The problem of AI generated music in streaming platforms

[@itwr]

Visual artists, musicians, who's gonna fall next?

[@synapticschism]

No idea... anything related to text seems inevitable.

[@WhatDoesEvilMean]

….? You’re naming the last of things. Do you know how many jobs have been replaced by automation?

[@itwr]

@@WhatDoesEvilMean many, and the number is increasing.

[@WhatDoesEvilMean]

@@itwr And that’s awesome. :D

[@CraigGundlach]

nail on the head "Music as a commodity"

[@synapticschism]

It's kinda the takeaway expression isn't it? It's a bit sad that we got to a point where that alone isn't the issue.

[@kanilros]

That's one of the two kinds of music. The other is music as art. AI can and will replace the former, but by definition can't replace the latter (at least not until it develops feelings, at which point it has become human maybe?).

[@synapticschism]

@@kanilros indeed. However I think the crux of the discussion is that music as a commodity is preventing listeners from accessing music as art, right?

[@kanilros]

​@@synapticschismI guess it can be. But that would also be true for music as a commodity made by humans (assuming their intent for making it was commercial rather than artistic). I do suspect "consumers" of music are a much bigger portion of streamers than listeners looking for and appreciating music for its artistic value. I also doubt most of them care if the music they're "consuming" are pleasant sounds put together by humans or computers. But as for me, if I hear a song I like, I go check out that artist and want to find out what they're about, to connect with them in a way. If they turn out to be AI, there's not much to connect to so I won't be waiting for their next piece of "art". As someone who makes music to express myself artistically, I don't think AI generated music is preventing anyone from finding my music, not any more than human-made generic consumer focused music already was. But humans who make that music, a lot of whom are unquestionably also creating art, they'll have less a chance to enter the "music as commodity" market if it is flooded with AI.

[@synapticschism]

@@kanilros Perfectly explained. :)

[@Real_Wilkinson]

This is a brilliant video exploring the realms of AI generated music. I'm appalled how the streaming service seems not to be too concerned about what this does to human musicians. This video has provided me with some thoughts to mull over. Your explanation and thoughtfulness over what you are talking about is a credit to who you are as a musician / artist.

[@synapticschism]

Thank you, mate. FYI I have a lot of experience with AI/ML in professional contexts, which I guess helps with keeping a balanced approach to this. My take is that there's room for music as a service kind of thing, but artists need to consent and be paid. That way incentives are positive and a new industry can exist. What rubs me the wrong way is when music as a service (or commodity) enters the realm of the artistic and therefore consumer consumption. My line is drawn there.

[@Soul-Burn]

I support generative AI as a tool to create art, and as you mention for background music etc. However, I completely agree that this doesn't really have a place where the music is supposed to be the main product. The problem I have with AI is that most people who make stuff with it make the most generic and boring slop that floods the spaces and pushes out higher quality art and music.

[@synapticschism]

I understand what you mean, but will the general audience agree? I honestly don't know. What most people think of quality music is basically the music they like. It doesn't mean it's good, it just means that if they react positively to it, then TO THEM it is quality music. This creates a whole new problem because I haven't listened to one single good AI song. But I have listened to AI music people may easily enjoy, therefore, that will be good music, regardless of what artists or people with a better sensibility to music think.

[@Soul-Burn]

There are 2 kinds of general audience. * The vocal minority - artists, online people, activists, etc. * The actual general audience - just wants enjoyable music and games. The first group doesn't and won't accept it for a while. The second group may feel something is strange, but don't *really* care. I have heard enjoyable "main product" AI music, but pretty much only "joke" or "parody" songs. Nobody expects these to move you to bits, so it's a good fit. I have also seen AI artwork that I enjoy. Usually intricate canvases for me to discover in awe. It will embed into works, as background music and art, and *most* people, the silent majority, won't care even a bit.

[@notaspectator]

Thanks for bringing up the issues :) . I'm a software engineer of many years but shifted to making my music and playing instruments and teaching arrangements to people with disabilities. I am figuring out a new platform and a way, publish 10% to spotify/apple music, the rest from own site I can help with, no analytics or ads or promotions over each other, more localized and very little ability to skip music. Will try it out and test out my theories with artists and hopefully get some support and some financial support as I am running dry on savings.

[@synapticschism]

I wish you the best of luck. :)

[@notaspectator]

@@synapticschism thank you, some will be needed :)

[@blackcreekrock]

Great video! I believe you have a very well-balanced opinion. It's a very tired cliche, but it's true: music is essentially about human connection. I want to hear music that came from a human mind that I can relate to. A machine cannot convey emotion, it can only mimic. But it already mimics quite well. It will get better at it. As AI improves, it's going to become harder to tell what's real and what is fake. That's a disservice to us all.

[@synapticschism]

Thank you for your words. You 100% nailed it. There is a human element in music as an art form. I have nothing against music as a service or a commodity. However, I strongly believe that for public consumption, music should always be an art form.

