Shooter Jennings strongly believes that the music industry – or at the very least, the compensation aspect of it – is broken. The famed producer and son of Waylon Jennings is one of the most respected individuals in the music industry. In just the past couple of years, he’s helped produce projects for Lukas Nelson, Charley Crockett, Jake Owen, Benjamin Tod and the Turnpike Troubadours. And you may have heard that he produced an album called Songbird, which was made up of never-before-heard songs from Waylon that were recorded in his prime and never released. And more Waylon records are on the way soon. Through his many years as a producer – and recording himself – Shooter has become more than familiar with the art of producing. Jennings has become a master at the craft, and many of the best acts in country music recognize the talent he possesses. Some might think that good production means recordings that sound flawless. Shooter Jennings knows that the greatest production is actually creating songs that sound human. That’s why it hurts him to see the direction that the music industry has headed. AI has begun to infiltrate the space, and he hates that. The compensation model has made it near impossible for artists and songwriters to make a living, and to Shooter, that’s laughable. It was recently announced that Spotify and the massive record label Universal Music Group were working on a way for fans to use AI to make their own remixes and covers from songs directly on Spotify’s platform. And it’s fair to assume that other labels like Sony and Warner will be right behind UMG. Of course, this new technology is pitched as a “great way for artists to increase their streaming revenue,” although, as Shooter points out, streaming platforms could just pay a fair amount to publishers and songwriters. As he explained in a recent social media post: “It’s a joke. The music business will stay in this ‘nobody’s making money on albums so you gotta tour non stop if you want to survive’ until artists wake up to how they are stealing all of the revenue from us and pull out of streaming all together. This isn’t a ‘renegotiate through federal pressure’ thing, this is a ‘this is toxic and it’s killing art’ kind of situation.” It’s a joke. The music business will stay in this “nobody’s making money on albums so you gotta tour non stop if you want to survive” until artists wake up to how they are stealing all of the revenue from us and pull out of streaming all together. This isn’t a “renegotiate… https://t.co/VgaNebJuS0 — Shooter Jennings (@shooterjennings) May 21, 2026 In other words, Jennings wishes that artists would stop sending their new music to streaming just because that’s how it is now. In a perfect, artist-trying-to-make-money world, everyone would handle their releases like Johnny Blue Skies (the artist formerly known as Sturgill Simpson) did with Mutiny After Midnight. That album prioritized physical media and is still not available on streaming… and it still led to one of Sturgill’s biggest releases of his career. Jennings went on to compare music streaming to streaming services, like Netflix. He pointed out that streamers have to pay big money to license films for limited amounts of time. With the music streaming model, all music is just available forever, and it’s seemingly forever. Another social media user came out and combated the point that Jennings was trying to make by implying that the producer was basically saying “only the rich should have access to music.” That argument fired Shooter up, and he clapped back with this: “This is exactly what I’ve been saying for a long time. Prior to streaming, people expected to pay for music people worked hard to create. Now, because it’s been basically free for years, we now have this ‘have’ versus ‘have not’ argument turning artists who create work into the oppressor or elitist for complaining that 99.9% of the reimbursement is being stolen for their music. I got an idea, how about I pay you $7 bucks a month and you come repair my roof, unclog my toilets and replace my air filters as many times as I ask you a month. And then if you b*tch about it I’ll say ‘Oh so only rich people get their roofs repaired?’ Get the f*** out of here with this nonsense.” This is exactly what I’ve been saying for a long time. Prior to Streaming people expected to pay for music people worked hard to create. Now because it’s been basically free for years we now have this “have” vs “have not” argument turning artists who create work into the… https://t.co/GRdzCG91yJ — Shooter Jennings (@shooterjennings) May 22, 2026 In essence, Shooter Jennings is saying that the music streaming model is giving fans too much value for what they are getting. And granted, as an avid music listener myself, I couldn’t believe that I got to access basically everything that’s ever existed for a relatively low monthly price when streaming was first introduced. It’s a dream come true for fans, but a nightmare for those that make the music. For as much time and money and effort and energy and talent (I could go on) that it takes to make music, it has essentially gone from a sort of rare and valuable product (anyone can make music, but few make good music), to something everyone expects as a given. Back in the day you could always just flip on FM radio, but if you wanted to curate your own music, you had to buy it. As a kid, you had to save up 20 bucks to buy a CD from Walmart. Now, you just create a free Spotify account, listen to a few commercials, and never spend a dime on music ever again. Pretty good deal for the listener, eh? Shooter Jennings thinks the industry has reached a breaking point, and perhaps Sturgill Simpson laid out the way to fight back earlier this year. It’ll just take other brave artists – and producers like Shooter Jennings – to follow suit.The post Shooter Jennings Calls For Artists To Fight Against AI & The Music Streaming Model: “Toxic & It’s Killing Art” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.