AI-Assisted Music Mastering: An Exploration of Human and AI Practices in Contemporary Music Production

Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly involved in our daily lives, and music production is taking its share of this trend. In this context, artificial intelligence has recently started to be involved in the mastering process, which is the last step of music production that involves optimizing the recorded and mixed musical work and its preparation for commercial distribution. This research aims to comprehensively examine the current state of AI-assisted mastering services, comparing the outputs from various AI-assisted web platforms and an AI-assisted plug-in with the services of a professional audio engineer. By distinguishing the differences in the quality of the outputs produced by AI-powered solutions for mastering and professionals of the music industry, thereby identifying the stage to which artificial intelligence-supported applications have come in music production, specifically in mastering services, and determining their strengths and weaknesses in the context of mastering is aimed. © 2025 by IGI Global Scientific Publishing. All rights reserved.