The second I feel is that people would still be interested in AI music in a meaningful way. I think AI music has a following now because it's interesting and novel, and that gives it a story, but once it's mainstream, that story is boring and people will go back to seeking real culturally relevant music.
Sure the music on TikTok/IG and friends could be generated, but I am not sure I care too much. Those platforms are almost entirely vapid, void of authenticity already, the music being fake too doesn't detract that much.
Case in point, I enjoy some shit. No way AI will replace lo-fi recorded-in-underground-bunker limited-cassette-tape-release atmospheric black metal / noise.
I mean it might, but here's a take from a different angle: art is not just the end result, it's the process and the story behind it. Nobody objectively gives a shit about a selfie from the early 1500's, but because of its provenance the Mona Lisa is considered one of the most valuable pieces of art out there. Nobody gives a shit about a database row with an ID, timestamp, user ID and the text "just setting up my twttr", but because it's the first tweet and it's put on a trading platform and it might appreciate in value, someone spent $2.5M on it.
You slag of TikTok because every generation will slag off whatever the following generation(s) do, that's normal. But the generation following you see that differently, and in two decades they will still reference some of the more iconic clips they've seen. I mean I do it with really bad movie voiceovers from nearly 20 years ago, as well as terrible porn intros. It's part of culture.
Anyway, there will be a place for AI generated anything alongside the handcrafted stuff. Like how there is still a market for handcrafted goods alongside the mass producing machines. Or hand-drawn art in the age of digital. Or physical valuables in the age of electronic money and cryptocurrencies.
It did not.
I was at a Chinese restaurant, around a year and a half ago, and realized that the music they played was a sort of “ersatz” music. It was familiar tunes, like Scarborough Fair, or Hotel California, slightly modified, and strung together. Vocals were basically wordless humming.
There is an entire industry, based on musicians, providing “stock music,” and it’s been around for a long time. Sort of a musical equivalent of Shutterstock. Some of this music is quite good. Most is fairly boring.
Music is way too connected to our emotions to be reliably synthesized. AI would need to advance to be able to produce emotions and creativity, before it would threaten the music industry.
Also, there’s always the “tabloid” aspect of the industry. There are artists that may be fairly unremarkable musicians, but generate a lot of press coverage. Unless the world of Questionable Content becomes real, I can’t see any Star headlines of AIs beating up paparazzi.
In the 1980s musicians unions wanted to kill the Fairlight CMI synthesizer and it's progeny
https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1985/7/29/a-source-of-di...
When I contacted him, to find out what happened, he informed me that all his music was now only available through a stock agency.
Can't blame him, but I was a bit sad.
Ad use pays incredibly well, because unlike streaming you get a non-trivial fee every time it airs on TV/radio/cinema.
Some musicians make very successful careers doing this.
I'd have agreed 10 years ago, but I swear every time someone drives past with their stereo bumping, it's "robot music" (as I smart-assedly refer to heavily quantized/autotuned vocals). I guess it will probably still die out eventually, but that fad has been a lot longer-lived than I'd expected.
Obviously, this overlooks the shared experience element of music, but that's not so relevant in the case of online music we consume solo.
Saying people will not be interested in AI music is like saying people will not be interested in movies with CGI.
Music outside of pop gains popularity through grass roots popularity contests essentially. Then in Top 40 people care way more about the personalities than the music, you could probably sneak some AI music in there but you would still need the singer to sing.
Music is very often a cult of personality thing, even outside of pop. In those arenas authenticity is really important, someone not even making their music would be outed pretty quick.
Some examples of what I mean: People go to clubs to hear DJs play, because they perceive the DJ to be generating the atmosphere. You couldn't get people to pay a cover charge to see that DJ's mix play without them present, even though it's technically very easy and would be exactly the same music.
Similarly, you can't get people to go to a concert of a recording of a band, that would be lame. People want the band.
Which will likely happen within 10 years or so. Hatsune Miku is already a thing, and a few upgrades from now she'll probably appear to be running her own post-TikTok account.
J- and K-pop boy/girl bands are already run like this. The individual artists are more or less interchangeable and can be dropped at any time if they lose their looks or appeal. They don't get much/any creative freedom, and the performances are all externally choreographed.
It wouldn't take much to create a virtual version. Give it some virtual sass and you have a tame monster.
See e.g. https://www.digitaldjtips.com/2011/05/dj-getting-people-to-d...
Then if I really want to play something that wouldn't normally fit with an easy transition, I can always adjust they key or tempo on the fly. There are limits before it starts to sound weird, but that can also be a neat way to mess with a song. Add a riff or a phrase from one song into the current one, but only because I'm able to halve the speed or chop up the time signature to match.
And that's just me as a barely fluent hobbyist. Experienced DJs can do some great stuff. Even a non-"mixing" DJ like a radio DJ can string together songs based on thematic connections, sneaky relations between artist or lyric or even the conditions in the room. Those can be a lot of fun and would be a lot harder to automate than simple beat matching.
These were productions from the artists behind the KLF to expose how formulaic chart hits were. So I would not be surprised if we see AI produce top 40 hits sometime in the future. However, I would be very surprised if AI could replace the vast majority of music that is out there.
Of course you're right, but I'll tell you what next.
Redefine 'dominate'. All that has happened is we've shown mass media, mass popularity, is better suited to the unreal. Humans need not apply here.
'Mass' anything, then gets less interesting as it is self-evidently a dead-end. And not 'everybody', but significant numbers of people, pursue something else, perhaps things that are unlikeable in an interesting way. The differences will always be less 'addictive' than the 'mass' stuff, but will overperform in other, definable ways.
As someone who has deleted Twitter and Facebook I think I'm correct in this notion that the most addictive, most 'mass' media sources are not 'good' in any normal human sense other than manipulation of that very instinct in all its forms…
If I go to a techno club, I would soooo love to see what an AI can do to make me move my feet more.
But if I listen to some mellow song with lyrics maybe I want to feel the touch of a human artist and his emotions.
I would also love to listen to AI generated music with lyrics, but it would generate different emotions (not worse, just different).
AI generated art will just open another type of experiences, but it will never replace human art.
https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2005/HPL-2005-88.html
In fact, before that - i saw a talk on this while i was a student, and i finished university in 2003, i think.
The guy who did this work went on to get the computer to do production, but i don't know how that panned out.
THE FUTURE: Your phone will have an exploratory music feature. You dial in all sorts of weights... genre, tempo, density, melody, etc. You'll crank out a custom instrumental playlist at the tap of a button. This will probably make for great study/work music.
When it eventually overshadows normal instrumental music it's going to be a giant bummer for anyone hoping to make money doing it. Artists are going to have a lot of soul searching to do.
I absolutely doubt that any AI will ever produce something I genuinely like. Maybe some features in isolation, hopefully not multiple genre features in some unholy mish mash...
I just don't see it.
This agent would enjoy the moving crowds in a much more authentic way than a human DJ would.
I can't find it now, but there was a wearable project (I believe earrings?) which gave quantitative feedback about how a music audience were moving.
Leving aside arguments about qualia, couldn't we just make the "crowd moving" metric part of the objective function?
It's not clear this is healthier.