Light Box

Investigation into how AI is reshaping music creation and musicians AI summary

Mark Henry Phillips & Radiotopia Visit website › Music · EN · 11 episodes · latest 2026-11-05

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What it is about

Mark Henry Phillips has spent twenty years making music for a living. Then one night he typed a few words into an AI music generator and it did his job better than he ever could. In ten seconds. Basically for free. Light Box is what happened next: a season-long investigation into what AI is doing to music and the people who love it. What happens when a machine can do the thing you thought made you, you?

Publisher’s own description, taken unchanged from the podcast feed.
2026

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Latest episodes

9. Is AI Illegal?

2026-11-05 · 55 min · Season 1, episode 9

Every AI music generator was built on other people’s songs, nearly all of them, taken without asking and without paying. The AI companies say that’s fair use, the same rule that lets a critic quote a book. Musicians say…
8. In Their Skin: The AI Beatles

2026-10-27 · 49 min · Season 1, episode 8

I found recordings online of the Beatles in 1969, goofing around at rehearsal and drifting in and out of their old songs. They totally sounded like they could be the real “Nagra Tapes” from the Get Back sessions. But...…
7. James and the Copper Wire

2026-10-20 · 58 min · Season 1, episode 7

AI music is supposed to be what ends musicians’ careers. For James Hinton, aka The Range, it might be what saves his. For a decade, he made his music out of strangers’ voices on YouTube, until he couldn’t anymore. On…
6. UDIO: A Post-Mortem?

2026-10-14 · 47 min · Season 1, episode 6

For a lot of people, Udio was the AI music app where they finally got to make the songs they’d been hearing in their heads for years. Then one night last fall, Udio settled its lawsuit with Universal Music Group.…
5. Slop (Who Is This For?)

2026-10-06 · 56 min · Season 1, episode 5

A year ago, I was driving my daughter home from preschool when Spotify autoplayed a song that cut out mid-note. It was AI, and whoever made it hadn't bothered to fix the ending. So I tracked down the 19-year-old behind…
4. The Critic (Marc Ribot)

2026-09-29 · 42 min · Season 1, episode 4

Marc Ribot has played guitar for Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Norah Jones, Robert Plant, and about a thousand other people. He's also one of the most outspoken critics of AI music. He calls Suno and Udio plagiarism…
3. The Hit Factory (Part II: Steal From Everyone) E

2026-09-22 · 42 min · Season 1, episode 3

A producer with 13 billion streams posts on Reddit about how much he loves making music with AI and... gets banned. We have the conversation that wasn't allowed there. In Part II of our hitmaking story, Mickey Shiloh…
2. The Hit Factory (Part I: No Songs Left Behind)

2026-09-15 · 52 min · Season 1, episode 2

There's already a #1 hit made with AI. You just don't know which one. In this episode, we go inside the world of professional songwriting camps -- where hits for the biggest artists are assembled by rooms of strangers.…
1. Inside the Black Box

2026-09-15 · 49 min · Season 1, episode 1

Composer Mark Henry Phillips logs onto an AI music generator expecting slop. Instead... he has an existential crisis. What it made wasn't slop -- it was good. Really good. This plunges him into a year-and-a-half long…
Teaser

2026-09-08 · 4 min

A sneak peek at what's coming this season on Light Box, the new show from PRX's Radiotopia. Launching September 15. Host and creator Mark Henry Phillips is a professional composer who accidentally opened Pandora's box…

Episode details from the publisher’s feed. Playback happens at the publisher.

Publisher details

Owner: Mark Henry Phillips
Oldest episode in feed: 09/2026
Typical length: 32 min
Format: Serial Meant to be heard in order

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