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Comment by ehnto | Hacker News Reader

There's two fallacies I think you've touched on here, one is that there is an "objectively best" music. Music is so tightly coupled to cultural movements, very subjective, and extremely broad in scope, it just can't be the case.

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.

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> one is that there is an "objectively best" music.

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.

"Process is art"

I am old enough to remember when people were afraid that Muzak would take over.

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.

I would argue that a lot of this "stock music" is just a continuation of elevator music which has been around for a very long time. There's musicians (often very good ones) who essentially made their whole career doing this music, look up James Last for example.

Exactly. In fact, there was a Romanian electronic musician that I used to like, and his catalog suddenly disappeared.

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.

>I am old enough to remember when people were afraid that Muzak would take over.

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...

That was revolutionary, at the time. I remember when the guitarist for our band got a Korg sampler. It was amazing.

It's called library music. It's much used in ads, trailers, and corporate productions. Ad agencies sometimes also commission music.

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.

Always seemed like the modern analogue to the older practice of artists only being able to make a living if they could secure patronage. The days of (semi) direct payment for physical copies of recorded media are starting to seem like an aberration rather than the rule.

> 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

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.

I don't think we need "objectively best" here—merely "subjectively best". And because each person could have their own AI DJ trained on an arbitrarily rich set of preferences and experiences from their one-person audience, we should expect that AI DJ to be subjectively the best for their respective human.

Obviously, this overlooks the shared experience element of music, but that's not so relevant in the case of online music we consume solo.

Maybe we call them dopamine melodies instead of music to underscore the effect rather than the art. The fact that most synthetic music today is hot garbage doesn’t convince me that we couldn’t connect with it in a meaningful way in the future. After all, things like GPT3 are more like talking to a hive of humans than a single alien.

I'm convinced tons of this stuff already exists as things like youtube channels of 'Best Chill Piano Ambient'. I think it's become impossible to tell neural-net generated stuff from the output of humans trying hard to define a functional genre, especially one that's effectively 'background' rather than didactic or challenging.

Parent meant best in the sense of Billboard Hot 100.

Saying people will not be interested in AI music is like saying people will not be interested in movies with CGI.

That's not even a close comparison. Humans make CGI, it's still directed and created by humans. The real comparison would be seeing if people would accept that movies aren't written and directed by humans anymore.

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.

It actually wouldn't be the same music. DJs typically adapt their set to how the crowd reacts.

See e.g. https://www.digitaldjtips.com/2011/05/dj-getting-people-to-d...

Yes, a lot of people don't get this. Pop is as much about fashion and branding as sound, and an AI would need a virtual personality to get anywhere with that.

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.

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