[@FitriZainOfficial]

thanks for this video, well said brother🙏

[@synapticschism]

Thank you for your support.

[@SilkNRoots]

I was one of the totally fooled by this... And yeah, i totally agree with you brother, this needs to stop! Although I am not sure our voices will be enough to actually make a difference 🤦🏻‍♂️

[@synapticschism]

Everyone was. The only person that raised a point was my wife. She picked something with the vocals, don't ask me what or how she did it. But she didn't claim it was AI, just that it was weird. And yeah, I hope we can have this discussion.

[@vasiliychernov2123]

Some day I went to listen to Release Radar on my Spotify. I noticed some releases which list artists I follow as collaborators of a noname artist. I instantly became suspicious, played a track and it was apparent that first of all, my followed artists are of course not related to the tracks and they were added by a shady actor to boost their play counts. Then as I was listening, it also was obvious that the audio was AI-generated as it had some distinct sonic characteristics. AI-generated "music" sounds muffled, something like it's processed through a vocoder with white noise a little bit. I don't remember if I sent a report to Spotify regarding using unrelated artists in songs metadata. I remember the album was called Invasion of Galatto (quite telling). I can't find it on Spotify now, so maybe I did send a report and the album got removed.

[@goncalopatraquim2521]

9:06 Yes I was "kind of heart broken" and really sad. I now think back to recently having seen the same thing in images or coputer art beying made by AI and ending up beying sold. Nontheless music is an artform that I relate much more and it really saddens me to see this happening to musicians. Platforms and distributors will answer only to the market so no help there. Could there be "AI free" platforms and distributors? Can they set them apart? For how long? I cannot imagine a way forward where this problem could be solved. Just another downside of ML/AI, i guess. 😢 Great clip, Bro.

[@synapticschism]

Thank you for adding your bit, brother.

[@Thepietro5000pp]

As a visual artist I agree with everything, however there's one thing prompters can't do. Live shows. Maybe I'm in a bubble, but I've seen a lot of people ditching social media and heavily dropping their internet usage. I myself changed my smartphone to a dumbphone for contact, Walkman for music, PSP for entertainment. Surprisingly, lots of people around me did the same in the past year or so. It's still not very common, but I believe a bigger "back to real life" movement begins. EDIT: also there are two points to remember. 1. People who don't care about if song is AI generated don't buy music. CD era is over, now it's all in streams, and it's better to have 1000 devoted fans that buy every album you put out, than 10 000 listeners who just stream your song from time to time and then forget you exist. 2. No copyright. The tracks you mentioned can be downloaded and uploaded on Spotify as "yours" and nobody can do anything about that. AI and prompters having no ability copyright strike you is something that will be weaponized in the future, and I'm here for that :)

[@synapticschism]

I have indeed moved away from social media, especially for private stuff and I'm only active with accounts for this project. I agree that live performances may be a thing, I've considered writing and mixing music on Twitch but I fear it may be distracting.

[@EmpireofWhimsy]

Thank you for making this video. I agree, AI has its place, but must be clearly marked as such. We are vehemently against AI in our music and art. The flood of AI generated music and art steals the humanity from the creative process, and takes away from artists in a universally negative way. Your video is well reasoned and indicates your integrity as an artist and a human being. Keep creating. The world needs it more than ever.

[@synapticschism]

Thank you for your kind words. I appreciate you. Thank you also for your input. My original position was that AI should be about the tools and not about the product but we've crossed that threshold already, so I can only hope that we find a way of protecting the artists and add them to this loop. As someone who worked in AI/ML for a decade, ignoring the creative people responsible for the idea is a very bad play.

[@icondark]

I have very little problem with art that is being used as a commodity...a product, a widget, a screw, a bolt... a means to a monetary end... being replaced with AI. The problem that I DO have with that is the source of the training data and whether the original artists got compensated. To platforms like Spotify, ALL music is a commodity and we are seeing yet another manifestation of that. I've also said for months that people complaining about AI art because of quality are picking the wrong nail to hammer, because soon nobody will be able to tell the difference and, when it is pointed out, most listeners won't care. Looks like that's happening sooner than I thought.

[@Real_Wilkinson]

@icondark there are high court cases going on between Labels and AI Firms as we speak. This could reshape the landscape. But it could also be a detriment to Indie Artists too. If either side wins. It will help them and not us.

[@synapticschism]

I don't know if you watched my other video on the topic (the Bandcamp one) but I'm 100% with you. I think there is a world where music is in fact a commodity, however, the creators of the data (us!) need to be in the loop. I must consent and be paid. This is a different beast though. What I showed here is directly competing with artists.

[@risengrind6268]

7:39 stop please complaining about things you can´t change. I am a musician myself. The whining is useless. Make the best of it and make your own money with the new possibilities that AI provides.

[@synapticschism]

I don't care about making money with music, that's my whole point. I'm not whining, I literally don't care. Moving forward, where can I listen to your music?

