sometime around the 1990s technology magically started changing the course of global music the first of such inventions was sound tools a completely digital recording and editing system for apple macintosh in 1991 but in 1997 one of the most common yet controversial additions to the list appeared the autotune the name autotune itself was given to an audio processing software released by american company antares audio technologies to measure and alter pitch in vocal and instrumental music now autotune is used as a blanket term to address the many software that perform this function which goes on to show the popularity this software has gained over the years it is common knowledge that a large number of artistes across the world from rihanna to bts use autotune to fix their pitch and make their vocals flawless however the verdict is still out on whether or not it is a good thingin 2010 time magazine listed it as one of the 50 worst inventions accusing it of making bad singers sound good and really bad singers sound like robots the american rock band death cab for cutie attended the 2009 grammy awards wearing blue ribbons to raise awareness about autotune abuse we spoke to indias musicians about where they stand on this bittersweet relationship musicians seem to have with autotune heres what they had to say weighing the positivesthe one song that really brought autotune to the limelight was believe by legendary artiste cher for her 1998 comeback track she turned up the pitch correction so high that it created the robotic voice that is now part of so many popular songs the cher effect was one of the biggest hits of the decadei use that myself in songs as an effect allowing technology itself to be used as a form of expression is an interesting use that the autotune software has in music says ricky kejanother application would be to correct the pitch of vocal samples for which most musicians and singers use it now says ricky if a musician tells you he doesnt have pitchcorrection software in his studio that is a lie everyone has it and uses it he says but it has also become necessary now because listeners are accustomed to perfect pitch when a singer singseven if a listener himself is not a musician when he listens to a song and the pitch is off he will know something is wrong we are used to perfect pitch singers composers and producers use software to achieve this without having to do many repeats he saysajaneesh loknath the composer famous for movies like kantara also believes autotune can come in handy when working with new talents who have a great voice but cant hit the right pitch it helps reach the audience quickly and become popular at the same timeits a matter of convenience and an individual choice he adds ricky agrees a computer can fix the pitch but not the emotion of a song so using