AI music has arrived! But WHY?

[@russellvaughan2679]

Fredrick Venus actually sounds a lot like Sparks

[@arbitersofsound]

😂 i had completely forgotten about them. I was also thinking of t-rex

[@hurdygurdyguy1]

​@@arbitersofsoundForgotten about Sparks??!! Blasphemer!!!

[@IoannisNousias]

«θα βρούμε καλές γκόμενες, μάνα μου γλυκιά» The Greek song is hilarious 😂 Loosely translates, “we’ll find fine chicks, my baby”, said in your typical slang for this genre. Its intonation is weird though, had to listen to it a few times to make out the lyrics.

[@arbitersofsound]

the rest says "xorepse karsilama..." 🤣 skyladiko though at the end of the video is by far my favorite

[@JeanLoupRSmith]

That French song sounded more like Jacques Brel than Serge Gainsbourg but man is it uncanny. Also the Icelandic one is most definitely Björk's voice. It's insane you can create songs with AI to basically sound like major artists both alive and dead with no concerns over who owns the copyright. This is what the Writers and Actor strike was all about last year, musicians better make sure they also fight for their rights in this very fast changing landscape we live in.

[@arbitersofsound]

I think you're actually right about Jacques Brel😅(I'm just a SG fanboy) The weirdest thing is that I didn't actually try to be overly specific with tags in the prompts. It was just icelandic female vocals, or 70s prog rock and bam! udio was like heres some bjork/genesis etc

[@JeanLoupRSmith]

@@arbitersofsound Yeah the "scarab boys" was also pretty obvious even without seeing the prompt.

[@LostSpringBand]

Thanks! I've been saying this to anyone who will listen for some time now. I hope the omnipresence of AI music will give a boost to local live music. This might sound counter-intuitive, but I think you're right - we do want to feel a human connection, and watching a live band gives us that. Even better - learning the basics of an instrument and participating in jam sessions might also be a way back into real human music. We will have to become less picky about production values, but in any case the punk attitude is always a good remedy for slickness.

[@arbitersofsound]

Thanks for commenting :D I think you have a very good point about live tbh. It could be "proof" that the music we make is real.

[@marielanomade]

Give life back to music! Les robots avaient raison.

[@hurdygurdyguy1]

Genysix sounds awesome!! Need a whole album!!!

[@Olafgolafpop1]

As a professional travel writer I am effected with the same problem in a diffrent field. AI can generate reasonable well written content. Noone would probably spend actively money on it but its still good enough to flood the internet and get one or two clicks on the advertisements. But as what you said with the AI music: There is no real reason to actually read it.

[@SingenSpielenSprechen]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

[@arbitersofsound]

Thanks for watching!

[@arbitersofsound]

How do you feel about AI music? Would you listen to it? Would you generate some and why? I'm really curious so let me know in the comments! (Also excuse my almost-stream-of-consciousness rant, I tried free soloing this without a script for a change 😛)

[@valasdarkholme6255]

I am in favor of it in a few instances, personally. Would I *listen* to it? Probably not. What is it's use then? So I stop hearing the same few no-copyright tracks on every KZbin video from someone without the budget to commission original music. (Even when they get licenses for existing copyrighted music, they get strikes because those are run by bots owned by companies who resell the rights in packages, and they do not check to see if you got a license independently, and then they have to go through lengthy dispute processes again and again. So I can see why many just use royalty-free stuff). And maybe for solo developers making indie games, so they're not also using those same handful of copyright-free tracks because they have no budget. Anyways. That's the real use I see for it. So small independent youtubers and solo game developers use a bit more variety in their background noise. I don't see it as being as good as bespoke stuff for projects with a real budget; and when I want specific music, I want that specific music, not randomly generated AI stuff. But, I have no interest in this "songs copying dead people", as a replacement for actual musicians, etc. Hard pass.

[@valasdarkholme6255]

I do listen to a good amount of videogame BGM as my music to vibe to while working. Whether that's music from old D&D games; or music from old JRPGs; or music from chinese wuxia and xianxia dramas; or the Fullmetal Alchemist Soundtrack - varies. I don't see that getting replaced by AI, at least not for me. But they're also mostly tracks from 15-30 years ago. Once in a while some synthwave gets mixed in. It's often newer, but it's also background noise. I expect I'll pick actual synthwave artists over AI versions, but I don't imagine those artists get a lot of revenue from me playing their stuff on KZbin or Spotify either. When I want to listen to music from an actual artist, it's most often metal songs by specific bands I like, most of which are no longer making albums. Occasionally 80s / 90s Rock, or Great Big Sea. I'm at a stage in my life where most of the music I listen to is stuff that I've heard before. I don't seek out a lot of new music, but I like the stuff I already like, and much of it I own on CD. *Maybe* it could replace generic soft instrumental music I occasionally turn on when I go to bed. But that would be about it. I hope this stuff is deemed all deemed 'impossible to copyright' like has been happening with image generators - so that any company with a budget will have good reason to use real human artists instead.

[@IoannisNousias]

I want my own Freddie Mercury - Queen AI station 😆 Last year, this genAI was crap. This year it’s convincing, though boring. Imagine next year…

[@stellviahohenheim]

I goon to human music

[@arbitersofsound]

@@valasdarkholme6255 Yeah, I think the background music game is already over, which is probably a positive thing tbh (and you're absolutely right about the whole copyright strike thing, it is indeed ridiculous). So, AI music is useful when it's not the focus and it needs to fill a "there should be some music here" gap in videos, games etc... Will it stop there though?