[@jaywalker6781]

Suno and Udio are now being sued by Universal, Sony and Warner. Depending on the outcome, it could lead to some important changes... I mean, if the majors win, Udio and Suno are financially dead, and it will be the end of A.I. generated music companies. Now, the use of personal software will be far more complicated to prosecute, as it was with samples back in the days...

[@synapticschism]

I don't think the majors want to make AI go away, they just want a piece of the pie. If the AI companies double down and go to extremes, then yeah, maybe there will be major changes, but I'm not seeing that happen. As soon as the majors get their hands in a slice of that money, they will all be friends.

[@StopSleepingMusic]

I really appreciate you making this video 🙏🏼. The future may be a race to the bottom for the most generic generative AI music.

[@synapticschism]

Thank you, I appreciate your words. I don't know what the next steps are but I feel this discussion isn't over.

[@burnindownthehouse]

Rick Beato said about a year ago that in the near future, 9 out of the top 10 songs in the Spotify Top 10 will be AI created and nobody will even care. Casual music listeners don't care who makes their music, they just want to hear music. Whether or not a human creates it is of no concern to them. As a musician it hurts me to hear that, but I know it's the truth. This is what the future holds, unfortunately.

[@synapticschism]

I believe that is likely the case.

[@RokoNovakGlazba]

While AI music is definitely gonna replace a huge amount of music but it has some stuff it just can't replace, 1. Languages, for English it of course has the most data for singing and grammar but for less spoken languages like Korean? It might be able to make kpop but it won't be able to make some Korean shoegaze (eg. Parannoul) and make it speak coherent Korean, and Korea has a decently sized music scene so what for languages like Croatian or Hungarian? 2. It can't exceed the quality of the best music just due to the way it's made, like yeah, the average quality of an AI song might be better than even most but sometimes quantity doesn't beat quality. 3. I'd rather say that the most popular music as of now relies on image of the artist as well (eg. two artists who I listen to barely: Charli xcx brat which sounded more unique than Crash but is performing way better or Taylor Swift, whose appeal is pushed to be the most popular artist currently alive due to her image as a story-teller and her songs being her diary entries (I'm not saying that the quality of the music does not matter in fact I think it's the most important reason but her image is what pushes her to be the most famous artist right now)) Though these are just the thoughts of a miniscule 17-year old artist from Croatia so correct me if you think I am wrong.

[@synapticschism]

I don't think you are wrong to be honest. Language depends on how much data on that language it has (including vocal samples) and yeah a lot of an artist's appeal is image related. And never let your age or country of origin dictate if you are wrong or right. :)

[@uselessdogs6443]

The last part is so well put out. No real artists, no training with real music.

[@synapticschism]

That's my professional background speaking. Weirdly I've been in that situation of telling people the models will stop working if there's no data. Kill the goose, lose the golden eggs.

[@T3PP4N]

The only robots i actually wanna listen to are Daft Punk man how did we let ourselves get here 😭

[@synapticschism]

Wrong incentives...

[@retrobloke]

I don’t think you’ll find a musician on the planet who doesn’t whole heartedly agree with you. It is heartbreaking. 8000+ listens! Like many I only have a handful of monthly listeners on my Spotify channel as it is, now I’m competing with this! I guess most people who make music have to be resigned to just making music for themselves. Soon there will be no point putting anything out there for others at all 😢

[@synapticschism]

I am in the camp of writing for myself, but I'm not worried about me, to be honest. My biggest concern is the artists who are trying to launch a career because they are putting a lot of resources into it and this is an uneven playing field against them.

[@retrobloke]

@@synapticschism My hope would be that there is a bigger backlash and the streaming sites change their policies, if they don’t surely they threaten their own businesses. It will just dilute the content into wishy washy ear fodder that all sound the same. Probably what’s needed is getting some big bands behind it, creating some kind of anti AI movement or protest group. We are basically allowing AI to irradiate human expression, it’s truly a massive issue right now. Checked your music btw, interesting!

[@synapticschism]

@@retrobloke Yeah, I think that a small channel with a small X following like me isn't going to change much. Thank you for checking my music, I appreciate you. :)

[@synapticschism]

@@retrobloke oh and cool channel of yours. I'm a game dev veteran, already lost track of how long I've been around professionally, maybe 15 or 16 years.

[@retrobloke]

@@synapticschism oh wow, game soundtracks? Or coding? Always something I’d loved to have got into, but these days all my new music tends to be for my YT shows. Would love to know what games you worked on.

[@Istarax]

I fundamentally disagree with the extent of the problem. As you saw, their music was all over the place, they will not gain a large following that way. You have nothing to be afraid of. Also, if you are worried about uploading too infrequently, you could embrace the change and find a way to use AI to speed up your workflow. I agree, writing a simple prompt to generate anything is not artistry, but I believe real artists can remain artists, even if they use AI in their workflow. I'm not too familiar with AI music generators and how easily you can make it actual art, but in image generation at least, there is definitely a possibility to be an artist who uses those tools. Some people use ready-made loops and synthesizer presets, which imo is just as bad (not bad) as using AI to generate vocals or drum tracks for their music. Creativity is about combining things, it's literally impossible to come up with something completely new.

[@playOLDmusic]

I make my own music without any ai. I did release one song per week this year and have already sent songs to my distributor to release every Friday till the end of this year. I agree with everything you said but i can't agree to the fact that the only way possible to release so much music is by using ai.

[@playOLDmusic]

Also released almost 70 tracks last year. Output has been slower this year.

[@synapticschism]

Fair enough. I mentioned it is not possible to do a release per week with the production values of the tracks I showed. Can you link me to your music so I can compare the production values?

[@Skanking-Corpse]

Your mistake is thinking these platforms were ever going to care about what people put on those platforms, all they care about is revenue. AI generators are a plague and people who don't care about art will use them to drown out any actual artist. If you want to fight back then call out any AI Generated music and art out there, be merciless about it because they are a threat.

[@DavidAnderson-vg8uz]

Finding more and more of this generated "content" right here on youtube. The ai slop-merchants don't care about about your final point, it's all about easy, selfish, short term gains.

[@synapticschism]

I can't argue with that. It is a very short term view, in my opinion.

[@ACosmicVibe]

We recently started using AI to make our music. We write our own lyrics and put them to the genre music we want. We used artlist etc n got very bored with limited tunes. We have created some great music so far and are not limited to others' creations. We dont do spotify. I play instruments. I am an artist. I am an award winning screen writer. But I am having fun creating with AI .

[@GeeBeeProMusic]

I feel there is a difference between hitting generate with no human input and spending time writing a song, getting the structure down, and then generating the end product with AI. No difference between using AI to generate the song and hiring someone on Fiver to play the song I personally wrote. I think the argument is that people with no talent can just pump out 100 bangers a month and put artists out of business. I view it as another tool that can be used by artists to complete work. I didn't see drummers out of a job because I can make drum tracks. It is lame that people can pump out songs but in the end it will just be clutter and garbage. It will take actual human talent to input the structure to make a good song. Plus AI cant play live shows. It will just be another tool used by all musicians, not an end to music. Just my opinion, I am not the authority on how you feel about it. Stay blessed everyone

[@synapticschism]

Those are actually good points in favour of AI! :) I think the reason why I'm upset with this finding is that I believe AI can be very useful and powerful... but not like this, you know what I mean?

[@LAUREBowman-qj8iq]

When I listen to the radio in my car I listen to the music, sometimes cases the artist doesn't actually write the song the artist also doesn't actually write the instruments also either so but their voice is thier instruments if not being auto tuned so I don't understand what the issue with ai is the artist sing wont have to compete with ai because ai can't have concerts or have fan base ai can only be listened to so what is the act issue

[@ZyzyxVile]

Music tracks have become a worthless commodity, and that's not because of crappy Suno AI music. Just to get by, a lot of bands have resorted to becoming T-Shirt salesmen and giving way there music for free. The average yearly income of a song writer is also well below minimum wage. Unless you sit at the top that is. This isn't because of AI though, this has been going on for over 15 years now because of streaming. Music has become too accessible and no one wants to pay you for it. All AI music is going to do is muddy the waters when it comes to discovery, that's it. The industry needed change well before it came around.

[@synapticschism]

I agree with you, however I don't think it is just discoverability. Playtime available is affected and frequency of release is unbalanced. I don't think your assessment of the situation is wrong though, although I recall selling cassetes and CDs in my gigs 30 years ago.

[@Aihiospace]

Why would Spotify have an issue with AI music? They themselves use AI to create endless playlists of AI-generated music to suit every passive consumer-listener's mood and taste (hence no need to pay real artists any potential royalties).

[@synapticschism]

What are the official playlists of AI generated music?

[@Aihiospace]

@@synapticschism I honestly don't know and don't want to know. I don't use Spotify myself, because I love and listen to music. But there were articles and posts about these "generic AI mood music" playlists, that Spotify creates in order to attract more subscribers, a couple of years ago already...

[@schnitthart]

About a year ago, I saw that someone called himself "Schnittharty", which is very similar to my artist name. He created songs and one of his songs has the exact same name as one of mine. I saw the name of the "label" in his Spotify account details. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the homepage, but probably don't exist anymore, don't know. On this site you can create AI songs for different genres and upload them to Spotify. The annoying thing was not only that my name was stolen, but that this garbage also produced even more clicks, although it is clear that the higher numbers could not have been human. I didn't want to be associated with that so I contacted them and threatened to take legal action and they took everything down.

[@synapticschism]

I'm sorry you had to go through that. I hope everything is fine now.

[@schnitthart]

@@synapticschism yes everything is vanished from his page

[@cerebrumexcrement]

i joined an fb group out of curiosity and a lot of these guys think of themselves as legitimate musicians. 🙄

[@synapticschism]

Just read the comments here. You'll find plenty of post-hoc justification on how, without any know-how or experience, they justify being artists in their own right.

