A3E 2027 Anaheim
Building upon 25+ years of tracking technology’s impact on creativity, A3E 2027 Anaheim at The NAMM Show introduces and explores the Creative-Origin Ecosystem™ — where human creativity, artificial creativity, and advanced applications converge while keeping human creators at the creative center.
Across two days of A3E Cross-Cutting™ keynotes, sessions, and workshops, creators, technologists, rights leaders, studios, platforms, and innovators will examine the common language, transparency, trust, and standards needed for a healthy creative future.
From Human-Driven Content Creation (HDCC) and Hybrid Content Creation (HYB) to Human-Driven Content Creation Plus (HDCC+) and AI/AC-Driven Content Generation (AICG), A3E 2027 brings the industry together to understand, measure, and document the evolution of music and entertainment creation.
A3E 2027 Anaheim At-A-Glance: Saturday, January 30th
| Saturday January 30: HUNTINGTON ROOM, Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor | |
|---|---|
| 10:00am - 11:00am | Prompting as Collaborative Art: Skill, Authorship, and the Creative Record |
| 11:00am - 12:00pm | Infinite Supply: Creator Monetization, Market Integrity, and the New Creative Supply Chain |
| 12:00pm - 1:00pm | Generative Audio Workstations: Collaborative Creation, AI Components, and the Future of the DAW |
| 1:00pm - 2:00pm | Prompt-to-Song: AI Music Platforms and the New Generative Media Economy |
| 2:00pm - 3:00pm | Saving Human Works with AI/AC: Restoration, Separation, Cleanup, and Creative Preservation |
| 3:00pm - 4:00pm | Studio Dynamics: Keeping Human Creativity at the Center of the Future Recording Environment |
| 4:00pm - 5:00pm | GS23 |
| Saturday January 30: PALOS VERDES ROOM, Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor | |
|---|---|
| 10:00am - 11:00am | GS24 |
| 11:00am - 12:00pm | GS25 |
| 12:00pm - 1:00pm | Receipts of Creation: Documenting Human Creativity in the Age of AI/AC |
| 1:00pm - 2:00pm | GS27 |
| 2:00pm - 3:00pm | Soundtracking Synthetic Worlds: AI Music for Games, XR, Virtual Venues, and Interactive Media |
| 3:00pm - 4:00pm | GS29 |
| 4:00pm - 5:00pm | GS30 |
Saturday, January 30th, 2027; 10:00AM – 11:00AM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Huntington Room
Prompting as Collaborative Art: Skill, Authorship, and the Creative Record
As generative tools become embedded in music, songwriting, sound design, video, visual media, performance, and production workflows, prompting is emerging as more than a technical command. For many creators, it is becoming a deliberate collaborative art, shaping ideas, removing constraints, guiding references, iterations, edits, selections, refinements, and final outputs through an evolving exchange between human intention and machine response.
This HYB-focused session explores prompting as a new form of creative direction and artistic augmentation. Generative systems may allow artists to extend beyond their native strengths, helping a guitarist explore vocal ideas, a vocalist imagine instrumental arrangements, a producer test orchestral structures, a songwriter develop sonic worlds, or a creator overcome technical, physical, or workflow limitations. In this context, prompting becomes less about outsourcing creativity and more about translating creative intent across disciplines, abilities, and expressive forms.
Saturday, January 30th, 2027; 11:00AM – 12:00PM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Huntington Room
Infinite Supply: Creator Monetization, Market Integrity, and the New Creative Supply Chain
As human-created, AI-generated, hybrid, and technology-augmented content continue to grow across music, video, games, social platforms, virtual worlds, and creator marketplaces, the creative industries are entering a new era of infinite supply. The challenge is no longer only how content is made, but how it moves through the ecosystem, how it is classified, how it is trusted, how it is discovered, how it is monetized, and how creators are fairly compensated.
This A3E Cross-Cutting™ session examines the emerging creative supply chain, from ideation and production to distribution, platform policy, consumer discovery, rights management, royalties, fan engagement, and new marketplaces. The session will explore how Creative-Origin thinking can help the industry move toward greater clarity around human-origin work, hybrid contributions, AI-generated outputs, augmented workflows, attribution, disclosure, market integrity, and creator monetization.
