Recently, NetEase Cloud Music's "Million Prize AI Music Creation Competition" is about to come to an end. In an interview, the judges of the competition and the most popular AI musician on the Internet "Roaming Conference Room" revealed how non-professionals use AI to perform "3A" creation (AI lyrics, AI composition, and AI arrangement). "Roaming Conference Room" is a man from science and engineering who calls himself "KTV Brutalist" and has settled in NetEase Cloud Music. He doesn’t understand music theory and doesn’t know how to arrange music, but he used the “3A” creation method to turn the characters from “Journey to the West” into singers and sing. After the songs went online, they repeatedly became “AI divine songs”.
In the work "Wandering the Conference Room", gods and monsters no longer fight, but enter the recording studio and open the mic with all their heart: Sun Wukong puts down the golden cudgel and roars at the top of his lungs about the indignation of being suppressed for 500 years. The black bear spirit escaped from Luojia Mountain, playing the guitar and singing about the regret of almost stealing the cassock. Princess Iron Fan stands alone in the Banana Cave, singing affectionately about the loneliness in the deep alleys of the old mansion. Tang Monk, Bajie, Silver Horn King, Bull Demon King, White Bone Demon… all appeared on stage and started singing. The audience deeply sympathized with the lyrics of his work, commenting that "it feels like it's singing to me."
NetEase Cloud Music will hold the "Million Prize AI Music Creation Competition" in December 2025 to encourage the creation of high-quality AI songs, and "Roaming Conference Room" will participate in the review as one of the judges. In the era of AI, "Roaming Conference Room" believes that AI should not be regarded as a competitor, but as a tool. AI will not make musicians unemployed. Even if he can use AI to write a song that satisfies him in half a day when he is very lucky, he also said that his lack of professional music knowledge is also his bottleneck. And many works require people and AI to polish them repeatedly, so the key to good works in the AI era is still "people".
Specifically, how can we use AI to write a good song? What is the most critical aspect of AI music creation? Let’s take a look at his answer:
NetEase Cloud Music: Please describe your personality or work style in three words?
Roaming the conference room: introverted, sincere and frank. I majored in computer science, and I have a typical male personality in science and engineering. I am usually boring and even a little socially anxious.
NetEase Cloud Music: Has music always been your hobby? Besides music, what other hobbies do you have?
Roaming Conference Room: I have always liked music, but I have never studied it systematically. I only stayed in KTV Brutalism. I have dreamed of creating music a long time ago, but I am a novice and don’t understand the ins and outs of it, so it was just a dream for a long time. It was not until the emergence of AI music that the dream became a reality.
My usual hobby is to read various AI-related news online to see what new technologies and new models have come out. If it is a better open source model, I will try to deploy it locally and run it myself, and then try the combination of various parameters myself. It feels quite interesting. Another hobby is playing games. I’m quite a homebody and don’t like to go out when I have nothing to do.
NetEase Cloud Music: What gave you the idea of using AI to make music?
Roaming Conference Room: It's a coincidence that I use AI to make music. I used to make meeting videos of various characters in "Journey to the West" on the short video platform. For example, King Yinjiao wanted to capture Tang Monk and held a work deployment meeting. As a team leader, Jinggui had to implement the implementation and also held a meeting for his subordinates, etc.
These contents are also very popular on short video platforms, but they are often restricted. I saw that my account was about to be exhausted, so I thought about making a song first to slow down, so I came up with the song "Almost". Unexpectedly, after it was released, the traffic was also good, and there were no problems such as restriction, so I simply changed the track and concentrated on making music. This is why my account is called "Roaming Conference Room".
NetEase Cloud Music: Can you share your complete process of creating an AI song?
Roaming the Conference Room: My creative process is usually to write lyrics first, then compose music, and finally create videos.
But before writing lyrics, you must first have an idea, that is, which role to choose and which angle to choose, that is, what is the core idea of the song.
Once you have an idea, you can tell AI your thoughts and let AI write lyrics. At the current stage, AI word writing can only write a rough first draft. It looks beautiful at first glance, but many details cannot withstand scrutiny, so a human needs to go through it and rewrite inappropriate sentences. When it comes to writing lyrics, the cooperation between AI and humans is very important. Humans are responsible for controlling the concept of the entire song and ensuring that all sentences can accurately express their thoughts, while AI is responsible for making the expression more beautiful and clever.
After finishing the lyrics, you can throw the words to the AI to compose the music. The prompt words given during the composition should still be closely related to the idea, and you cannot use a cheerful music style to match the sad lyrics. The composition step is quite random. It usually takes several rounds of drawing cards to draw the right song. In order to match the rhythm and melody you want, you may have to go back and modify the lyrics again.
In the end, making the video was easy, using the simplest studio lip-syncing method.
NetEase Cloud Music: You use AI to do "lyrics, composition, and arrangement" by one person. How long does it take to complete a song?
