On October 24, 2025, Predicament Omnimedia released Living On The Edge (Of A Broken Heart) by country rock artist Ronnie Lee Robbins (POM2503). The single is a follow-up to Robbins’ still-growing debut track, Nothing Wrong With That, which has hit #13 on a Spotify promoter’s Top 100 Country playlist, as well as several other curatorial playlists highlighting new artists and m songwriters.
Like the first song, Living On The Edge was written and co-produced by one of the [entirely fictional] of Robbins’ 'parents', Predicament Omnimedia and Afinat Records’ owner and CEO, Lee Streby. “Living On The Edge has the distinction of being my very first song I wrote by myself, ever,” Streby says. “I wrote it envisioned as a country rock song with kind of a Keith Urban vibe. I only started trying my own hand at songwriting in 2022, after the pandemic.”
He only needed a country rock artist to bring his melody and lyrics to life. In 2023, Streby was introduced to several AI tools. He fed the song, accompanied by his ukulele (his recently re-discovered childhood instrument), and his own vocals, into a vocal replacement tool, and was shocked how good the replaced voice was. “I can carry a basic tune, but I’m not by any means a true singer,” Lee says.
Fast forward to the development of more advanced AI music production tools, where he took the new vocal track and had an engine rework the song with a full band and new melodic ideas. He ended up asking the engine to take more liberties and produced four different melodic options. One sounded “very Garth Brooks,” one was in a higher pitch range like Vince Gill, and one that Lee thought sounded older, reminiscent of the Oak Ridge Boys from the late 70’s and 80’s. “Ultimately, I thought all four were mind boggling at what this generator came up with in less than a minute. I really thought my original version was still the right melody and style for the lyrics,” Streby remembers. “The quality was nowhere near release range, though, but the production was impressive, nonetheless.”
Fast forward to 2023, Streby was writing some new holiday songs for a project that became the recently released full album, Songs For The Season, Vol. 1 (POM2504). Streby had written another country rock song, Nothing Wrong With That for gay pride festivities in 2023. With the quality of AI generation significantly higher, toward “decent release quality for my ears,” he muses, the voice of his fictional country artist was “born” on the latter song. Ronnie Lee Robbins was created and given a back story as an adopted, now grown son, which he never had in real life. Giving Ronnie Lee a full-fledged character with a back story was key to making his sound “authentic as I can,” the ‘papa’ says, “and that has led to a weird thrill, a kind of sense of parental pride rises as the song catches wind somewhere,” Lee adds. “I’ve heard songwriters refer to their songs as kids.”
In 2025, Streby decided to form Predicament Omnimedia to personally explore this new frontier in music technology. He released Nothing Wrong in late 2024, followed by the re-recording of Living using the now-preserved-for-reuse voice of Ronnie Lee Robbins, a name that unites his own first two names with his partner’s last name, Robbins. “We took the leap and started testing a few songs in release to see if they could garner any traction. God bless ‘em, my songs have been growing and growing in listeners worldwide and that really tickles the heck out of me because my record business is just a hobby, and my motivation is only to let people hear these songs and put them out in the world — as demos if nothing else, to maybe get covered down the road,” Lee says.
Streby used AI to create Robbins’ visual persona as well. “I see my own face in Ronnie's because I used my own photos to set the base for the visual model.”
With both tracks getting played on several platforms and playlists, worldwide, Streby and Robbins “are just having a ball,” he says.
Living On The The Edge (of a broken heart) is based on a friend of Streby’s who was painfully shy. “One day he told me the story of how he met his girlfriend, now wife. He was introduced to her by mutual friends at a party, and was immediately taken with her. But he could not tell her he liked her, or ask her out, even though everyone in our circle knew he was smitten and tried hard to set them up. But then one day, we learned that she had a job offer in another city and was considering leaving Baltimore, where we were at the time. That’s all it took!”
Streby continues, “One of our fellow male friends in the group told him: ‘Dude, she’s moving soon. So if you don’t speak up now, seize the day tomorrow, you won’t ever know if she is interested.” The shy guy called and finally asked her out, and they ended up happily married a year later.
Streby had written it in a note on his phone, thinking it could make a neat story song idea. One afternoon, he sat down and started working on the lyrics. Then he immersed himself listening to various country artists and started to develop the melody and sound style. “I played this album by Keith Urban several times, and just felt that modern country rock vibe was really close for this song. I ended up plunking it out on the uke with some chords and a lilting 12/8 beat, and one afternoon recorded myself singing it.”
Lee adds, “I guess I also declared ‘carpe diem’ for letting myself dare to form this label and put these hobby songs out in the world. I have no problem with fiction entering the music sphere, either. I think it’s kind of a fascinating new angle like a pseudonym for a well established writer in a new genre. I’m known for working in the ultra conservative classical field, but my tastes in music have always been extremely broad. This is wicked fun.”
There’s more to come from both of these early tracks, as well. Streby says, “In the process of generating both of these songs, I have already canned both with fictional “live” acoustic mixes. Predicament Omnimedia will be releasing both songs in these versions on a 2-track single EP, entitled Ronnie Lee Robbins: Unplugged, coming on January 12, 2026, after the holidays!
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For information, contact:
predicamentomnimedia@gmail.com
Words and Melody by R. Lee Streby
© 2022, Murphenator Music, Ltd. (ASCAP)
Recording © 2025 Predicament Omnimedia, an Afinat LLC imprint label.
All rights reserved. Used by permission
* DISCLAIMER: The audio and visual elents of this recording were created partially using AI technology as tools. This single utilizes 100% human written lyrics and a core melody. The visual and vocal performance personas of the artist were generated by AI from images and voice print training models originating from the creators, and elents of the studio recording were created by both generative AI and human performance elements, including tracking, mixing, and mastering tools. “Ronnie Lee Robbins” is a purely fictional character created by the author(s), and presented to consumers entirely for entertainment purposes. The artist’s likeness, sound, photography, lyrics, melody, arrangementd, and other creative elements are protected by US trademark and copyright protections to the extent allowed by current law, and belong exclusively to Afinat LLC and/or the individual creators whose work was used with permission, with all rights reserved.