Colin 
We have been warning about this for months. Long before Block announced it was cutting 40 percent of its workforce and replacing huge swathes of human labour with artificial intelligence, music communities had seen this pattern take shape. We have watched algorithms infiltrate radio playlists, automated systems steer editorial decisions and music tech companies pretend that machines understand creativity. We have written about how BBC Introducing platformed AI generated music, an AI band got the special treatment on streaming platforms and how major labels struck AI licensing deals that benefit shareholders more than artists. Over and over we have said the same thing: technology should serve people, not replace them. Now the most stark example yet has arrived.
Block, once a promising alternative to Silicon Valley centralised tech culture, has chosen cost efficiency over culture, buzzwords over human insight, and headlines over humanity. The company announced it will cut over 4,000 jobs, slashing its workforce from more than 10,000 to just under 6,000. The stated reason is that artificial intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company. In other words, machines will do the work previously done by people. That is intolerable in a music ecosystem already struggling under the weight of algorithmic homogenisation and corporate consolidation.
Block is the parent company of Tidal, a platform once held up by artists and fans as one of the few alternatives to the indifferent streaming giants. It promised better payouts, greater transparency and a more ethical approach to music distribution. There was always a gap between the promise and the reality, but this move obliterates whatever differentiation remained. By embracing layoffs and AI replacement with such zeal, Block has made unequivocal what many suspected all along. Tidal, in name or in spirit, is no longer a refuge for culture and creators. It now belongs unequivocally to the logic of shareholder return.
This decision is not about economic struggle or survival in a down market. Block’s own financials show it is profitable. Its earnings continue to rise even as it condemns thousands of people to redundancy. For a company with growing profits to remove almost half its staff is not necessity. It is a calculated statement about what it values. People who wrote code, who built customer relationships, who understood nuance and context, who empathised with creators and listeners – all of that is expendable because a machine can approximate it, or because the fantasy that it can is more valuable to investors.
Music is human first. It is the product of lived experience, emotion, connection and storytelling. You cannot distil that into patterns and parameters without losing what makes it matter. Playlists guided by data can help discovery, but they cannot feel, or listen, or care. They cannot be moved by a lyric that resonates, a chord that aches or a voice that catches at memory. When companies decide that understanding music is the same as analysing its data footprint they betray the very art they claim to serve.
But this goes beyond music. The precedent here is terrifying because it signals that corporations feel empowered to name “AI” as reason enough to dismantle entire workforces. We have heard this refrain before. Tech leaders trumpet the inevitability of automation while quietly celebrating rising stock prices and reduced expenses. They frame layoffs as efficiency gains, as modernization, as forward thinking. What they do not say is that this exact calculus strips away empathy, erodes knowledge, and empties culture of context.
In music, this has repercussions that cannot be overstated. People who work around music are not faceless employees in cubicles. They are producers and curators, label staff who understand artist development, engineers who listen for nuance, programmers who know the difference between what is popular and what matters. When those jobs are replaced by lines of code, the industry loses its capacity to hear itself. The result is more sameness, less risk, fewer voices of colour and divergence, and an accelerating feedback loop where algorithmic metrics trump artistic courage.
What Block has done is take something that was already vulnerable and pushed it toward collapse. Tidal was never perfect, but it was one of the few platforms that tried to be different. Now it stands as a cautionary example. Ethical branding means nothing if the company executing it is willing to fire almost half its workforce because a machine is cheaper. This is not evolution. It is abandonment.
Artists deserve more than this. They deserve platforms that understand the work behind their work. They deserve companies that invest in people who care about community, not just about market share. They deserve services that see human insight as indispensable because that is where the real value of music lies. AI, at best, is a tool. It is not a replacement for human curiosity or human care.
We are at a crossroads. The music industry can choose to lean into automation at the expense of the people who built its infrastructure, or it can resist this narrative and demand better. It is not enough to say we are concerned about AI. We must call this what it is: a disregard for the human cost of automation, a willingness to sacrifice empathy for efficiency, and a rejection of the values that once made platforms like Tidal meaningful.
Block’s layoffs are a betrayal of music workers and a betrayal of the artists those workers existed to support. Whatever promises were made about ethics and differentiation are now revealed as hollow. Those who still care about music culture, integrity and human creativity must see this moment clearly. This is not progress. It is a shifting of burdens from corporation to community, from systems that make money to people who make meaning.
The industry needs to push back. Artists, fans and workers must refuse to accept that AI is a valid excuse for mass layoffs or the erosion of cultural stewardship. The future of music should not be defined by artificial intelligence at the expense of real human insight. Music lives through people. And if the companies that claim to serve music forget that, then culture itself becomes another casualty of convenience.