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Also a musician and I don't think it's that amusing. IMO this isn't an "AI can't be art" discussion. It's about the fact that AI can be used to extract value fr
by drittich 8mo ago
Also a musician and I don't think it's that amusing. IMO this isn't an "AI can't be art" discussion. It's about the fact that AI can be used to extract value from other artists' work without consent, and then out-compete them on volume by flooding the marketplace.
- anthonypasq 8mo ago[flagged]
- lotsofpulp 8mo agoA sufficient proportion of junk can cause a market to fail, taking down "legitimate" or "quality" purveyors.
- Ritewut 8mo agoThis is actually the definition of competition. You are just being drowned by AI music so no one can discover your music. Steam had the same issue years ago with asset flips drowning out the discoverability of actual titles and they implemented many curating tools to help resolve the issue. Acting like AI music isn't having a similar effort on genuine musicians is just playing dumb.
- anthonypasq 8mo agoif no one wants the slop, then its not competition. the problem is that people do actually want the slop and artists are mad about it.
- peab 8mo agobut people do want it. people who listen to top 40 want slop. most people want slop
- butlike 8mo agoAt least top 40 has a room of engineers and at least they're getting some compensation. Yes, I understand splits are a bloodbath.
- Ritewut 8mo agoThat's not how discoverability works. If it becomes too much of a chore to sort through the swamp people will often just opt for whatever is popular.
- nomel 8mo agoAll of the "discoverability" algorithms are specifically and fundamentally about sifting through the millions to find the few that are preferred. That is their many-billion-dollar industry purpose. Spotify does a fantastic job with this, for me. > will often just opt for whatever is popular. Are you suggesting that people consume media they don't like? I'm not familiar with anyone that does this. I personally skip if I don't like a song even a little.
- teucris 8mo ago> All of the "discoverability" algorithms are specifically and fundamentally about sifting through the millions to find the few that are preferred. They are fundamentally about finding the content that will generate the most revenue. That changes the dynamics quite a bit.
- nomel 8mo agoYou're not wrong, but the need to please the user is still paramount, otherwise they'll just do something else. This is why TikTok is eating everyone's lunch.
- Ritewut 8mo agoI don't agree with this and to answer the question you originally asked me, I do think users are consuming things they don't actually enjoy. The goal isn't to please the user, the goal is to not bore the user. If you talk to people I'm sure you'll find a lot of the music they listened to isn't "enjoyed" so much as it is inoffensive background noise.
- 8mo ago
- kraquepype 8mo agoMany people don't care because it sounds like music. It sounds like music, because it was generated by a model that was trained on actual music. It is music that has been chewed up and regurgitated. It provides no benefit to the actual artists whose music fed that model.
- anthonypasq 8mo agoshould artists pay royalties in perpetuity to their teachers and musical inspirations?
- kraquepype 8mo agoNo - human learning is still something special in this world. It is a gift of time and effort, from both the student and teacher. The ability to be inspired by other works and draw from them, not merely imitate them. You can ask any human musician to make music that is either inspired or outright copied from another artist. They have a moral compass to do so in a way that is not infringing on the works of others. A music AI model will ingest what is thrown at it, and generate whatever you ask of it. It is a tool, and if it is ingesting human works to be formed into something else, proper attributions and royalties to the sources need to be made.
- sapphicsnail 8mo agoI have not met a single person offline who wants more AI music
- anthonypasq 8mo agoAI music gets millions of listens, idk what to tell you dawg.
- stephen_g 8mo agoSure it's almost entirely things like background music in shops and cafes where nobody is actually paying real attention to the music? I find it hard to believe anybody is actively listening to that kind of stuff (apart from perhaps checking our some of the more notorious cases for novelty value).
- peab 8mo agoas a musician, the internet has made it that there already is a shit ton of competition. AI will make it worse sure, but it was already a 'problem' and never going to be solved. The thing is, you aren't entitled to distribution. Most musicians who make it these days work really hard at doing live shows, or growing a following on tiktok. once they have an audience - who cares about competition?
