How Auto-Tune took over the music industry

Popular music changes all the time, but there’s been one consistent element in practically everything released in the last two decades: Auto-Tune is everywhere. What started as a simple audio processing tool in the 1990s has become the dominant force in music. Artists are training to sing with Auto-Tune; songs sound like Auto-Tune. Like it or hate it, Auto-Tune is everywhere. And to be clear, most people like it.

On this episode of The Vergecast, the second installment in our series about the future of music, music journalist and Switched on Pop co-host Charlie Harding tells us the story of Auto-Tune. (Disclosure: Switched on Pop is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, as is The Vergecast.) It starts, of all places, in the oil and gas industry. It involves artists like Cher and T-Pain, spreads like wildfire throughout the music business, and quickly becomes so utterly ubiquitous that you probably notice when Auto-Tune isn’t used more than when it is.

We’re now more than two decades into the Auto-Tune era, and Charlie makes the case that all the backlash and frustration with Auto-Tune is both overrated and misguided. Maybe, after all this time, we should think of Auto-Tune not as a way to mask our deficiencies as musicians, but just as another instrument to play. And as ever more of the music-making process becomes digitized and perfectible, the change Auto-Tune wrought isn’t going anywhere.

As we barrel toward whatever the “AI era” of music will be, we also look for clues in Auto-Tune’s story that point to what’s coming next. We talk about the distinct sound that comes from tools like Suno and Udio, how artists will use and abuse AI, and whether we should be worried about what it all means. We haven’t yet found the “Believe” of the AI music era, but it’s probably coming.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:

We also asked Charlie for his off-the-cuff thoughts on the ultimate Auto-Tune and vocal processing playlist. Here are a few of his suggestions, first from the pre-Auto-Tune days:

And then for some canonical Auto-Tune hits, in no particular order: