As Told By Alizen(:

Most of you are familiar with famous music groups like T-Pain, Lil Wayne, Fall Out Boy and Cobra Starship. Other than striving to bring you top quality tunes, what do these four (and other artists) have in common? Auto-Tune. For those of you who don’t know, autotune is an audio processor that specializes in correcting sound errors, mistakes and the like. Auto-Tune was initially created by Andy Hildebrand, an engineer who worked for Exxon. This program was originally created to subtly change pitches that weren’t completely tuned inside a professional recording studio, but after it was released as a plug-in it became available to virtually any aspiring artist. This not only alerted musicians who were striving to hit it big in the music industry, it allowed for fraudulent tracks.
If you aren’t well-acquainted with the gift of Auto-Tune, it will definitely be hard for you to recognize the difference. The following track is appropriately placed to help show you how Auto-Tune is used to modify -and ultimately distort- a human voice.

Dixie Chicks – The Long Way Around – Noticeable on “parents” and “but I.”

T-Pain – I’m Sprung – Especially obvious on “homies” and “lady.”

Avril Lavigne – Complicated – Listen to “way,” “when,” “driving,” “you’re.”

Uncle Kracker – Follow Me The whole vocal sounds strained, but especially the word “goodbye.”

Maroon 5 – She Will Be Loved – Listen for “rain” and “smile.”

Natasha Bedingfield – Love Like This - “Apart” and “life.”

Sean Kingston – Beautiful girls - “OoooOver” doesn’t sound human.

JoJo – Too Little Too Late – Appropriately, “problem” stands out.

Rascal Flatts – Life is a Highway Every vocal, foreground and background, is treated, but “drive” in particular.

New Found Glory – Hit or Miss - “Thriller”, and every time Jordan sings “I.”
Derived from this blog

Now I don’t mean to sound biased, but in the music industry a plethora of rappers have been found to use this nifty tool. Yes, when you’re blasting your speakers to Lil Wayne and D-Pride, the songs playing through your stereo has been processed by Auto-Tune.

How can somebody tell when Auto-Tune is in effect?
Well, to be quite honest, it’s extremely easy. If a song sounds too robotic, and the voice sounds highly unrealistic, one of two reasons might explain this:
1)The singer either has an extremely unheard talent or
2)It’s been processed through Auto-Tune.
So what does this make the artist? Does their highly-edited music become worthy of calling a hit? A record-breaker in the Top 100 Charts? I find it unfortunate for bands with actual talent to be undermined by “singers” who can’t even rely on the source of their own voice. Aspiring musicians who have hopes of becoming a household name are left inside the metaphorical closet of rappers, groups and bands, because they are outshone by fictitious people who are more highly regarded by the general public. Whatever happened to the days where bands relied solely on their raw talent and prayed for instant fame? While Auto-Tune is a service that can help revise audio-related issues, the dependency in which these so-called artists have for it has become more than what I can say is acceptable.

T-Pain tells artists not to use Auto-Tune
Pop-Music Examples
The Many Uses of Auto-Tune