Roaming Conference Room: If you focus on it full-time, you can actually compose a song that satisfies you in one day, or even half a day if you are lucky. The days when I updated quickly was because I felt that the response was pretty good, so I stayed up late at night, but then I couldn't stand it any longer.
The most time-consuming part is figuring out the lyrics. Sometimes I haven’t thought about it well, and I might not be satisfied after two or three days of revising it. But sometimes I have a clear idea in my mind, and I might be able to finish it in an hour.
NetEase Cloud Music: Why do you think people like your work?
Wandering Conference Room: I think luck plays a big part in my work being loved by the audience. Everyone has never seen gods and monsters singing before, and it’s very fresh. But after the novelty wears off, you have to have something that can retain people. I mainly put more thought into the lyrics, which should not only fit the plot of the character itself, but also have my own thinking.
NetEase Cloud Music: In AI music creation, how do “humans” and AI specifically divide their labor?
Roaming the conference room: In the creative process, people’s job is actually to write prompt words.
Writing prompt words is indeed a science. There is even a new profession called "prompt word engineer" who specializes in how to write prompt words to make AI work better. Therefore, before you start asking AI to write, you must first have a rough idea in your mind of what kind of song you want to make, and then tell the AI your thoughts clearly and clearly, so that the AI will not write randomly.
If you want a very satisfactory work, the first draft after the AI has written it cannot be used directly, and the details have to be revised. At this time, humans need to judge what is inappropriate and why it is inappropriate, find these inappropriate sentences, and then tell the inappropriate points to the AI again, and let the AI modify those inappropriate sentences alone. It may have to be revised many times before finally achieving a satisfactory effect.
Most of my creative themes are thought of before I create, but sometimes I don’t have a clue, so I let AI help me think of them. However, if I want to write a theme that is different from others, I still have to think of it myself, because the themes that AI helps me come up with are also common themes without much new ideas.
NetEase Cloud Music: We submitted more than 50,000 works to the "Million Prize AI Music Creation Competition" held in December last year. As a judge, which works impressed you the most?
Roaming Conference Room: I think it is a big trend for all walks of life to embrace AI, and high-prize competitions can promote the development of AI music. This is a virtuous cycle. In the final analysis, AI is still a tool. Only when people use it will it become more useful, and when it is more useful, more people will use it.
As a judge of the competition, I am not a professional after all, so my evaluation criteria mainly rely on subjective listening experience. There are quite a few entries this time that sound quite comfortable, such as "Want to Kiss You" by "Le Jiupei". The title of the song is the theme, which is a kind of casual and happy state in pop music. It can be adapted to many scenes and can be brainwashed; the description of many small body movements is silky smooth to the point of wanting to kiss you. The impulse and enthusiasm.
There is also a song called "Love You Zero Distance" written by "Xiaotang Acri". You can feel the sincere and firm love in the song. The chorus melody is very good. There are some flaws in the AI singing of some lyrics, but it does not hinder the meaning of this song to the lovers in the song.
NetEase Cloud Music: How do you view the impact of AI development on current life?
Roaming Conference Room: I use AI in my job, but it has nothing to do with music. I come into contact with various needs that need to be solved by AI on a daily basis. Nowadays, AI is needed for basically everything. AI is a very powerful productivity tool for me.
I think the current main battlefield of AI is still in work and production. The impact of AI on ordinary people's lives is not that big. Intelligent driving counts one, and daily information query counts one. Of course, there may be a lot of AI quietly playing a role in other aspects. For ordinary people, they may just feel that something is more convenient, but I think this is exactly a healthy development direction, and people can enjoy the convenience brought by AI without even realizing it.
NetEase Cloud Music: Have you encountered any bottlenecks in your creation? What do you think about some people’s concerns that AI will put musicians out of work?
Roaming Conference Room: My personal bottleneck is that I have too little music expertise to effectively communicate with AI. Many times I have that feeling in my mind, but I don’t know how to express it to AI, and I don’t know what the professional terms are that correspond to the style I want.
I think AI will not make musicians unemployed, but will make them more comfortable when creating. The premise is that AI is not regarded as a competitor, but as a tool.
NetEase Cloud Music: What do you think of the development of AI music? What are your next creative plans?
Roaming conference room: I think AI music will be in a state of decline for a long time, and then AI songs with a "human touch" will stand out. The training direction of the AI music model will also change from "perfect" to "less perfect but more like a real person".
I plan to make more light-hearted and happy songs in the future. I am quite positive and optimistic. To be honest, I am not very good at the style of suffering, hatred and hatred.
NetEase Cloud Music: What advice do you have for creators who want to enter the field of AI music creation?
Roaming Conference Room: It is recommended not to try to win by quantity. AI can indeed make music very quickly, but with the influx of a large number of shoddy AI songs, the environment for AI music will become very bad. People will become more and more resistant to AI concerts. Only works that have been truly invested in and polished repeatedly can be accepted by everyone.
