AI has some decent uses. Unfortunately, all the shittier and sinister ones outweigh the good.
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
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Remember that anything "created" by an AI cannot be copyrighted, so the fact that there's a label representing them is concerning... and possibly actionable
Not Actionable… you can sell things that don’t have copyright it just means anyone can sell it, you could theoretically rip the song straight from the internet and resell it on the same platform right next to them (unless any human creativity is involved then that has copyright )
(unless any human creativity is involved then that has copyright )
This is the part people usually forget when they spout "it can't be copyrighted." If a human edits the output in some capacity then that is still copyrighted. It's not really the gotcha a lot of people seem to think it is.
And that edit can be as minute as changing a single bit of data that is imperceptible to the human ear. As long as a human being has put input into it, they’ve edited it, and there’s copyright that can be protected.
Even if they ran a local model to make the music?
Why would what computer the model runs on make even a sliver of difference?
I was implying the training data would be local or user created. Not just using music from the internet.
I'm cancelling my family subscription the moment I catch Spotify randomly trying to put AI stuff in my playlist.
It's fate is uncertain because they got sold somewhat recently, but I really like Bandcamp and its model more than Spotify.
Spotify is renting music. You subscribe for two years and at the end of that you have nothing to show for it. The musicians also don't get much from you, either.
Buying albums for $8 a pop, though? It can be cheaper than Spotify if you're like me and pick up about one new album a month. Some stuff I listen to and don't buy. Some months I don't buy anything and just listen to what's in my library. And after a couple years of this, I have a large library of drm free music.
I get that Spotify is easier and for some people their taste is really wide, so maybe renting access makes sense for them. And starting from nothing can be daunting. But I am also certain their are Spotify users that pay every month and just listen to the same four albums.
It can be cheaper than Spotify if you're like me and pick up about one new album a month. Some stuff I listen to and don't buy. Some months I don't buy anything and just listen to what's in my library. And after a couple years of this, I have a large library of drm free music.
The starting from zero and needing a couple of years to build a solid foundation for your library is the biggest hurdle. If you have that foundation, then sure there are probably not more than 12 new albums per year that are worth to buy. But If you don't it's just impossible.
Say you are starting from zero and find that you like the rolling Stones? How long or how expensive does it get with your method before you are even done with their catalogue?
Also a lot of people are probably on the family plan. That changes the equation in favor of Spotify by a lot. You might have 6 users with different tastes, but are only paying like $20 per month?
Say you are starting from zero and find that you like the rolling Stones? How long or how expensive does it get with your method before you are even done with their catalogue?
Assuming you plan on living a long time, sometimes the long term investment comes out ahead. If you keep renting, you'll never make any progress.
But get why it can seem daunting.
Imo unlike movie/TV-streaming music-streaming services at the moment still kind of fulfill their promise to the consumer:
A for the average consumer mostly complete selection of content at a reasonable price (at for the consumer, maybe not for most artists) and a high degree of convenience.
Until you build your own library, which would take quite a while until you drop a lot of money in advance, you'll have a worse experience.
And even when living alone you could still share with friends, parents/siblings or a partner.
All that said I am very sympathetic to your line of thinking. Because it only works as long as the deal doesn't change.
And we see all to well how it might not last when looking at the movie/tv streaming market. Prices might increase beyond purely matching inflation, content might fracture into multiple services, sharing might get disallowed, and specific versions of songs or artists might disappear due to censorship (or similar reasons).
That's very like the normal path of enshittification. Offer a good deal to customers for a while, but once you have a big chunk of the market you can jack up the prices. When you buy drm-free media, no one can take it from you.
Because it only works as long as the deal doesn’t change.
Right. That's what I was just writing. There's a little competition now with like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, whatever, and competition can keep things from becoming deeply shitty. But I wouldn't be terribly surprised if in 5 years the big players had merged together, and then things get more expensive. There's no reason to believe Spotify (or whatever private for-profit org you choose) will continue to offer a good deal indefinitely.
I get why people go with the cheap-at-the-point-of-sale and convenient option, I just would rather they thought further ahead. Especially people I know have money and means.
There’s a little competition now with like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, whatever, and competition can keep things from becoming deeply shitty. But I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if in 5 years the big players had merged together, and then things get more expensive.
But the distribution side is only one part of the equasion and tbh the much easier one, which is why there are still so many even smaller players that offer a more or less complete (or at least large) library. Besides the ones you mentioned i can also think of amazon music, youtube music, deezer, and napster. I think there are also plenty more. It's really not that hard from a technical side to stream audio, certainly easier compared to the high bandwith you need for visual content.
The more interesting part is if anything could happen on the rightsholder side, which unlike with movie/tv-streaming is completely seperate. There you have Disney, WB/Discovery, and so on all doing their own streaming services primarily with their own content (Sony is one of the few to just produce and sell). But on the music side you don't have the large record labels like Sony, Universal or Warner Music to try and make their own streaming service. And smaller indipendent labels also make up a much larger share, and sometimes the music rights might also lie with the artists themselves or descendants.
