We’re deep into a RAM crisis — will music gear prices go up?
RAM manufacturers are raising prices and prioritising AI data centres, leaving laptop and musical instrument manufacturers to absorb costs or go without. How bad will price hikes get?


Akai MPC Key 61. Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech

AI. First, it steals our music. Then it steals our water. Now it’s stealing our RAM.

RAM, or Random Access Memory, found in our laptops, phones and yes, music-making gear, is getting gobbled up by AI data centres. And the companies that produce RAM are seemingly all too happy to not just raise prices, but prioritise these chip-munching server farms, leaving musicians and consumers in the lurch.

How much should producers worry about this? Should we be buying up laptops and memory-intensive gear like samplers and grooveboxes while prices are still manageable?

What is RAM?
Before we get to the doom and gloom, let’s define what RAM is.

RAM acts like a device’s short-term memory. Whatever the machine is currently working on gets loaded into the RAM and used to process tasks in real-time. The faster your RAM, the quicker it can do these processes. And the more RAM a device has, the more jobs it can do simultaneously.

In a sampler, for example, RAM acts as the temporary storage facility. Record a bit of audio, and it stays in the RAM while you edit and process it, before getting shuttled into a storage area like an SSD for saving. Effects processors use RAM as places to store buffers or delay lines, or for caching to keep processing smooth.

Why does AI need RAM?
AI is wolfing up the world’s supply of RAM. What does artificial intelligence need it for anyway?

In much the same way that a laptop requires RAM to do temporary calculations, so too do AI applications. The difference is the number of calculations, which is exceptionally vast. Neural networks and large language models (LLMs) need massive amounts of memory to accomplish this. And that’s where data centres come in.

Data centres eat RAM
One computer isn’t enough for AI. It needs gargantuan server farms to handle the workload. These are data centres.

According to Wired, there are at least 5,400 data centres active in the United States alone; the global number is estimated at 12,000 around the globe. Not all of these are AI-focused, but they increasingly are, with 1,000-server centres becoming ever more common. And, because of environmental issues (over half of data centres’ energy requirements come from fossil fuels, according to Eco-Business), there’s even talk of putting data centres in orbit.

“Have you heard this?” says Girts Ozolins of Erica Synths when asked about his company’s use of RAM. “Elon Musk is actively promoting these data centres in space. That’s an absolutely insane thing.” Ozolins goes on to explain the plan for a data centre in orbit with a four-kilometre-wide solar panel. “And this startup has raised like 34 million dollars. It’s impossible by whatever common sense.”

Lots of companies are betting big on space data centres, such as Nvidia’s Starcloud. Whether these ever take off remains to be seen, but either way, the demand for RAM will remain astronomically high.

No matter whether data centres are up above our heads or earth-bound, one thing is for sure: they need RAM. The Wall Street Journal reports that up to 70 per cent of RAM stock for 2026 has already been allocated to AI.

Laptop and phone prices are definitely going up
Data centres use two kinds of RAM: DRAM (the dynamic version of RAM, the type that we’ve been talking about), and HBM, or high-bandwidth memory, which comes packaged with fancy GPUs, as in Nvidia’s Blackwell Ultra chip. DRAM and HBM are made up of silicon wafers.

Three companies control 93 per cent of the RAM market: Micron in the United States, South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung. They’re making immense profits, and have been increasing prices as they desire. With demand outstripping supply by around 10 per cent, according to TrendForce, a company that tracks markets for computer components, manufacturers have no choice but to pay up, with some estimates raising current prices by 50 per cent compared to a few months ago.

And, as demand from data centres increases for chips, supply is being directed more and more in their direction and away from the consumer sector, which includes the high-tech devices that music producers need, such as laptops and grooveboxes.

“I keep telling everybody that if you want a device, you buy it now,” said Avril Wu of TrendForce in an article by NPR. “I myself bought an iPhone 17 already.”

Both Micron and SK Hynix are working on bringing new chip fabbing factories online, but they won’t be ready until 2027 or 2028. That means the RAM shortage will likely continue for the foreseeable future.

So what about music gear?
We’ve gotten used to inexpensive memory for our devices. It’s one thing that helps reduce prices and democratise music-making equipment. However, the days of cheap memory appear to be over. Does this mean that prices on gear will go up in response?

The Verge predicts that the shortage could cause overall costs to go up across a broad swathe of consumer gear, including computers, phones (with fewer sales predicted for this year as an overall result), and game consoles.

Will this also affect electronic musical instruments? Possibly, but it mostly depends on the type of instrument or effect it is, the amount of processing required, and other similar factors.

According to Bloomberg, computer company Lenovo is currently stockpiling RAM as part of an attempt to “strike a balance between price and availability.” Larger musical instrument companies that rely heavily on chips may also be doing this, although it requires a large market presence to outbid giant consumer electronics manufacturers.

Another strategy to prevent prices from spiking is to cut costs in other areas. “You may use a cheaper battery, maybe a smaller capacity battery,” Jeff Janukowicz, research VP at International Data Center, a research firm for the technology industry, suggested to The Verge. “Display [screens] might be an area where you might look to do some cost reductions.” While this would not be ideal, memory-heavy instruments like those in the Akai MPC line could be candidates for this kind of cost-cutting. (Akai Professional declined to comment on the RAM shortage.)

Some synthesizers, including Korg’s digital lineup that includes the multi/poly, use Raspberry Pi devices to handle DSP. Bad news: Raspberry Pi has raised prices on its Pi 4 and 5 modules. Korg’s Multi/poly synth uses the Compute Module 4, which contains a Pi 4 module inside. Some of the company’s other synths, like the Wavestate, employ the Compute Module 3, which has already reached the end of its manufacturing lifetime — an issue that could pose other problems going forward.

Roland offers a number of high-tech products with sampling features, such as the SP-404MK2 and Fantom line of workstations. When asked how the RAM crisis may be affecting things, the company tells MusicTech: “RAM chip supply is a common global issue all the manufacturing industries are facing, like US tariffs, and we have been working in flexible and agile ways to find optimised solutions.” What those ways are, the company did not elaborate on.

Ozolins doesn’t see it as affecting Erica Synths, however: “Our RAM chips, they are really on the small side, because we do not need such processing power like a data centre. So, yeah, no effects at the moment.”

No need to worry… yet
So, should you start stockpiling digital gear in anticipation of rising prices? For the immediate future, it’s probably not necessary. Music producers are feeling the economic pinch now for various reasons, and companies know this. With rising inflation, stagnating wages, and tariffs in the United States, no one is really in a position to bear the brunt of another price hike.

Hopefully, manufacturers will find a way to ride the RAM crisis out without significant price rises. Or perhaps the industry is small enough to weather the storm without it causing much upset. That is, if the problem resolves itself as predicted.

If the crisis drags on, however, and RAM manufacturers continue to prioritise data centres, the situation could change within a year or two.

Source: https://musictech.com/features/opin...medium=email&utm_term=0_-df36adab1c-466617630

 

Fuck RAM. It's neanderthal time, baby!! Wooo!!!