[@IaS_AI]

I guess this won´t be a popular Opinion here but you seem to at least try to think about this topic and don´t condem it all right away. It seems pretty strange to me that you are judging music by how it is made. When you found that "Artist" you talked about - why did you need to find out that it is AI to say it is bad? Bad music can be made with or with out AI - AI just made it easier so more bad music without any artistic vision will be made. But at the same time, good music WITH an artistic Vison can be made with AI too. Its pretty strange to me that ppl accept Hip Hop / Rap Artists that buy Beats from someone else and then "Talk" their Lyrics to that Beat as being Artists, while they won´t even listen to the Lyrics some Artist wrote and made Music for it with AI. To me AI is a bit like what a DJ does - you select what parts will fit together and represent an artistic vison of your own. Oh and btw: If someone gets AI to write Lyrics that are good and not obviously AI at first glance, they really are an Artist for coming up with such a prompt to make that happen. So yes, there are ppl making bad music with AI trying to make a quick buck - but there were also ppl making bad music for a quick buck before AI - blame it on bad music without a vision and not on AI.

[@synapticschism]

I appreciate you taking the time to comment in a considerate way. I don't think I said the AI music was bad, in fact I mentioned that it had high production values. Even if we disagree on what is good or bad music (in my opinion that is often subjective) I hope we can agree that consumer music is expected to have high production value, and the AI music produced nowadays has high production values. From a listener's perspective, I don't think I said AI music is bad. If I did, I misrepresented my position. I'm not arguing about bad music, I arguing the incentives are badly directed and the playing field being uneven given how easy it is to generate music in a very short amount of time at a very low cost with AI. And yes, I am saying people who write prompts aren't artists because no one has convinced me that writing prompts is a form of craftsmanship. I should clarify that I have professional experience in managing data science teams which may be a bias that I will see it is wrong in the future, but at this point, I don't see how it can be. I think there's a point that defenders of generative AI are not getting: if there aren't incentives for people who write music, there won't be enough music to train models in the future. Maybe it is a distant future... but it is a serious possibility. No new models = no music variance.

[@IaS_AI]

I guess i mistunderstood you then, based on you saying that you don´t see an artistic vison in this music. For me that means bad music. If an Artist has nothing to say he should not make the song imho. If he does have something to say and can put it in a song i don´t care what instruments or technics he uses - be it acoustic guitar, Keyboards, sampling or AI. I guess it all comes down to this: For me good music means that i can hear that the Artist had something to say with his Art, that he made it to share a message or a feeling while for you the criteria is if it sounds good on a technical production level. You talk about "Artists wanting to make a living from music" - for me thats just as much commoditization of music as the thing you critizise about AI music. Music should not be made with that goal in mind. It can be a sideeffect of making the music you love and its great when it happens. But as soon as Artists start to care more about making money then saying what they want to say i´d say its starts to become bad music from my POV. (And this is happening for decades, most Pop/Chart Music is just made for money, not for the Artistic Vison or message. What is the difference between sample heavy music styles and AI creating new songs based on existing Music? Oh and btw: i don´t think that AI music has very good production if you just take what you get from the AI, at least for some genres of music its an awefull mix and you have to split the stems and mix&master it in a DAW after creating the Track. I also don´t think that ppl will stop making music - there are thousands of Bands and Solo musicians that don´t have a realistic goal of making a living from what they do and still creat aweseom music. If you look at niche genres you will find these Bands and Projects all over the place. Why would they stop doing what is fun for them? They have a vison, a message and want to create. They won´t stop because there is a different way of creating artificial meaningless music.

[@synapticschism]

@@IaS_AI I think there's a lot in which we agree and a lot in which we either disagree or characterize differently which is not fun to argue about with text. I'm sure we'd have a productive, lively and respectful conversation live. I just want to leave a final message: I run this project because I love to write music and I want to support indie artists. AI music by the very nature of how it is produced goes against these two things when it is allowed in platforms where it competes with artists. Although I do my best to be fair, I am well aware that I'm biased. That being said, I appreciate the discussion with you.

[@stefbaldfish2982]

If you write lyrics then AI is a good solution to express yourself. I hate it when it's put down as easy. Writing a Nice lyric is work to...

[@synapticschism]

I'm not completely uncomfortable with that idea, to be honest.

[@stefbaldfish2982]

@@synapticschism i have a closet full of own written poetry. I gradualy rewrite them to lyrics and put it to music using AI. I don't feel embarresed to be open about this. I put effort into my writing. But nobody reads poetry these days. And I banned my radio because it was not satifying me. I hate the music of today So I took it in my own hands. I only produce songs that are in line of what I like. And I listen to my own music every single day on Spotify. My life became more satifying. So I understand that musicians see this as a threath. But I see it as making songs that my favourite artist can't make because they are death or stopped making music. Think of Meat Loaf, Jim Steinmann, Elvis, ... And so on... What is the crime in that? I feel good about this. And honnestly... If the music industrie had been more open, this AI discussion was never An issue. But record labels had to much power. So... I 'm happy with what I do.