That fragmentation of rights combined with the large variance of musics tastes requiring a mostly complete library to make sense imo is what currently holds of enshittification. So i would actually say there is decent competition, although at the same time it is very hard to truly distinguish yourself from the other services.
The question is whether something can break this balance.
Couldn't agree more. Granted I already had a collection started in the form of high quality mp3s I used to import into iTunes.
Since switching to using only my music library I've started to enjoy radio and "shuffle all" much more. I rediscovered a lot of artists that the streaming apps stopped recommending.
I've, overtime, started replacing my mp3s with flacs from bandcamp. It eases a lot.of stress knowing I own my copies and bandcamp (and qobuz) keeps backups in case I happen to lose my library.
Will there be an AI that has the money to buy AI music and AI books?
Yes with consumer spending at an all time low the world government will decide that in order to keep the status quo intact there has to be an alternative model. Some entrepreneur will come up with the idea of ‚buyBots‘ who are anthropomorphic androids that will get issued a governmental credit card and who’s only goal is to keep dying strip malls alive by roaming the halls and mindlessly buy random stuff 24/7. funnily enough for some unknown reason these bots will for randomly form small groups of 3-5 bots and if one group happens to run into another they will throw their arms in the air, screech joyfully and then merge into a horde of buy bots. This excerpt was written by myAssLLM, if you like it give it an ass up.
Y'know where AI music isn't ending up? In my compact disc collection. (Unless I decide it's really good!)
I don't mind AI music when for example played in the background of YouTube video. That's a neat use case, because otherwise you would need to deal with Copyright holders for each piece of music, and that sucks.
But I'd still rather listen to regular music made by human artists, because at the end do we all want to be just humans that the only thing we pursue from life is to consume AI 'art'? Fuck that dystopic future.
I think you helped me figure out where I stand on AI. What is "the thing"? Did AI create "the thing" or was it a tool to help the creation? Part of a YouTube video is a perfect example. If I want music to set a mood, and I didn't have anything specific in mind, fine. That's about 5% of "the thing" and I can understand using a new tool for the job. But all the random shitty AI-generated pictures floating around social media where that's the entirety "the thing"? They can fuck off.
Basically, do things for the human, not the bots or the clicks. Unfortunately I don't think we're far off from Dead Internet Theory - we have LLMs creating content for SEO. Basically one bot creating content to please another bot. The human element has become an afterthought.
Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Is that why most of random music all sounds like the same Indie, portlandia, coffee house, folksy, wah wah, almost whispering songs?
U mean you don't like everything sounding like it belongs in an apple commercial?
AI can only make mediocre music, the average song with average text, it couldn't invent the next bohemian rhapsody, whatever you ask it to do will be met with a statistical mean of it's training data. Thus average depthless music. We only need a license that pays the electricity bill instead of making too much money. I hope it makes artists get creative again to compete. Anything above average music would do.
This reads like a hot steaming pile of AI trash.
I'm disappointed in the abilities of current AI and even more disappointed that pile of trash is still beating humans because they decided to optimize music so much towards mainstream average likings that it can indeed be generated. Don't you think the music industry deserves this?
We’re going to continue to be disappointed by AI artwork in every form because you can’t just artificially create an amalgamation of music and expect it to be any good.
The AI hype is going to die a quick death, in my opinion, and I don’t even think we’re that far off from it. Attempting to remove the human element from artistic creation is a fool’s errand, and the sooner it fails and dies the better off we’ll all be.
I think it will at least find a niche where it outperformes humans, like generating lobby/elevator music or 'generic greek background ambiance music' for a restaurant or something. Also the easy parts of the music market, same chords and beats with meaningless text sung on autotune are in its reach. It exists, people will make or save money with it, I don't think it is going away.
like generating lobby/elevator music or ‘generic greek background ambiance music’ for a restaurant or something. Also the easy parts of the music market, same chords and beats with meaningless text sung on autotune are in its reach
You’re probably right, unfortunately. I guess I’d just file it under things that nobody wants or needs. The whole scenario you just described is really sad, and I struggle to find the actual value in it.
Agreed. Tossing whole music niches to AI would be sad. "Generic restaurant Greek music" is... still music. Still traditional, historied, HUMAN singing and art. Just because you (original commenter) don't care doesn't mean no one else does. I want to hear humans sing. Not algorithms.
AI is definitely capable of making great music right now.
Is it capable of creating another masterpiece, or introduce a new style of music? That's debatable, but I guess in the future it will be possible.
Do I want to listen to AI music on regular basis though? Fuck no.
AI is definitely capable of making great music right now.
Got any links?
Mediocore
I knew and have talked to a guy who makes AI generated music, and he's as insufferable as you could imagine. He made YouTube channels and used all the shady tactics you could to get monetized, fake Roblox videos, fake drop shipping tip videos, botting subs, etc.
I've even had the misfortune of being featured against my will on one of his songs under an old alias!
Thankfully I don't use that garbage service.