How Google's New AI Turns Anyone Into a Music Producer (Flow Music Demo)

0:00It really gives everyone the ability to use our tool, make music, make music videos, make spaces. You can come to producer with nothing, so no idea, and ask producer to kind of help kick you off and be your true creative partner in the studio. Perfection is also like not as desirable, right? You want something that's a little fun, you and authentic. It actually blows my mind every time I think about it. I would just say five years, but I think five years it'll be just a completely different beast.

0:30Corey:Welcome, humans, to the Neuron AI Explained, the show that helps you understand what really matters in AI without needing a PhD or a venture fund to figure it out. I'm your host, Corey Knowles, and today we're talking about Flow Music, formerly producer AI, if that rings a bell. This is the new AI music platform inside Google Labs. We're going to talk about what it does, why Google brought it in, and whether tools like this make music more accessible to an entirely new audience. Joining me today is Kendall Rankin. Rankin left LinkedIn in 2024 to join the fledgling producer AI at that time and joined Google when the startup was acquired in February of 2026.

1:08Corey:Now we're here with Flow Music. But before we get started, I want to take just a moment to let you know that today's episode is sponsored by Dell Technologies and NVIDIA. And you'll hear more about that here in just a little bit. And on that note, Kendall, welcome to the Neuron. It's great to have you. Thanks so much for having me. Excited to have this conversation. Same, same. I guess let's start with the basics. Who is producer AI really for right now? Musicians, video creators, marketers, hobbyists, people who've never made music before? For sure. No, great question. And one of the things that's most interesting about Flow Music and our producer agent is that it's really built for anyone that loves music, loves to create music, and those who love to consume music, but that may have never had an opportunity to create previously.

2:01And so it really gives everyone the ability to use our tool, make music, make music videos, make spaces, which are our custom apps. And so the short answer is everyone, but we also work a lot with artists, producers, a lot of people that grew up playing instruments and now are refining this new hobby that they have now that they're able to kind of bring some of their old passions back to life with tools like Flow Music.

2:31Corey:I saw you have some big names attached to it along the way even I was looking at the other day I think it was the Chainsmokers and some others I was really impressed. Yes the The Chainsmokers were advisors for us when we were a startup. And so they obviously are staying close just to make sure that we're, again, building with artists in mind. And it's really important for us to do that from the beginning. That's really awesome. I guess, can you walk us through what a typical end-to-end session in producer AI looks like? You know, if I say I come in with a vague idea, how do I go from prompt to something maybe I'd publish or use in a project along the way?

3:12One of the actual best parts of producer to me is that we have what we call an agentic agent that works with you to create any music that you imagine. So what's cool is you can come to producer with nothing, so no idea, and ask producer to kind of help kick you off and be your true creative partner in the studio. or you can come to it and say you know I want an R &B song with heavy 808s and influences of country music in it right and it can you can get as granular or as vague as you want and the part about producer and working with producer within Flow Music Studio is that it will work with you to suggest new sounds or suggest new ways that you can iterate on the song to really push you in some interesting and creative directions, which I'm sure in the demo part we'll get into.

4:11But the end-to-end session, I wish I could tell you there's a, you know, here's how it goes and then it ends this way. But it really is so personalized to whoever uses it, which makes it the most fun.

4:22Corey:Well, you know, we mentioned a demo. How about if we just go ahead and dive in? Yes, of course. So let me go ahead and share my screen. So when we talk about AI in the enterprise, there's this huge wave of optimism. 84 % of business leaders say AI is going to transform their industry. And that's massive. But here's the reality. 93 % are struggling to actually make it work. And that's the gap. That's exactly what Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA is built to close. Dell calls it the world's broadest AI portfolio. And that's not marketing fluff. We're talking everything from AI-ready PCs to servers, storage, networking, and services, all designed to work together.