[@stefbaldfish2982]

By the way you can judge for yourself. Just check out my band: Lustful Luminaries

[@KiffietheDreamer]

My opinion is that 'artist' and 'AI music creator' are two very different things. There's little overlap. Frequency of release isn't the main issue though, it's the artist identity that's important. My music is still identifiable as mine, in my style, even though its improved over time, mainly because I've released a lot and learned with each creation.

[@synapticschism]

I think that is a fair point. My question (and sort of counter-argument) is that the higher frequency in a disadvantage for artists since one single "AI music creator" can deliver hundreds of these per day.

[@yuaelt]

I have to respectfully disagree. Your point reminds me a bit of the times when synthesizers and loopers were first introduced, and the "traditional" musicians were appalled by the music created with the help of computers, saying this is no longer art, that the creators are engineers rather than musicians, that it's artificial and fake, etc. Same when Fatboy Slim emerged and the wider public realized one can make new tracks entirely by sampling existing records. Did it make musicians die out? No. Firstly, it's easy to be impressed by AI output when you first hear it, because it's such an improvement compared to a few years ago. But if you give it a closer listen... the tracks AI spits out have all kinds of problems you'd never encounter when working with humans, that still make the song useless (random noise, fake-sounding vocals, nonsensical lyrics, AI hallucinations, inconsistent melody, very basic solos... to name just a few!). It takes actual skill to make it spit something presentable. Forgive me if that's not what you intended, but I get the impression you don't recognize that effort. Secondly, what you get is usually the most generic version of the style you asked for. Listen to it and any music created by a decent artist (emphasis on 'decent' here) and you'll realize just how low creativity the AI output is. The users of these platforms constantly demand them to allow for more control, more direct editing, and more granular options to actually inject their own creativity into the output. And finally - the account you showed in this video has a total of... 4 followers. To me, this means their weekly releases are not good enough to attract an audience. They'd probably have to put a lot more work into the tracks to gain popularity, especially with next to zero chance to have a recognizable style. But speaking of work, let's not forget that artists get paid for the effect of their work, not the time spent on it. So while I don't think AI will be able to spit out anything better than humans overall anytime soon, if there are some individual AI creators who already make better music than some individual traditional musicians... I don't have a problem with the latter having to change professions, sorry. My point is, I think the real artists who make actual use of human creativity and original thought, will prevail. Some by just doing what they're doing and being great at it. Others, by learning to incorporate AI as a new production tool. Thanks for the interesting video!

[@synapticschism]

I won't disagree with you that my complaint is similar to musicians complaining about sequencers, samplers, synths, DJs, etc. I have been accused of not being a musician myself for being early adopter of tech in music and I have always defended that whoever is making music is a musician. The difference, in my opinion and probably where we disagree, is that writing prompts is not writing music. Regarding the middle part of your reply, I work with AI and ML for years. I understand the effort, I just don't agree that it is a creative one and I don't recognize it as an artistical output. It's a technical effort. Lastly on the number of followers, you probably saw the FB page. The Spotify account says it has 4k monthly listeners, which is decent. However, I have checked other accounts that are very likely AI and one of them has 800 thousand monthly listeners and one track with 55 million streams.That is taking room from artists who write music and I don't agree with that. I want to finish by saying that I appreciate your input and embrace open discussion on the topic. While I don't agree with you, I respect how you presented your points.

[@yuaelt]

@@synapticschism Thank you, and likewise! I enjoy a good conversation, and that is usually one where people's opinion differ a bit! Thank you for correcting my perspective on the number of followers these creators get - I had no idea there were so many. To be honest, I've been experimenting with one of these tools (suno) for a few months now, but I haev yet to produce anything I would, with a clear conscience, put on Spotify, let alone expect it to gain any popularity. It's just not that good to listen to. Of course, the reason for that could be that I'm terrible with prompts, or that there are a lot of people out there with bad taste, or both. But when I think about it... it actually supports my point. Spotify isn't by design a museum of art, even if it can serve that purpose too. If there are 55 million people who want to listen to AI-generated music even as it is now... why not let them? There are even more who listen to pop idols pretty much manufactured by record companies, performing songs written and composed for them by a small army of people, with strict guidelines, mathematically calculated best-selling bpms, the best ratio of repetition in the lyrics, etc. Are they all artists? Are they not? And most importantly - do we have to care? My answer is no. We listeners are not obliged to care whether the person who created the music we enjoy has the right to call themselves an artist or not. I realize this sounds quite cynical, so here's some explanation: We've learnt to accept things as works of art even if there is zero skill, craft or beauty to them - that's the XXth century art, you could literally spend half your life writing numbers on a door in increasingly faint shade of grey, and that was art. Now, we got a tool that allows anyone create something with a high craft value in record time. But if we have already agreed (as a culture) that craft is not what makes an artist - the idea is - then nothing has changed here, we still need an artist to come up with an original idea. Ergo - AI prompt writer may not be a composer, a painter or a writer, but they are 'artist enough'. On the other hand, if we decide that it can't be all about the story and whatever faff the creator cared to write under his scribbles to justify them hanging in the museum (which is very much my unpopular opinion on postmodern art as a whole...) then we need to admit that art needs craft. But if it is so, then it's really not that sacred, and we go back to an almost medieval view of a musician being valued as much as, say, a baker. You can get artisan bread (good music by talented and educated musicians), your local bakery produce that's just OK but you get it fresh (wedding bands? :D) or you can buy it mass-produced (manufactured pop idols, or as of now - the AI) depending on your taste and needs. You'll call much less people 'artists' with this interpretation, but you'll need to accept the world needs the crafters too. Those 55 million, as much as their existence surprises me, are probably not all bot accounts... I don't know if that makes more sense, or does it make me sound even more cynical, but actually, I have a pretty positive view of this situation. I am looking forward mostly to the hybrid results of when creative humans prompt the AI, then take whatever it spat out and edit it themselves. Who knows, maybe we'll actually get something good out of it!

