"H ave you heard Solomon Ray's new album Faithful Soul? It's number one on the gospel charts-and entirely AI generated, just like the musical artist behind it. The idea that a hit Spotify artist might not be human is a satire of the attention economy itself: an ecosystem once based on authenticity and connection now topped by a synthetic voice engineered for maximum uplift. What does "soul" even mean when it's made by software trained on real music?"
"In the 1960s and '70s, Ottawa worried that broadcasters, studios, and cultural products from the United States were overwhelming Canada's airwaves and shaping Canadian identity. CanCon quotas, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the Broadcasting Act, Telefilm, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were all established as tools of self-determination. They were designed to ensure Canadian stories had space to exist and compete inside a market where foreign players, especially US networks, held disproportionate control."
An AI-generated artist named Solomon Ray reached number one on the gospel charts with an album entirely created by software. The phenomenon exposes how the attention economy rewards engineered synthetic voices over authentic human connection. Questions arise about the meaning of "soul" when software is trained on real music. Other synthetic "ghost artists" such as Velvet Sundown have emerged, forcing Canada to confront the implications for cultural policy. Canadian content (CanCon) was created to protect national storytelling and media sovereignty during the 1960s and 1970s. The CRTC now requires humans in key creative roles to qualify as CanCon, and the composition of content itself must be parsed.
Read at The Walrus
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