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5:44Yep. Perfect. So once you come to producer, this is the home screen. and of course you feel free to we can ask questions and I'll also get your feedback and your input on what we can create together but just to give an overview of the platform so this is flow music with the producer agent and so the first thing that you'll see here is that we have a chat box that allows for you to begin the session where you can say hey producer I'd love to create a song about x y and z or i'd love to create a song for that are on podcast and um see kind of where we right yeah we can we can do that we can do that let's do that while we go yeah no yeah let's let's okay let's start off with making a song and then after this i'll get into spaces which are our custom apps and music videos so i can make sure you kind of see all of it come together but yeah that'd be great yeah so i'm gonna ask you actually cory um what's your favorite genre or a genre that you would love to have be as part of the the the song for the podcast

6:51Corey:it's such a tough call because probably my favorite genre wouldn't fit like i'm a i like um i like like garage rock and oh that's we have a lot of people on our platform that make garage rock i see that quite a bit so yeah let's try it let's try okay garage rock song about what would you like for it to be about the neuron we can do the podcast or we can do something else let's uh you know what let's make it about wow I'm on the spot I'm trying to think um I feel like if we go to the podcast I'm going to wind up with it corny let's do something let's keep it fresh let's make a song about AI okay Okay, great.

7:43So make a garage song about AI. And so that's just, you know, the start. And as you can see here, it comes into this chat type feature. It begins crafting lyrics, which is really fun. And also it'll, on the back end, generate a sound prop. and one of the things I want to call out is that up here in the top right you'll see this compose icon here and so if you wanted to you know skip the agent part of it all and just go and compose your own song you could do that so I'll open it here and you can see the lyrics from that the agent or that producer created will populate here so you have the ability to edit you can you know change anything you want um maybe we'll get into that but i like how it's giving like uh

8:35Corey:cues for the music too drum start with a heavy driving beat aggressive guitar piercing organ yeah and it breaks it up into chorus and different verses it has an outro um and as you can see here hears the sound that it generated. So it looks like they've loved it. Okay, let's see what we've got. So should we hear one? Yeah, let's hear one. All right.

9:36Corey:I'm standing right here. Am I real? Am I real? Good thoughts, Corey. What do you think? Okay. It's all right. Right. It's pretty good. And the best part, though, is that, you know, if you hear anything within this song that you're like okay i want to add you know more uh roaring guitar or add any audio effect you can do that and so if there is something right we can let's just say more fuzz guitar yeah let's get and kind of see and see what what it generates there and as you can see there's kind of like this modify feature that we have which allows for you to exercise some control when using flow music and working with producer.

10:24Corey:Over in the compose tab, are we able to make changes right there? You absolutely are. If you go to compose, for example, we can change the lyrics, as you see here, or we can also change the sound. Is there anything in particular that you The biggest thing I would call out is that it seemed to fumble a little over like, I think the vocals in parentheses were intended to be like background, like maybe background vocals or something, maybe a little quieter behind, and it kind of gave it its own measure. Right, right. Now, that is a great call out and great point. And sometimes, you know, the model may not interpret it the best in the first iteration.

11:09But one thing that we can do is actually maybe even say that to producer. I was going to say that we could say it.

11:17Corey:We could even just delete that line probably. Yeah. for sure it's just a fraud we can delete that we can delete the am i the background in my reels yeah and then yeah and then let me see if there were other i'll bet there is in each each verse yeah yeah and then once we do that we can go ahead and actually generate the song okay i'll leave the last the last course one just for um but i'll generate yeah there we go leave it for effect at the end yeah yeah um but yeah so this is overall the experience and as you can see you can get as granular as you want with the compose section or you can just talk in a conversational language to the agent and producer being your creative partner will make the edits as best as possible um you know it's not always perfect but it definitely trends in the right direction it doesn't have to be perfect to be really impressive frankly exactly exactly and that's the best part it's like perfection isn't is also like not not as desirable right you want something that's a little fun you and inauthentic so yep exactly exactly okay cranking the fuzz to the mix yeah let's see what we got now okay

12:53Hey!

12:55Corey:You look at me Like I'm something strange I got two arms I got a face Yeah, he's got a face Why you turn away? I'm standing right here Am I real? Am I real? Yeah, that was good. And it did the background vocals, at least for the first part, and it added some layering. It felt much more right that time than it did on the first pass. And I think that's the beauty of working with producer, right? is you can just iterate and use the agent and work with it to create what you want or get something even more interesting. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Show me what else we have. I'm excited. Yes.

