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Light Box

Mark Henry Phillips & Radiotopia 4 Episodes Oct 14, 2026

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 and 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. It asks what happens when a machine can do the thing you thought made you, you.

Episodes

6. UDIO: A Post-Mortem? Oct 14, 2026 47:09 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. Downloads were switched off, and the new fine print said the songs users had made weren’t theirs anymore.After talking to Udio users all over the world, Mark realized this story

5. Slop (Who Is This For?) Oct 6, 2026 55:54 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 it. That was just the start of a trip down the rabbit hole. It turns out there's a lot of slop out there. Is it going to ruin everything? Or am I looking at it all wrong?Wr

4. The Critic (Marc Ribot) Sep 29, 2026 41:42 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 machines. And for him, the whole thing comes down to consent: nobody asked the musicians.I caught him on the phone somewhere between Milwaukee and Minneapolis, driving to a gig.

3. The Hit Factory (Part II: Steal From Everyone) Sep 22, 2026 41:55 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 and David Phelan say the quiet parts out loud: everyone's using it, nobody's admitting it, and if it's happening anyway, you might as well get on the trolley. Also, Mark play

2. The Hit Factory (Part I: No Songs Left Behind) Sep 15, 2026 52:05 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. And we meet two hitmakers with billions of streams -- Mickey Shiloh (Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Iggy Azalea) and David Phelan (ZAYN, Charli XCX, Jason Derulo) -- who ar

1. Inside the Black Box Sep 15, 2026 49:26 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 rabbit hole. He discovers -- with help from Sonarworks' Helmuts Bēms -- that professional musicians are secretly adopting AI like performance-enhancing drugs. Mark also digs

Teaser Sep 8, 2026 03:40 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 by experimenting with an AI music generator. In this teaser, he shows his wife what he's gotten himself into.The first two episodes drop next Tuesday (September 15) and then

Trailer Sep 1, 2026 01:05 Listen to LIGHT BOX, the new show from PRX's Radiotopia. Out now! Mark Henry Phillips spent twenty years composing music for a living. Then one night he typed a few words into an AI music generator and it did his job better, he thought, than he ever could. In ten seconds. Basically for free. Light Box is what happened next: a composer and audio journalist investigates what AI is doing to

Light Box

Episodes

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