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Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

$4M would pay for a lot of mediocre human composers to produce a lot of mediocre music.

I understand the value proposition here and it's neat technology, I just think it might still be a little bit early for millions to be pouring into the field. Every example I've heard of "AI music" has been some level of failure. But, maybe they just need a few million dollars to throw at the problem, and it'll go away.

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The real niche IMO is in game music. If you can get the music to respond in real time to players actions without becoming repetitive that's probably worth 100+M across the industry even if it's never 'great'.

I think you nailed it.

The real utopia here is putting your headphones and listening to appropriate and good music.

Music responding to gaming, sports, chill, on-the-train, falling asleep, without user input would be pretty cool.

In its day, Rez achieved this more convincingly than many games. It was a real ear opener.

Not everything needs awesome music.

With service, we can now implement a better version of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPM1o9QKw1Q

(This has already existed for years on iOS and Android, but they could be improved).

There's also video games and a lot of amateur youtube videos that could use it as well.

I dunno, I've heard Al Biles and his GenJam[1] autonomous accompaniment play, and it's actually pretty good. On par with most small time performers, at least. (Though maybe the synth could use some higher quality samples.) Also probably not technically AI, I imagine, but since a NN is just a generic function approximator, its conceivable a musician AI could imitate this improvisation.

[1]http://igm.rit.edu/~jabics/GenJam.html

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