13:52Awesome. So one of the things that I think is really interesting and unique about flow music and working with the producer agent is this concept of spaces now spaces are custom apps that you are able to create that allow for you to make your own new instrument you can create a custom doll for yourself you can create synthesizers like honestly it's endless and here you have on the home page we have some of our featured spaces so as you'll see here

14:27Corey:I see drums. Yeah, we have a room sound even probably. Yes, yes. So it's honestly, the limits are in the sky, right? Like you can do so much with this. And especially if, you know, I know, Corey, that you are a musician yourself. if you ever are you know in the studio or creating music and you want a certain sound or you're missing a tool or a plugin and you want to build it in the way that's custom for you and your creative process you can use flow music to do that and producer to build what you want so honestly the it's endless here what you can build and I'm going to go ahead and maybe show you an example, we can do something simple for now, just the mini keyboard.

15:17I'm gonna share this tab here. Alright. Okay, so as you can see here, this is just a simple keyboard that you can create and produce. So let's click it.

15:37Okay, now you can see I don't play the piano, but, but what's also really interesting is that you can record directly, um, into producer or into flow music. And yeah, so let's say that I'm going to click this record button here. Now, anything that I create, I can stop and then it downloads that recording. And so I can use that and take that into a session with producer. Yeah.

16:08Corey:Or you can pull it into your Pro Tools or whatever if you want. No, exactly. Exactly. You can take it into any creative tool, integrate it into your workflow. And so... Are you hitting the limits of siloed AI? Just as humans once transformed society by sharing intent, knowledge, and innovation, AI faces a similar inflection point. To achieve distributed superintelligence, we must move beyond simply scaling up. we need to scale out to. OutShift by Cisco is building the Internet of Cognition, an open infrastructure enabling agents and humans to collaborate in real time. Visit outshift.com to learn more about the Internet of Cognition.

16:50You know, I think one of the things that's most interesting and exciting about the work we're doing with Flow Music is that we are really building this open, creative world where it's not just, you know, one-shotting a song. It's not, there are so many mediums and creative tools that you can use within Flow Music and work with producer to create that enhance the creative process for artists, no matter what stage you're at, whether you're a hobbyist, whether you are someone who's an emerging artist, or even, you know, you're a professional artist, like deep into the artist world. So that's one thing I find the most exciting about.

17:28Corey:I think something that really interests me is the parallel with how we use normal AI in our day-to-day, in work, in office stuff. Is that this idea that first it's important to understand that, you know, once you get on the first try, keep pushing. It'll get better. The other thing is that we've always seen really good results when you give the tool to someone who knows the right questions to ask. So like if someone knows, listen, I want this at like 92 beats per minute. I want you to use that old Ratko buzz from the distortion from the 80s. I want this sound. And someone who knows what they specifically want to ask for could probably really do a lot.

18:16So one of the things that's most interesting about this tool is that you actually can go into the advanced section within the compose tab. and specify BPM, length. And so it's really a great way to have some controllability. And, you know, we're also excited down the line to be adding a lot more controllability features that will really make the process easier for people that, as you said, do come into using a tool like Flow Music and working with producer. It makes it a lot more fun because, you know, just imagine you're tinkering with so many different controls and figuring out what you can create based off of that.

18:56So really exciting things to do.

18:58Corey:And maybe the ability to integrate with whatever you're using as well could be a cool thing. Yeah, yeah. And what we also have noticed is a lot of our users will come to Flow Music and they will create something as maybe inspiration, and then they'll take it into their DAW and they'll remix it. They'll figure out, you know, add different instruments or have people record their vocals over it and then kind of bring it back into flow music. And it becomes kind of this iterative process where it's, you know, it's really one of many tools that artists use to create their final output. If they're that advanced or if they, you know, just want to have fun with it, they can also just stay within the tool.