- kazinator 8mo agoI feel that human artists as a class are more entitled to distribution than generated slop. And decisions like Bandcamp's above reflects essentially the same view.
- peab 8mo agoWhy? Are human made tools more entitled to distribution than machine made tools?
- Workaccount2 8mo agoThe hardest pill to swallow as a musician is that despite everyone who ever listened to you telling you you're great, despite being in a band and playing shows, despite maybe even selling some merch...if you are not in the top 1%, you probably will never even get chance to play a show that might put you on someone meaningful's radar.
- butlike 8mo agoI hear you and feel you on this being a hard (hardest) pill to swallow, and I think I have a helpful phrase. It helped me quite a bit so I hope it helps you: 'For the love of the game.' When you don't make any money and no one comes to your shows; when the booking emails go unanswered and the likes on soundcloud remain <10, just remember why you picked up the instrument in the first place. For the love of the game.
- Anamon 8mo ago
- alfalfasprout 8mo agoYet your argument is deeply flawed too. Flooding the market with slop makes it much more difficult to discover genuine, quality, art from smaller creators. ad hominem has no place on HN.
- pousada 8mo agoThe market was already flooded 20 years ago. Your biggest competition as musician is not AI or any new music it’s the music released in the last 50 years. I predict that slop won’t significantly change the game - which was already rigged against new (and good) artists when I was a little baby
- sodapopcan 8mo ago> You're just mad that people actually like AI music. Yes, I am! I'm also mad that people like shitty over-produced pop, though (including me sometimes), so what can you do. Life is shit.
- soulofmischief 8mo agoLet people enjoy what they like. It makes it easier to just sit back and enjoy what you like.
- albumen 8mo agoThe problem with that approach is when what people like impacts other people negatively. If your habits don’t make things worse for others, have at it!
- butlike 8mo agoThe problem is economies of scale. Surely me enjoying heroin on my open-air back porch wouldn't be a bother to others, right?
- rdiddly 8mo agoThat's fine until, for example and by analogy, you go to the store to buy beer, and you don't particularly care for IPA, but IPAs have crowded out half the beers that used to be there including the one you used to sit back and enjoy.
- hxugufjfjf 8mo agoHow does the analogy work with music though? Are you saying that because there is now over-produced pop there is now less rock, jazz or whatever you prefer? If so, is that actually true and verifiable by numbers?
- rdiddly 8mo agoMore like among the things you could stumble on at random, a greater proportion of them are things you're not interested in. You incur more of a burden of intentionality/effort. Less like discovering, where something happens to you, and more like seeking/finding, an act of will. Which some will say they prefer, maybe even me included...
- mcpar-land 8mo agoSpotify has a history of intentionally boosting internally produced, royalty-free and/or AI music over actual artists. https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/ https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...
- troupo 8mo agoThat article is bandied around, and no one either reads or understands what's written there. Neither do article authors BTW. 1. Spotify doesn't have "internally produced music" 2. There are companies that provide white-label ambient/white noise/similar music. 3. Spotify may have preferential licensing deals with some of them (as any company would seek preferential contract terms) 4. Some of that music is generated (AI or otherwise)
- butlike 8mo agoPreferential contracts to AI-gen music makers is equivalent to "internally produced music" in my mind, even though they're not technically equivalent. `==` vs. `===` essentially
- jesterswilde 8mo agoCuration is a real concern. 'Flooding the market' is bad for everyone, being seen is difficult as is. It's even harder in a slopstorm.
- james_marks 8mo agoIs this not the constant state of the world? A technology floods a market, the market finds a) the price floor and b) ways to curate If you’re a producer in that zone, you adapt or get minimized.
- array_key_first 8mo agoIn order to find the stuff to listen to you have to... find it. If you had to wade through, say, 1 million AI generated books to find one that isn't, then ALL of your reading would be AI generated.