Saturday, January 30th, 2027; 12:00PM – 1:00PM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Huntington Room
Generative Audio Workstations: Collaborative Creation, AI Components, and the Future of the DAW
The digital audio workstation is evolving from a self-contained production environment into a connected creative ecosystem where artists, developers, instruments, effects, AI components, and collaborators can work together in real time. New open development layers, multiplayer production environments, AI-connected workflows, and creator-built instruments are beginning to make the DAW feel less like static software and more like a living creative environment.
This HDCC+ session explores the future of generative audio workstations through real-world examples of collaborative production, custom tool-building, AI-assisted coding, open software development kits, modular instruments, intelligent components, and community-distributed workflows. The discussion will examine how these systems can expand expressive ideation, structural composition, performance and execution, and operational augmentation — while raising important questions about authorship, interoperability, provenance, attribution, rights, and where advanced augmentation begins to become hybrid co-creation.
Lucas Cantor Santiago | Composer/Author/Investor | ListenHearNow / Extra Base Hits / Mindset MusicTech
Lucas Cantor Santiago is a composer and producer who’s won two Emmy awards. He’s the author of the book Unfinished, the role of the artist in the age of Artificial Intelligence, which is out now and available in bookstores and online. He’s a partner and co-founder at Mindset MusicTech, a Venture Capital fund that invests in the future of music.
Saturday, January 30th, 2027; 1:00PM – 2:00PM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Huntington Room
Prompt-to-Song: AI Music Platforms and the New Generative Media Economy
AI music platforms are moving beyond novelty and into a new phase of creative, commercial, and platform development. Prompt-to-song systems, synthetic voices, generative sound, adaptive audio, AI-assisted visuals, and multimodal creation tools are beginning to reshape how music and media are produced, packaged, distributed, discovered, monetized, and experienced.
This AICG-focused session examines the emerging generative media economy through the lens of AI music platforms and their expanding role across entertainment, creator tools, social media, gaming, advertising, virtual worlds, and fan engagement. The discussion will explore business models, licensing approaches, platform positioning, creator access, consumer use cases, distribution pathways, and where AI-origin music and media may fit within the broader Creative-Origin Ecosystem™.
Christopher Wieduwilt (Moderator) | Founder | The AI Musicpreneur
Christopher Wieduwilt is the founder of The AI Musicpreneur. Every month, more than 40,000 music professionals and creators turn to his work to find out which AI music tools are worth their time, how to get results out of them, and what the latest AI music news means for their music and their business.
That work draws on two careers. Christopher has written and played his own music for more than 20 years, including a coast-to-coast US tour, and that’s the ear he brings to every tool he covers. Before The AI Musicpreneur, he worked in product management for startups and helped Lufthansa, Porsche, Goodyear and L’Oréal build digital products.
He sits on the Creative Advisory Council of SIQA, which runs the first global AI music charts.
Everything he publishes follows one rule: AI is a tool, and human judgment is the skill.
Saturday, January 30th, 2027; 2:00PM – 3:00PM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Huntington Room
Saving Human Works with AI/AC: Restoration, Separation, Cleanup, and Creative Preservation
As AI and Artificial Creativity tools become more advanced, some of their most powerful uses may not be about replacing human creators, but preserving and extending the life of human-origin works. Audio restoration, stem separation, noise reduction, archival cleanup, damaged-media repair, voice isolation, remix preparation, catalog enhancement, accessibility improvements, and creative preservation can help artists, estates, labels, studios, archivists, producers, and rights holders recover works that might otherwise remain unfinished, unusable, inaccessible, or forgotten.
This HDCC+ session explores how advanced applications can support human-origin creativity by restoring, separating, cleaning, enhancing, and recontextualizing existing works while preserving the human creative source. The discussion will examine practical use cases across music catalogs, studio archives, film and television audio, live recordings, legacy performances, demos, stems, and unreleased material. It will also address the important boundaries: consent, attribution, rights, provenance, disclosure, enhancement versus alteration, and where preservation may begin to cross into hybrid or generative creation.
