Postscript on the Musics of Control

Yinuo Chen

Keywords: gear economy, AI music tools, control, human-machine relations, AI ethics

TL;DR: A study of control in music technology that connects ethical and technical perspectives, situates AI music tools in the gear economy, and proposes an ethically informed design intervention.

Abstract: This paper traces how "control" is socially coded in contemporary music technology, and offers an account of the circuit of control to bridge the conceptual gap between the sociopolitical and the technical. Formally, the paper adopts a triptych that deliberately echoes Deleuze's influential "Postscript" in title and cadence: Historical, Logic, Programming to progress its analysis. The analysis redirects attention from the controllability of intelligent systems to the social formations through which control is allocated and recognized. To frame this shift, the paper theorizes the gear economy—a lens set alongside the much-frequented concept gig economy in sociology—to explain how AI-music tools (e.g., Suno, Udio) are legitimated through existing music gear markets. The claim is coalition rather than addition: AI tools fold into pre-existing markets that price and credential controllability. On this basis, the paper calls for design-oriented ethical interventions that speak to technologists, producer-musicians, and the general public, making the circuit of control visible and reconfigurable, and redirecting control toward humans so that AI music tools augment rather than shrink creative agency.

Submission Number: 16