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3. The Hit Factory (Part II: Steal From Everyone)

Sep 22, 2026 · 42m

Coming soon to iPhone. Already have it? “Listen in Starcast” takes you straight there.

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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 plays his own AI experiments for his old mentor Jad Abumrad (Radiolab, Dolly Parton's America), who does not react the way either of them expected. Along the way: a $3 million record deal for an "AI music designer," a hip-hop hit built on a soul singer who never existed, and the argument that if you steal from…