Saturday, January 30th, 2027; 3:00PM – 4:00PM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Huntington Room
Studio Dynamics: Keeping Human Creativity at the Center of the Future Recording Environment
The studio is no longer just a room or a workflow. It is becoming a dynamic environment where human creativity, machine creativity, tools, rights, credits, eligibility, and trust are all interacting. As AI and advanced creative tools become embedded in songwriting, production, performance, mixing, mastering, immersive audio, and post-production, artists, producers, engineers, labels, and studio leaders will need a deeper strategic understanding of where human creativity, machine creativity, and advanced augmentation intersect across the recording process.
This HDCC+ session explores how studios can embrace technological advancement while keeping human creators at the center of authorship, performance, decision-making, award consideration, label expectations, and creative trust. The discussion will examine human-origin music, AI-assisted workflows, session documentation, provenance, credits, disclosure, and the studio’s role in helping creators leverage artificial creativity without losing sight of the human gifts, judgment, and originality that give recorded music its value.
Chris Horton | EVP Strategic Technology | Universal Music Group
Chris Horton, EVP Strategic Technology, leads Universal Music Group’s Office of Strategic Technology, which is responsible for the technology aspects of digital partner deals and for long-term strategic technology projects and policy. Chris has worked on UMG’s digital distribution deals for more than 25 years, including the first successful download and subscription services. Chris and his team collaborate with technology companies on the development of new music-related products and services, including high-resolution audio, stem-based formats, music-related AI, web3, AR/VR, anti-piracy and more. He has developed and co-founded various music industry standards and standards bodies, including DDEX. He currently leads UMG’s AI Task Force and UMG’s AI Review Team. Chris received his undergraduate and M.Eng. degrees in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Universal Music Group exists to shape culture through the power of artistry. UMG is the world leader in music-based entertainment, with a broad array of businesses engaged in recorded music, music publishing, merchandising, and audiovisual content. Featuring the most comprehensive catalog of recordings and songs across musical genres, UMG identifies and develops artists and produces and distributes the most acclaimed and commercially successful music in the world. Committed to artistry, innovation and entrepreneurship, UMG fosters the development of services, platforms and business models in order to broaden artistic and commercial opportunities for our artists and create new experiences for fans.
Rob Christie (Moderator) | Republic Records* Studios Director | Universal Music Group
2 x Grammy Winning A&R Producer, former Staff Producer for EMI-Capitol Records.
*(Republic Records has been recognized by Billboard as the industry’s #1 label over the last 10 years. It is home to an all-star roster of multi-platinum, award-winning superstar artists such as: The Weeknd, Taylor Swift, Drake, Ariana Grande, John Legend, Post Malone, Metro Boomin, Stevie Wonder, among others.)
Saturday, January 30th, 2027; 4:00PM – 5:00PM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Huntington Room
(GS23) A3E 2027 Anaheim at The NAMM Show Session: TBA
A3E session description TBA
Saturday, January 30th, 2027; 10:00AM – 11:00AM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Palos Verdes Room
(GS24) A3E 2027 Anaheim at The NAMM Show Session: TBA
A3E session description TBA
Saturday, January 30th, 2027; 11:00AM – 12:00PM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Palos Verdes Room
(GS25) A3E 2027 Anaheim at The NAMM Show Session: TBA
A3E session description TBA
Saturday, January 30th, 2027; 12:00PM – 1:00PM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Palos Verdes Room
Receipts of Creation: Documenting Human Creativity in the Age of AI/AC
As AI-generated and hybrid content become more common across music, media, and entertainment, human creators may increasingly need to preserve the story of how their work came to life. Session notes, stems, sketches, drafts, lyrics, project files, performances, recordings, metadata, collaborators, timestamps, and creative decisions can all become part of a creator’s “receipts of creation.”
This HDCC-focused session explores what artists, songwriters, producers, composers, engineers, studios, labels, publishers, and creative teams may need to document in order to support authorship, attribution, originality, rights management, licensing, provenance, and long-term creative value. The goal is not to turn creativity into paperwork, but to help creators protect the human process behind the work and better navigate a future where Creative-Origin may become a meaningful signal of trust, recognition, and monetization.
