The post and comments come out a bit unfair if you read the answer from the music author.
The music author seems to be doing the music as part of a thesis and does not dump the generated music straight from the model. Instead it uses it for ideas and cooperation, and in the end there is post production and real work. I know people doing a similar thing to learn how to write books with AI as a productive tool.
In my opinion this is the real promise of AI: elevating the productivity and enabling more people. Like the internet has done, it will give voice and tools to many who could not, and a lot of those “voices” may seem of low quality, but alas such is the price.
As in every technological progression, paradigm changes happens. Some good some bad. Give yourself some agency and avoid the bad content and enjoy the good ones.
Also if you look at the YouTube videos there are comments of people genuinely liking it.
Finally some refreshing view: I am constantly bombarded by people who either completely abhor or love it.
I think it's a tool, it's going to take away jobs which were already shaky and on the line, while empower people who can understand its potential and limitations.
Still better than some rich guys choosing young people to have them take out a huge loan, feed them a bunch of lyrics some dudes wrote across the sea, match it with one of the 200 ready to go beats their "label" has in the drawer and make a single with a music video to pump tiktok ads on.
There's very little romantic songwriting and true exploration going on in mainstream music. AI productions if anything to me are more honest if done with an open model by a person in their home. At least it's just a person fiddling with it until it sounds as something they like and not a megacorp. Until spotify makes these themselves.
The fault in this logic is that exact same people will be leading the way of mass manufacturing more soulless garbage and dumping it to the consumer as mainstream music. AI doesn't actually fix the problem, it just makes it easier to do.
Mainstream music has been saturated with commercial influence for decades. We've had many, many broad revolts against this, that more or less immediately got picked up by the entertainment industry, commodified and commercialised.
I hope I am not wrong, but there is so much music out there already that success today is not about the quality of the music but instead about the audience's connection with the artist.
If there is no artist I don't see how any strong following could be built. (Obviously AI will carve easily into elevator music etc.)
Who will ever look up a song and favourite it on Spotify if there are no humans behind it?
> Who will ever look up a song and favourite it on Spotify if there are no humans behind it?
"Obscurest Vinyl" has 249,608 monthly listeners on Spotify. No one is interested in the humans behind their hit "I Glued My Balls To My Butthole Again".
People like me who mostly take songs at face value, valuing them by music and lyrics, and don't really care about who wrote or performed them, much less what else they're up to in their lives?
That said, the quantity of music is in itself a problem. Half the value of art is in experiencing the same thing as others. It's going to get even harder with cheap generative art. The better it is, the worse the situation gets.
Personally 3/4 times I'll put my big Spotify playlist on random or play a Spotify curated playlist. Certainly there is scope there for Spotify to select songs based on their licensing costs.
I've certainly had a hunch that certain songs get much more frequent rotation than others on my liked songs playlist (although I appreciate humans are notorious for picking out patterns where there are none!)
As an anecdotal statement, I do not want a connection or care about the artist. I also don't connect (or want to) with directors, writers,
actors etc in TV shows and movies I view.
Music is just another consumable form of entertainment for me, and if I like the song I don't care who made it.
A while back there was an article circling about how Spotify has their own contract musicians and how they are pushing "fake" bands made up of these musicians in their playlists. Same reason. With AI they don't even need those musicians.
Most musicians I know would love one of these Spotify jobs. Writing and recording for a salary, rather than spending 75% your time on (mostly futile) promotion for a wildly unpredictable return?
Title by me, everything else Chatgpt, Suno, Midjourney and ChatGPT again.)
So the big question is, can AI generate art? Can AI generate "real" music? Or is all AI music artificial music? Can artificial music create real emotions?
I love this topic. So much possibilities to challenge our understanding / appreciation of art and music.
I know a paper on this topic [1] whose take I really like: that AI generated works only become art through the eye of the artist.
In isolation a sunset is physics, photography is chemistry and AI is math. Without the artist there's no real difference between an AI song and playing /dev/random. Only through human interpretation do astronomy, chemistry and math turn into art.
Suno and friends, IMO, make good to acceptable songs. A few times per genre (for those they even can do, growling is still outside their capabilities). But, as with most things AI, it becomes very recognizable and same-y after a short time.
It seems obvious, at least to me, that AI i.e: code written to output something trained on human input, can make "art". It doesn't seem like a particularly deep or meaningful question. The question for me is whether you choose to attribute any value to it. I can hear a song that AI made and note that it sounds good (although this is rare currently). I have no interest in investing time into it though. I'm interested predominantly in the human experience and what humans express through art. Art created through the push of a button (or prompt) is still art, in the same way that pieces created by Warhol's assistants is still art. It's just indirect. That indirection, which for AI is on the extreme end of indirect, make it a bit of a novelty.
> I can hear a song that AI made and note that it sounds good (although this is rare currently). I have no interest in investing time into it though.
This argument makes sense to me for e.g. a novel, and is the reason why I wouldn't read an AI-written novel, all else being equal with human-written novels. But much of the music people consume is background music and requires no time investment at all.
For example, I play music while I exercise... give me a playlist that sounds good enough and it's upbeat enough, and it will be fine for the task.
