Bet $100 that all classical music will be AI generated (synthesized and composed) in just three years. Supply side will be infinite.
The truth is that classical music fan are very very picky about what they like.
Computers have been "better" musician than human for a long time: a midi file is always played "perfectly". Yet it's sounds horrible, mechanised to our ears. The controlled imperfection of a real human musician is what makes the music beautiful.
I don't see any computer composing anything worth listening to in the foreseeable future (and I'm bullish on generative ai).
This is why the act of playing music by a human is called a "performance", an "interpretation" in some languages. The musician is not just playing a score exactly as it is written, the musician gives a part of his/her into the act and make the music his/her own to make art.
Or, just keep your pacifier, baby ;)
I've chosen to think of art in terms of products I consume, and less as admiration of artists, though of course I do some of the latter too.
Isn't that exactly how music is consumed nowadays by most people? They put something when driving, cooking, doing homework, etc. It's used mainly for mood/focus and they're not exactly paying close attention to it the same way one would to a audiobook of, say, an abstract algebra textbook. Especially considering how cheap and easy it is to steam music nowadays. I suspect focused, attentive listening only makes up a small minority of the total streams.
The inverse is likely true with the classical audience. Just like with jazz, although there will be a portion of users seeking “vibey jazz” sort of playlists to use in the background while working, the majority of jazz fans consume jazz as albums and are still concerned with things like personnel and liner notes, perhaps even who mastered this recording. Classical fans are similar except I would say even more picky IME (worked in a jazz and classical CD store/venue for a number of years)
The same may be true for Jazz, though in that genre there may be a bit more of a separation between jazzy background mood music and jazz as consumed by fans. There are some overlaps ("The Girl from Ipanema", "Take Five", etc), but they may not be quite as central to the canon as their classical counterparts.
You haven't justified your assertion of the dichotomy between pure blind consumption and active, focussed listening. You must actually argue that the negation of one implies the other. Your comment is totally meaningless as it stands
I would think they would want to listen to it for the same reason they listen to human generated music.
Is your thought here that AI generated art is not art? Is it the nature of the creator that determines the listeners enjoyment? If the music generated by a computer is indistinguishable from human made music, how can this be possible? Moreover, at what point would the computer generation be sufficient to shift it from art to “screensaver”? Would it be one simulated member of an otherwise human orchestra? Would it take 50%. If you can’t draw a line, doesn’t that further indicate it’s irrelevant?
If you want a quick example of what I'm saying, look online for Music for Installations by Brian Eno. It's a "almost-generative-but-not-really" music album made for audiovisual installations. It's... kinda nice but it's 6 hours long and literally gets boring after less than 30 minutes.
I can't imagine listening to something even more abstracted from a human composer for more than 20 minutes. I mean, I'm pretty sure you can generate something even quite pleasant with AIs. Most people will just listen for 15 min, say "uh, cool", and go back to regular music.
EDIT: Should note that Eno's music is still very influential for a lot of people doing work. He composed Neroli after a lot of people doing intellectual work asked him for a new piece geared specifically towards it. Also, Discreet Music was historically used on many maternity wards. In general it is not as if he failed in the popular sphere, Eno is an extremely popular musician
And if that does happen, expect a far more exciting backlash movement, like alternative rock in the 90s was to garbage excesses of the 80s.
It already exists, and is known as elevator music or muzak. I can certainly see the value in generating endless copyright-free background music, because so many human effort has been put into composing it already.
The same reason anyone does anything. Because they like it.
ALL classical music, in just 3 years. I'm perfectly willing to put my entire net worth on the line for this one.
No one with enough bored capital to patronize the arts is going to go to see and be seen at a performance of a synthetic symphony - or not more than once or twice, anyway, for the sake of the thing. Philharmonics need not fear for their concert halls, or not at least for this reason.
I'd pay good money to see Antheil's "Ballet Mécanique", which requires 16 synchronized player pianos...
But yes, I'm not sure I'd be interested in whatever ChatGPT threw out.
Maybe there’s more to art than business though. I bet there will still be a market for unique and novel interpretations of classical works played by real humans capable of being moved by the compositions they’re playing.
There’s no way you’d be able to tell.
Uh, have you actually listened to any of it? At all?
There are some non-Western traditional types of music I'd agree can have a level of complexity not usually encountered within the Western classical or jazz genres, but it's fair to say all over forms of Western music are vastly simpler in terms of harmonic language, tonality, form/ structure, instrumentation etc. None of which I believe would make it harder for AIs to generate, as computers can manage complexity rather well. What I expect AIs to not be good at is to conjure a truly original and distinct sound world significantly different to anything that's come before, but that still captivates audiences. Which is arguably what the greatest human composers & musicians have generally achieved, in any genre.
AI would need to be able to do something like create The Bad Plus in 1995. That's an even bigger mountain to climb.
People will still want to create their sound, and that'll lead to new music over time that isn't just imitation.
Have you ever heard of Ella Fitzgerald?
EG: Read something like George Russell's "The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization" (the basis from which modal jazz sprung, which includes one of the most famous jazz albums of all time, Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue"). Now add to the theory the ability to improvise around it as good as a Miles Davis level jazz performer can. It's not technically easy at all.
Even if other music genres are much technically easier, so much of music is the social experience anyways.
Take punk music. Though some parts got more technical later, much of it (particularly the late 1970s / early 1980s stuff) is, in my opinion, very technically easy; not too challenging to play, with very basic music structure (which was half the point, a return to rock's garage roots).
I'm guessing an AI can probably be developed (especially with today's fairly realistic sounding guitar VSTs) to make some "technically correct" old school punk rock, certainly much easier than it can be programmed to make "technically correct" modal jazz. An AI, however, cannot replicate the human parts, eg the social or community aspects of a music scene. Which with a lot of music is a huge portion of the point (certainly for punk it was).
And it won't just be classical, it will be all genres and all creative media. And it will probably take longer than three years. But it will happen.
Ever been to a craft show? An artist can sell a handmade bowl for $100 even though you can find an identical manufactured one at Target for $1.
Other examples: Chick-Fil-A markets their milkshakes as “hand spun”. Or when Dreamweaver started automating the layout of webpages, web devs started calling their websites “handmade”. It’s been possible to automate call centers for a long time now, but companies advertise the ability to speak to a human representative as a differentiating feature of their business.
There is value in having humans in the loop, despite automation. People just don’t trust robots.
Apparently there's something about his work that's seen [2] as uniquely susceptible to automation, and I suppose I can see where the irritation would come from. Doesn't bother me any, but then I've always preferred Beethoven anyway.
[1] https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/google-doodle-bach-ai-m...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/11/science/undiscovered-bach...
I feel grateful that I heard the Mahler symphonies before the great flood of AI content, at least I will always have that. But perhaps AI could complete his 10th symphony…
You could make the argument that charting pop music will be AI generated, or Spotify will be pushing AI generated music through all their popular playlists to avoid paying music royalties - these don't seem to be too far from what happens currently.
But to bet that some of the fussiest and most discerning music listeners would prefer this seems foolish.