Saturday, January 29th, 2027; 1:00PM – 2:00PM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Palos Verdes Room
(GS27) A3E 2027 Anaheim at The NAMM Show Session: TBA
Session description TBA
Paul Sitar (Moderator) | President, A3E | CEO, Sitarian Corporation
Paul began his professional career as an aerospace underwriter, commercial pilot, and certified flight instructor. However, his passion for information technology led him to transition into the field of emerging technologies that impact all aspects of business and life. He accomplished this by launching research projects, trade shows, and conferences for prominent organizations such as Gartner, Inc. and Advanstar Communications, Inc., as well as for several of his own ventures such as NlightN, Inc., Sitarian Corporation, A3E LLC, and the The Electric Vehicle + Energy Infrastructure Innovation & Sustainability Exchange™. These efforts and projects have included a global footprint.
Paul has focused his attention on several areas, including music and entertainment technology, electric vehicles and next-generation mobility, healthcare informatics, electronic commerce, artificial and creative intelligence, robotics, IT security, cyber terrorism prevention, and critical infrastructure protection.
Paul’s experience also includes founding and managing a software security company for seven years. During this time, he successfully patented and commercialized a deviceless one-time password authentication system. Today, Paul continues his work in research, trade show and conference creation, and the launch of innovative projects in technology driven industries.
Saturday, January 30th, 2027; 2:00PM – 3:00PM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Palos Verdes Room
Soundtracking Synthetic Worlds: AI Music for Games, XR, Virtual Venues, and Interactive Media
Building on the evolution of game engines as real-time creative instruments, this session explores the next frontier: AI-generated, adaptive, and interactive music systems designed for synthetic worlds. As games, XR environments, virtual venues, immersive performances, and spatial media become more dynamic, music can no longer remain a fixed linear track. It can become responsive, procedural, generative, personalized, and deeply integrated with audience behavior, gameplay, visuals, space, and story.
This session examines how AI music, generative audio, procedural composition, spatial sound, and interactive scoring are reshaping the relationship between creators, engines, platforms, and audiences. The discussion will explore how artists, composers, developers, and music-tech companies can create soundtracks that adapt in real time across virtual worlds, live XR performance, game engines, interactive media, and AI-native entertainment experiences — while raising new questions around authorship, attribution, licensing, creative control, and the role of human direction inside generative environments. ( AICG / HYB-focused)
Alexander Brandon (Moderator) | Owner | Funky Rustic
Alexander Brandon is a game audio veteran with thirty years of experience and over one hundred titles to his credit, among them the soundtracks for such hits as “Unreal” and “Deus Ex”, and more recently music, sound and voice for such games as “Stormgate”, “Wasteland 3″, “Oddworld: Soulstorm”, “Aven Colony”, Wasteland 2”, “Alpha Protocol”, the “Neverwinter Nights” series, “Bejeweled 3”, “Skyrim”, and “DC Universe Online”.
Alex has skills in music composition, sound design, voice acting, voice direction, audio direction and game audio technology. He has written the award winning book “Audio For Games: Planning, Process and Production” and written columns for “Game Developer”and “Mix” magazines. He has also lectured at UCLA Extension, Texas State University and Berklee School of Music.
He has also worked with Hollywood voice talent, symphony orchestras, and high profile music acts such as BT. Alex continues to write on numerous game audio subjects, and is always honoring his roots, interviewing such Japanese game music rock stars like Hip Tanaka and Tetsuya Mizuguchi. As part of the game audio community continues to serve on the steering committee of the IA-SIG and has served as a founding member and as the Vice President of the Game Audio Network Guild.
He now owns his own audio production house in Seattle, Washington, “Funky Rustic”, and distributes music through Bandcamp, releasing an album every now and again.
Saturday, January 30th, 2027; 3:00PM – 4:00PM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Palos Verdes Room
(GS29) A3E 2027 Anaheim at The NAMM Show Session: TBA
A3E session description TBA
Saturday, January 30th, 2027; 4:00PM – 5:00PM Pacific Time; Hilton Anaheim, 4th Floor, Palos Verdes Room
(GS30) A3E 2027 Anaheim at The NAMM Show Session: TBA
The session description TBA
Sitarian Corporation, Sitarian Research + Advisory Services and Sitarian Events + Programs operate and conduct their practices as an independent, unbiased, objective, and agnostic industry resource, with the primary goal of providing realistic, actionable, practicable business insights, information, as well as educational programming and content.