceable "imperfections" of human-made music. The video concludes that the course is a scam, overpriced, and its AI features are useless, representing a trend of misusing "accessibility" to justify generative AI that undermines genuine artistic creation.

Charlie Puth Music Class [00:00]

Initial Impressions and Advertising [02:15]

• The video begins by introducing Charlie Puth's music course, now rebranded with an "AI twist."
• The original course, taken by the creator three years prior, was criticized for being unhelpful for both beginners and experts, despite its initial price of $270.

  

• The updated course is advertised at $449 a year, with a supposed "80% off" discount for returning students, bringing the price to $100.

  

  • This pricing strategy is highlighted as a common tactic where companies inflate prices to appear to offer perpetual sales.

    

  • The course's marketing repeatedly emphasized the "personalized AI feedback."

    

    

• The advertising claims the course is for "everyone of all skill levels," which the creator identifies as a red flag for music production.

  

  

User Experience with the App [05:16]

• The course is now exclusively available through an app, removing online access, which the creator notes as a downgrade in user experience.

  

  

• Interacting with the "AI coach" chatbot felt clunky and slow, with generic messages about "planning your day."

  

  

• A major practical issue is the mobile-only format, as music production is primarily done on computers, making audio file uploads inconvenient.

  

• The AI coach struggled with musical terminology, using "parts" instead of "tracks" and promoting expensive plugins like "Fab Filter Pro Q" which cost hundreds of dollars, making it inaccessible for beginners.

  

  

  

Course Content and Value [06:49]

• The creator notes that many lessons in the new app are the same as the original course, contradicting the promise of a "totally new and personalized experience."

  

• The overall quality of the course has deteriorated, with the creator labeling it as a "scam" due to the doubled price for the same content and a worse experience.
• The AI feedback provided for a sample track was vague, highly generic, and filled with praise that didn't align with the actual submitted music.

  

  

  

  • For example, the AI praised "vocal runs and pitch are spot-on" and a "sound design touch at the end" when the submitted track had neither.

    

• The previous course had peer-reviewed feedback, which, while sometimes "the blind leading the blind," was at least human and specific, unlike the current AI feedback.

  

Hands-on with the AI Coach [10:00]

• The creator attempts to follow the AI's instructions to create an "initial track" with "three to five parts."
• The AI coach responds with effusive, generic praise, claiming the track "channelled Charlie Puth's style" and that its "vocal runs and pitch are spot-on," despite minimal vocals and no complex runs.

  

• When asked for a 12-bar verse, the AI offers to draft one based on the "AI with no heart idea," essentially doing the creative work for the user.

  

• The AI generated lyrics like "Binary emotions, but I'm missing you," which the creator found nonsensical and not "clever" as the AI claimed.

  

• After making the suggested changes, the AI again provided overly positive and unspecific feedback, praising the "clever and catchy" lines it had generated itself.

  

• The AI feedback also made references to "console sound" effects that were not present in the user's audio, indicating its inability to accurately parse the input.

  

Charlie Puth and AI [19:50]

Puth's Contradictory Stance [19:50]

• The creator expresses disappointment over Charlie Puth's apparent endorsement of the AI-powered course, initially believing he wouldn't support such a product.
• News articles reveal Charlie Puth joined Moises, an AI music creation platform, as Chief Music Officer, indicating his direct involvement in AI music technology.

  

• Puth's statements promote AI as a "tool" to "help artists learn, explore, and bring their ideas to life," and claim it "opens up possibilities that used to take hours or expensive studio setups."

  

• This contrasts sharply with his TikTok videos where he emphasizes that AI will "never completely take over human-made music" due to its inability to replicate "imperfections" and "heart."

  

Critique of Moises and "Ethical AI" [20:40]

• The creator challenges Puth's "accessibility argument" for AI, stating that existing tools like MIDI and human-made plugins already offer affordable ways to create music without expensive setups.
  • An example of an expensive hardware synthesizer:

    

  • An example of an affordable software plugin:

    

• The video argues that generative AI bypasses the creative process by doing "the meaningful and fun parts for us," which is the "antithesis of art."
• Moises is marketed as "ethical AI" because it allegedly trains its models on "licensed and ethically sourced songs" and doesn't "create an entire song at the click of a button," but rather generates "instrument parts one at a time."

  

  • The creator exposes this as a semantic trick, arguing that generating individual stems still constitutes generative AI making music for you, just at a slower pace.

    

    

    

  • This is contrasted with using sample libraries like Splice, where humans still curate and actively integrate pre-recorded sounds, maintaining a creative choice.
• Charlie Puth's claim that "every musician I know is using Moises" is mocked as an exaggeration, similar to outdated marketing claims.
  • Charlie Puth is also promoting a remix contest for his song through Moises.

    

    

• The core criticism is that using AI to generate ideas or stems, even if later refined by a human, fundamentally undermines genuine human expression and the creative process.

Charlie Puth's Public Image [30:32]

• The creator expresses personal disappointment in Charlie Puth, having followed his career since 2010 and acknowledging his talent.

  

• Puth's contradictory statements on AI, promoting its use while simultaneously dismissing its artistic value due to lack of "imperfections," create a confusing and hypocritical public image.
• It is highlighted that Puth himself brought up AI in a radio interview, unprompted, to defend it, further illustrating his conflicted position.
• The video concludes by reiterating that the AI coaching in his course is useless and that the entire product is a scam, urging viewers not to waste money on it.