[@psychicdriver4229]

A I is gonna be in everything. Pretty soon nobody's gonna do much of anything... Except try to get away from it!

[@DJDiskmachine]

Great video! The troubling fact is that Bandcamp was acquired by a stock music company so... Better read that license agreement properly

[@arbitersofsound]

True.... that's another rabbit hole we have to dig into unfortunately

[@DJDiskmachine]

​@@arbitersofsound I'm looking into various self-hosting alternatives. Funkwhale seems pretty interesting and is Fediverse-ready ^_^ Time to stop feeding the LLMs with our creative work. Like you said, we're gonna see a tidal wave of generic garbage for the next year or so. It's time to lean into the weird to come out victorious on the other side =D

[@tenderlyone]

AI Music, it’s not Music. Is the work of laziness, the work of people who don’t know Music and resort to tricks in fall cities to be able to make music. Unfortunately, you are right; in order to make quick money, the recording industry may resort to making AI songs that make no sense but entertain people.

[@kimberlycarrigan8824]

Purple have actually been working their butts off for years to make these AIs.

[@arbitersofsound]

i don't think it's not music. but i'm not sure i see the point of it besides a thing that exists in the background that you really don't care that much about or pay attention to 😅

[@drewardnamthor]

So if a human creates music that sounds derivative it's a tribute or a pastiche but if an AI does it it's a rip off? Human creatives learn from the body of all that went before them and yet somehow AI isn't truly creative when it does PRECISELY the same thing? If we want to wall off certain areas of human effort from AIs then that's something we should decide to do as a society not because a highly privileged subset of humanity (musicians, artists etc) don't want their area of endeavour democratised or even entirely supplanted

[@arbitersofsound]

It depends on the context. I think that a lot of derivative human music is indeed also a rip off 😅 (Especially when the driving force behind it is purely money) Also, for the moment, AI is not really capable of combining lots of different influences into new music creations, which is what human artists mostly do (but it's probably a matter of time before that is also achieved). I think what I'm arguing against is the music industry weaponising this technology for the sake of profit and potentially hurting musical creativity in the future.

[@drewardnamthor]

@@arbitersofsound There is a lot of AI dross and human dross and I would agree with you about avoiding record industry monopolies (although I suspect that won't be an issue). While I respect your musical expertise (I have none) I am afraid you are wrong about AI's ability to mix influences, inherently the way these models work makes mixing styles easier that 'pure' pastiche. Remember ai has only been at music composition seriously for about 4 years now give it time.

[@arbitersofsound]

@@drewardnamthor I'm pretty sure at this pace it will be able to mix influences very very soon. Right now, we were really trying to give it prompts to create some wild crossover tracks (arabesque with black metal, or house with bouzouki 😂😂) but udio at least seems to ignore parts of the prompt that it feels are unrelated to the music it eventually creates.

[@asmworks]

I wouldn't say AI music is pointless, it's got a sense in it's own way, but worthless and meaningless. And worst of all, it is inevitably inhumane!

[@arbitersofsound]

That's actually a very good way of putting it

[@EricMichaelManuel]

I guess I wonder why you listen to music. Is it because you enjoy it? Why do you make music? Is it to enjoy what you hear, or is it the act of making? What about that making is rewarding to you? If you make music you listen to you, are depriving other musicians work? Do you only listen to music to reward the musicians who made it? I like making AI music. I'm not just hitting the roll the dice button. I like making diverse music to express feelings I have, some to have a laugh, some for the fun of seeing what I can make. I use my own poetry, some poems I enjoy, sometimes I might ask for some lyrics from an llm, work on the meter and rhyme, then use a music generator to create a song from it. I have a playlist of AI songs I made that I enjoy listening to. I also have many artists that I love, and AI music has not reduced my appreciation for other art and music. I don't personally have access to an orchestra to bring some of these musical ideas to fruition. ;)

[@stellviahohenheim]

Lol nobody cares

[@arbitersofsound]

If you are having fun generating AI music then more power to you! I think that as long AI helps to lower the barrier of entry to music making, that's a good thing. Music making shouldn't just be for those who have money for gear etc or just the virtuosos. Also, generating music for your poetry is something that I honestly hadn't thought about and it makes a lot of sense 😀 I do indeed listen to music because I enjoy it 😄 and because I love listening to the different musical/production/arrangement decisions that the artists make (and obviously learn from them). For some reason I believe that these decisions have some purpose behind them, as a means of storytelling or as a means to invoke a specific atmosphere or vibe, and that's where I find it hard to relate to the AI stuff. It feels like someone who's never been to france or speaks french, trying to explain to you what it's like to live in paris, because they've watched a ton of french movies (idk if that's a perfect analogy, but I hope you get my point 😅) Anyway, I don't really think that AI is bad or is coming to steal artists jobs necessarily. I think my point is more that the industry itself is bad and destroying music and artists, and that AI in their hands could be a superweapon that completely devalues music and disincentivizes people to even bother getting into making music in the future.

[@drmaawenz]

I like the lack of creativity that AI has, this basically means that it makes songs which are a mix of the music it was trained on. So eventually i get some interesting songs from "super groups" that never existed, that could be a mix of Syd Barett and Procul Harum or King Crimson and Mahavishnu Orchestra. Pretty bad ass, if you ask me.