19:41Corey:So one of the things I like about this is that artists have had this big concern for years, not just artists in music, but in graphic design and in traditional painting and things like that. When it comes to image models, video models, music tools, is that there's this idea that it's here as a replacement. And I think you've done a really good job of showing this as a new medium on which they can work. Yeah, absolutely. I think what we have always said both before we joined Google and now that we are part of this Google ecosystem is that we are a tool to amplify human creativity. And it's actually interesting because the two co-founders and the founding team in general of producer Refusion at the time, we've gone through some reprints.

20:37They were actually bandmates in high school and in college. And so growing up, you know, everyone that has been working on this tool is a musician themselves. And so now that we are part of Google, we also, you know, decided to join forces because Google and YouTube have such deep connections in the music industry and are very trusted in the music industry. And so our goal is to make sure that we are always centering artists and not just, you know, showing them what we're building, but also having them at the table with us as we are thinking about building new products, new features and asking what is actually helpful in their workflow.

21:20and not just thinking about, you know, one-shot generation tools, but like what would be a meaningful step change for them and also just allow for them to make new, unimaginable experiences in music and ultimately amplify their creativity.

21:36Corey:Where do you see people leaving the human in the loop? Do you find people are coming in and full-on generating? Do you find they're coming in and making loops? Do you find maybe they're doing all kinds of things? Is there any mix to that that you see? I'm curious. Yeah, it's interesting because a lot of the artists that we have worked with are using it, for example, to sample or to create samples. And so they'll generate, you know, 80s gospel choir sounds with like lyrics that they have written themselves, that their team has written. And they use it to iterate on different sounds and versions of that.

22:17And then they take that into their workflow or to their DAW, and then they're able to mix it. They're able to, you know, use all the features and tools to change that and put it into the song they're creating. So I think that's one way. I think also, for example, like songwriters, when let's say songwriters are in a song camp or they, you know, are with other writers in the room and they're trying to ideate and come up with different, you know, Let's say they have a lyrics and they want to create a backing track behind that for demos to share and to socialize around within the industry. So that's one way that we see it kind of being a tool.

22:59And then also outside of that, I think even just for the hobbyists or the amateur artists, using it as a way when you're with your friends, right? If you're recording into producer or recording something into flow music and asking producer to help you create something based on that, there's just so many different ways that the human and the lyrics they create, the beat that they make are at the forefront, but just, you know, creating new versions or stylizing in a different way. So those are a couple examples, but there are so many or even actually one I want to bring up too is with like creative agencies or creators in general and how they are able to create more custom personalized music to use as part of their final assets.

23:51So there's so many different ways to use this tool. And I actually think it makes it even more fun to work with others because you have so many more ideas you have to sort through. And taste also becomes even more important when we're in a world where you can generate endlessly using tools like this. It's like, OK, how can we discern what should be included as part of this next song or, you know, just use it as a starting point for us?

24:16Corey:I think something that we have a lot of fun with these tools. And my buddies and I played Dungeons and Dragons on Friday nights. Nice. And one of the things that ever so often happens is somebody shows up with a new theme song for their character. Yes. You know, just some goofy stuff like that. It is so much fun. We have fun as a group with it. It's not like we're trying to, you know, overturn the music industry. It's much more like we're just being nerds, having a good time. Exactly. Exactly. And that is also a moment of connection that like creating your own music, expressing yourself through your character provides connection and community among your group of friends.

24:55So it's a perfect example.

24:57Corey:Exactly. And these are really interesting. And there are so many approaches to how someone can use it. Like one of the things that I find interesting is is taking things that don't belong together. like maybe those 808s with country music or maybe it's that gospel choir with garage rock or something and just kind of seeing what happens sometimes you'd be amazed when you when you put things that don't belong together you come up with something awesome yeah I'm glad you mentioned that because that's actually one of my favorite ways to use a tool like flow music and I think it's actually really good especially with creating instrumentals and putting together sounds that shouldn't, like I love weird music, things that scratch your brain a little bit.

25:39It's like, how did these even come together? And I think it's phenomenal at that for sure. And just so much fun, right?