Retired Hobbyist Launches Bold Weekly Album Project Using AI Songwriting Tools
illi News/10305495

CAMBRIDGE, U.K. - illiNews -- Cambridge, UK  Retired enterprise developer and lifelong hobbyist songwriter David Harrington is shaking up the music world from his home studio in Cambridge. Under the artist name Machine Soul Collective, Harrington is using advanced AI tools as creative co-writers to write, produce, and release a fully coherent album, in a variety of genres, every single week—a pace virtually unheard of in the traditional music industry.

"I use AI as a creative tool to assist in my songwriting," Harrington explains. "It's like working with the most polite, talented, and well-informed co-writer you will ever meet."

Drawing from a personal archive of lyrics spanning over 35 years, Harrington fuses his past self with future-facing technology. He collaborates with AI tools to shape emotionally rich and musically adventurous work, often recycling and reframing lyrics often written decades ago.

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"The lyrics are mostly my own or come from collaborators," he notes. "It's been very eye-opening to revisit words I wrote when I was a completely different person."

So why release an album every week? For Harrington, it's part artistic experiment, part technological statement.

"I'm convinced the general public still doesn't fully grasp what this technology is capable of—or how transformative it will be," he says. "So I decided to make the point as graphically as possible: by doing the unthinkable."

Albums released under the Machine Soul Collective name are already available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and other major streaming platforms.

And while some industry voices claim AI-generated music lacks emotional resonance, Harrington challenges that idea outright.

"I have no desire to take anyone's livelihood," he clarifies. "But I strongly disagree with recent comments by prominent pop stars who say you can't get emotion into AI music. You can. My output proves it. Have a listen—see if you can tell the difference."

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The project raises a provocative question for the modern music industry: If a retired hobbyist can create and release high-quality albums weekly, what does that mean for the future of mainstream music production?

"Does the music business have a big problem?" Harrington muses. "Well—yes. It really does."

www.machinesoulcollective.com
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0nBWvb4v45GYOo6FoQMU6X?si=Ri_XmaowSJCoUPDBsvJ7fQ