[@synapticschism]

​@@yuaelt everything you say makes perfect sense, I'm not even going to refute it. I have ZERO issues with the person who writes the prompts or the final listener. My issue is with the distributors and streaming services. Why? My two main points are these: 1. Artists who write music have less space, and given the inequality in output potentially not enough space for artists to have incentive to continue. 2. If you have no artists, you have no models. This is something that should concern you as someone who uses these techs to create. If there are no artists, there are no new licks, no new genres, no new tones, no innovation... nothing new, ever. You've mentioned the artists who don't make it, tough luck, look for a new job. Ok, that is the cost of new tech, but do you think that the models you are using will survive if only the 1% of artists make it? It won't. You won't have enough variance to create new music at the click of a button, you won't have new styles, new ideas, etc. You can only create what already exists and the more you create, the less you'll have. I think you haven't grasped how dangerous that is. The top artists are not enough to create new stuff, not in volume and not in variance. I work with this tech for a long time. I managed teams of data scientists in very large game dev companies. To have this stuff delivering new content you need thousands upon thousands of new songs. If you take out the people who write the music, who's feeding the models?

[@yuaelt]

@@synapticschism I understand your concern, and I'm not saying it's not valid. Of course it's scary to have to compete with a technology that seems like it could take your jobs any day. In my industry (localization) the first wave of that happened with the arrival of neural machine translation, that made many people fear they'd be replaced by AI in a few years. It still didn't happen to this day, but with the arrival of genAI the voices are louder than ever. I hear you (and my colleagues too) loud and clear. The thing is, I don't think Spotify, or any other streaming platform, has an obligation to subdue the AI-generated music just because it can be made faster. What I think it should be doing, is developing its playlists and suggestions in such a way that they stay interesting and relevant to the listeners. So my answers to your points are again a bit more optimistic: 1. Less space for artists - that's not likely if the playlists are improved to keep the listener interested, because that is where humans win. However, that's based on the objective variability, and not artificial parity points. If the playlists are not improved, the large influx of low quality AI content would steer the bored listeners towards human-curated playlists where, again, quality or at least variability and novelty are what keeps the audience - and these criteria promote human compositions and/or heavily edited AI outputs that can match those. 2. No new data to train the AI therefore nothing new ever - since you work in the field, I think we can skip to agreeing that no matter how many traditional artists prevail, AI goes through the data much faster than we can produce it, so yeah, sooner or later we'll hit a ceiling of what it can do. But I wouldn't frame it as a problem - it's the humans who have new ideas. I never expected AI to evolve to the point where you can generate a truly original piece of music with one click. I expect it to become a tool for creative people to enhance their ideas, and a replacement for those who don't bring anything new to the table (that's the group I meant when I said I wouldn't mind if they had to change jobs, although something tells me many could easily turn into fast unedited AI spammers - same quality, less effort...). To sum it up, I don't want to disregard your concerns for the artists well-being, but I don't think we should make it Spotify's responsibility. And at the same time, I think our species' innate creativity, and need for novelty, both deserve some credit :). In the end, time will tell, I guess. Meanwhile, thank you for the very interesting conversation!

[@synapticschism]

@@yuaelt thank you for the discussion. :)

[@maddyaurora]

where were you when writers started being replaced by AI? what about digital artists started being replaced by AI artists? and now follows the music you should have spoken for all artists, not only musicians now that you are affected In the end art is art and if it pleases someone's eyes, someone's ears, they wont care who made it or what made it

[@synapticschism]

You are right, I should have spoken for all artists. And I should have spoken sooner. I failed to comprehend how problematic generative AI can be until I was followed by this account on X.

[@iterativeincremental]

video looks heavily edited. Maybe ai commentary?

[@synapticschism]

Yes it is heavily edited because I speak very slowly and the videos become a lot more boring. I do it manually. What is your point?