- lukevp 8mo agoAnd you create music without ever having heard music before? Or are you also extracting other artist’s work and using it as inspiration for what you do? AI music is the same as AI code. It’s derived from real code, but it’s not just regurgitated wholesale. You still as a person with taste have to guide it and provide inputs. Electronic music made it so you didn’t have to learn to play an instrument. Auto tune made it so you didn’t have to learn how to sing on key. There are many innovations in music over time that make it easier and less gatekeepy to make music. We are just moving from making music as a rote activity similar to code, to making music like a composer in much the way that you can create software without writing code. It’s moving things up a level. It’s how the steady march of innovation happens. It won’t work to put the genie back in the bottle, now it’s to find what you love about it and makes it worth it for you and to focus on that part. Banning the new types of art is only going to last as long as it takes for people to get over their initial shock of it and for good products to start being produced with it.
- gspr 8mo ago> And you create music without ever having heard music before? Or are you also extracting other artist’s work and using it as inspiration for what you do? But the parent poster is, presumably, human! Humans have the right to take inspiration like that from other humans (or machines)! Why do we seem so keen on granting machines the right to take from us? Are we not supposed to be their masters?
- wilg 8mo agoCouldn't you just as well say it's a human taking inspiration from other humans through a machine?
- yowlingcat 8mo agoWasn't it Picasso that said "good artist borrow, great artists steal?" I've never heard an artist confident in their own ability complain about this because they're not threatened by other competent human artists knocking them off never mind an AI that's even worse at it. AI not going to out-compete anyone on volume by flooding the marketplace because switching costs are effectively zero. Clever artists can probably find a way to grease controversy and marketing out of finding cases where they are knocked off, taking it as a compliment, and juicing it for marketing. But I liked the Picasso quote when I was younger and earlier on in my journey as a musician because it reminded me to be humble and resist the desire to get possessive -- if what I was onto was really my own, people would like it and others could try to knock it off and fail. That is a lesson that has always served me very well.
- butlike 8mo agoI'm starting to think more and more in my older age that being 'great' isn't a good thing. I might actually prefer being good. We'll see how that thought plays out though; give me a couple more years
- undeveloper 8mo ago> then out-compete them on volume by flooding the marketplace
- yowlingcat 8mo agoThe whole idea of outcompeting on volume doesn't add up for music. It's a power law game not a commodities game. Spotify is playing a dangerous game trying to pretend that it is but I have little faith it won't destroy their business long term and turn them into a future Blockbuster or Macy's.
- northzen 8mo ago> It's about the fact that AI can be used to extract value from other artists' work without consent, and then out-compete them on volume by flooding the marketplace. What do you think about The Prodigy?
- yowlingcat 8mo agoI didn't even think about the analogy to sampling (and the prior controversy) but that is an even better analogy. Ultimately, the different between what's creative re-use and what's a ripoff is a matter of how skillfully it's done and there's a lot of controversy in the middle!
- jen20 8mo agoIf you want to read the contemporary discussion of samping, the early 90s opinion columns of Sound on Sound magazine are worth a look.
- jason_oster 8mo agohttps://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/ https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
- airstrike 8mo agobut if no one is making Linkin Funk, can't I enjoy it just because it's made with AI? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH-BNwBV4EI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH-BNwBV4EI
- ComplexSystems 8mo agoIt's really only about the flooding the marketplace part, not about the extracting volume without their consent part. The current set of GenAI music models may involve training a black box model on a huge data set of scraped music, but would the net effect on artists' economic situations be any different if an alternate method led to the same result? Suppose some huge AI corporation hired a bunch of musicians, music theory Ph. D's, Grammy winning engineers, signal processing gurus, whatever, and hand-built a totally explainable model, from first principles, that required no external training data. So now they can crowd artists out of the marketplace that way instead. I don't think it would be much better.
- Gud 8mo ago“great artists steal”?
- Culonavirus 8mo agoTrickle-down economics with the "trickle" reduced to zero. Why are people mad? Don't they understand that you can't stop progress? Fssss... /s
- dragandj 8mo agoIMHO, it would be solved by just making AI "art" un-copyrightable. Fine, make "AI art" as much as you wish. Sell and buy it as much as you please if you find it to your taste. BUT, you can NOT participate in organizations that take royalties from radio stations, TVs, movies, records, etc. for publishing, performance, etc.
- senko 8mo agoWait until you hear about sampling...