I really love Udio, it works more like a tool for artists to extend, inpaint and modify musical ideas and explore. Compared to Suno it feels less polished but the AI is slightly more "dense" if that means anything anyway...
I agree, the rhythm of the rhyming feels great - tight and (dare I say it) artistic.
@franze is that something you have control over - is the prompting so detailed / accurate that you can specify that? Or is there some other tool that can adjust an initial revision? Or is it simply a roll of the dice?
So long as I know it uses AI generated vocals or instruments it's A-OK with me. It's an emerging genre. Whether it's junk is going to depend a lot on how the director corrals the output. I've listened to plenty of junk already. Amateur work can be fun to try and I'm curious how this will compare to Vocaloid or autotuned stuff.
Curtis Roads, in the latest edition of Computer Music Tutorial:
> A new industry has emerged around AI services for creating generic popular music [...] This is the latest incarnation of a trend that started in the 1920s called Muzak, to provide licensed background music in elevators, business and dental offices, hotels, shopping malls, supermarkets, and restaurants.
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The music author seems to be doing the music as part of a thesis and does not dump the generated music straight from the model. Instead it uses it for ideas and cooperation, and in the end there is post production and real work. I know people doing a similar thing to learn how to write books with AI as a productive tool.
In my opinion this is the real promise of AI: elevating the productivity and enabling more people. Like the internet has done, it will give voice and tools to many who could not, and a lot of those “voices” may seem of low quality, but alas such is the price.
As in every technological progression, paradigm changes happens. Some good some bad. Give yourself some agency and avoid the bad content and enjoy the good ones.
Also if you look at the YouTube videos there are comments of people genuinely liking it.
I think it's a tool, it's going to take away jobs which were already shaky and on the line, while empower people who can understand its potential and limitations.
There's very little romantic songwriting and true exploration going on in mainstream music. AI productions if anything to me are more honest if done with an open model by a person in their home. At least it's just a person fiddling with it until it sounds as something they like and not a megacorp. Until spotify makes these themselves.
AI music means near-zero cost of goods sold so the full 70% can turn into profit. The incentive is so strong that it's a certainty waiting to happen.
If there is no artist I don't see how any strong following could be built. (Obviously AI will carve easily into elevator music etc.)
Who will ever look up a song and favourite it on Spotify if there are no humans behind it?
"Obscurest Vinyl" has 249,608 monthly listeners on Spotify. No one is interested in the humans behind their hit "I Glued My Balls To My Butthole Again".
That said, the quantity of music is in itself a problem. Half the value of art is in experiencing the same thing as others. It's going to get even harder with cheap generative art. The better it is, the worse the situation gets.
I've certainly had a hunch that certain songs get much more frequent rotation than others on my liked songs playlist (although I appreciate humans are notorious for picking out patterns where there are none!)
The other 90%? Background music, e.g. for daily exercise, where I mostly want upbeat music that keeps me moving and sounds good.
For the 10% I prefer humans, for the 90%, if the AI music gets good enough, I'm afraid it will do the job just fine.
But I’m also the kind of person that hardly ever goes to concerts.
Music is just another consumable form of entertainment for me, and if I like the song I don't care who made it.
(Keeping in mind actual artists see a small amount of that 70% anyway so it’s more an argument about paying labels)
Ever wonder why restaurants and other commercial venues keep playing bland bossa-nova cover versions of good songs?
Licensing.
I have never tried AI text detectors, but my impression was that they were considered unreliable?
It only gets worse.
This one even asks the question, in german: "Is this art or can I throw it away?" (DE: Ist das Kunst oder kann das weg?")
Can AI music trigger real emotions or are they just artificial emotions?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79y1Dbst3l/?igsh=bDgzeGMxZTJ...
(And this one I call "If Poe had had a cat." https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79yC-rsywz/?igsh=MThzbDZvamV...
Title by me, everything else Chatgpt, Suno, Midjourney and ChatGPT again.)
So the big question is, can AI generate art? Can AI generate "real" music? Or is all AI music artificial music? Can artificial music create real emotions?
I love this topic. So much possibilities to challenge our understanding / appreciation of art and music.
In isolation a sunset is physics, photography is chemistry and AI is math. Without the artist there's no real difference between an AI song and playing /dev/random. Only through human interpretation do astronomy, chemistry and math turn into art.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779241252664
ie: https://suno.com/song/dfaa6a3c-ce91-4b71-a394-5b9232d00dc7
I can see why legit artists are concerned. (!)
This argument makes sense to me for e.g. a novel, and is the reason why I wouldn't read an AI-written novel, all else being equal with human-written novels. But much of the music people consume is background music and requires no time investment at all.
For example, I play music while I exercise... give me a playlist that sounds good enough and it's upbeat enough, and it will be fine for the task.
@franze is that something you have control over - is the prompting so detailed / accurate that you can specify that? Or is there some other tool that can adjust an initial revision? Or is it simply a roll of the dice?
If you can, do. If you can't, why?
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> A new industry has emerged around AI services for creating generic popular music [...] This is the latest incarnation of a trend that started in the 1920s called Muzak, to provide licensed background music in elevators, business and dental offices, hotels, shopping malls, supermarkets, and restaurants.