[@iterativeincremental]

@@synapticschism edited to a point where I asked myself if that is a deepfake. I take boring over this anytime

[@synapticschism]

@@iterativeincremental that is a you problem. This isn't deepfake or whatever, it's just heavy manual editing.

[@WhatDoesEvilMean]

It’s hilarious to watch people standing AGAINST PROGRESS genuinely believing that they’re on the right side of any history ever.

[@synapticschism]

FYI I worked as head of data science, managing a team of data scientists who developed AI/ML models for several years. This is not against progress. You are misrepresenting my position.

[@WhatDoesEvilMean]

@@synapticschism Am I? Your position seems to be that 1) Ai companies “steal” - they don’t. 2) Artists who use Ai shouldn’t be allowed in whatever spaces you decree. And 3) Ai Art isn’t art. This isn’t what you said?

[@synapticschism]

@@WhatDoesEvilMean no, but I'll help you out. 1. It is a uneven playing field considering the speed at which AI users can upload music. There is a place for AI music, as a commodity, I said it many times, but you've apparently missed it. 2. Without incentives there will be a diminishing number of artists. The implication of this is that you cannot train new models, therefore artists should have incentives to continue to do music. For this reason, no AI music should not be in the consumer space, which is the artists incentive. AI art is art, the people who write prompts to create AI art aren't artists. That is a big distinction. I don't recall ever saying AI companies steal. Are you confusing my video? I have stated in my other videos on the topic on how this should be handled to help artists and AI companies, but you are unaware of that, so you assume that I accuse AI companies of stealing, right? And to finish did you completely miss the point that I have experience with AI/ML. Feel free to drop your LinkedIn and I'll connect with you.

[@WhatDoesEvilMean]

@@synapticschism I think the “stealing” part was my confusing this comment with another one I was interacting with on KZbin. But insofar as “music as commodity”, most of the music we use in elevators or whatever has always been done by people who composed music for music’s sake - often times we’re hearing it because it’s public domain, not because it was made to be a commodity. The entire score of Always Sunny is that. And yes, Ai artists are artists. There’s no reason to muddy the term. I think what you mean is that Ai artists aren’t craftsmen. Craft and Craftsmen exist on a hierarchy (multiple hierarchies, in fact). Art and artists do not. A person draws a single line on a piece of paper or writes a single word, they’re an artist who did create art if they are engaged in the action of art. Unlike the craftsman who serves the ego and mankind, with each piece of media seating on that spectrum between these two opposing forces, the artist singularly serves their burden to make manifest in our world what they observe of the ethereal. The time it takes, the craftsmanship, et al, is wholly irrelevant as it pertains to the artist and the art they create. These are hierarchies that only craftsmen contend with, not artists.

[@jaywalker6781]

"Progress"? In what A.I. can be considered as a progress in the music domain? It's just new tech, dude, not progress! I prompted Udio with that: " An orchestral score for a space opera, made by composer John "Willsman" in 1977." Two minutes later, I had two pieces of music that could easily fit into any Star Wars movie! Wow, what a great progress for music is that! Just a simple sentence, no composer, no musicians, no 800 pages score, no recording, no engineer, no producer... Yeah, man, sure, big progress it is!

[@garethde-witt6433]

Spotify and ai need to be eradicated as do all streaming services

[@synapticschism]

None of those is going to happen any time soon, so we need solutions and to raise our concerns for the time being.

[@WhatDoesEvilMean]

You seem to be conflating craftsman with artist. I have a whole video on why I love Ai art.

[@ChrisEdgeSXE]

I make a.i. music where I put my own lyrics in it

[@ChrisEdgeSXE]

And it's a very cool thing (after 50 tries and 10 accounts) when finally a really standout track shows up with my description being "Bossa Nova, Metal Core, Trap Elements"

[@ChrisEdgeSXE]

And I will definitely upload it to Spotify because I really enjoy these songs and others will too. It makes fun to be creative in that way.

[@kacperborecki2133]

As someone who uses AI for music generation, I completely disagree with the video. I feel like you simplify Ai music to just prompting, but in truth it is much more than that. I would compare Ai generative music to a wild horse that an artist/designer is trying to tame to do what they want. First you have to write your lyrics, then you have to arrange them in a way that Ai will get you more or less what your initial creative thought was. Then you keep prompting for hours or even days and every time improving your instructions for the Ai to get what you wanted. Ai music that people are listening to is not made in seconds, and it also requires some skills and lots of creativity. I agree that streaming platform should clearly separate Ai music from 100% man made music, but it should not be not allowed to post or distribute it as it has its own value and use cases

[@synapticschism]

Although I don't fully agree with you (I'm not "just" a musician, I work with AI/ML professionally), I appreciate that you have the vision to understand there's a difference and separation is necessary.

[@kacperborecki2133]

@@synapticschism thanks for understanding. And I don’t understand why platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and KZbin don’t have option to label your creations as made with Ai