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Comment by sollewitt | Hacker News Reader

I noticed this and the ghost artists in my recommendations after playing some ambient.

I'm done with Spotify. I've had the service since it was beta in the Nordics, maybe 2008? It was amazing to be able to stream almost every piece of music there is.

I love music, I'm an amateur musician and I respect artists. This treats music as a fungible commodity. That's not what music is to me, so I choose not to support that.

I also understand the predicament they are in. I had friends who worked at Rdio, and I briefly worked at a startup doing music recommendation until the big 3 quoted us how much royalties they wanted in advance to stream their catalogue one time to learn from.

The record labels are the root cancer on the industry, but the alternative for Spotify might be to become a better label, not become another bad actor.

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Fundamentally, there is just way too much supply of music for it to be a well-compensated endeavor for most. I don't think any economic arrangement will make it well paying when there are so many people who are happy with doing it for free for recognition.

Maybe so, but Spotify is especially bad at paying artists a fair share even amongst their peers. If Apple and Amazon can afford to pay artists twice as much per stream, and Tidal can afford to pay three times as much per stream, then the problem with Spotify is... Spotify.

That's not how any of this works, though.

Spotify has the same licensing agreement.

The difference is that Spotify has a free tier (lower revenue from those users), their users listen more, and they may also have more customers in lower-income countries with lower subscription rates.

Which is to say - of you took a specific category of users - say, US-based paying subscribers and kept their listening activity the same - every streaming service would pay out roughly the same amount of royalties per-stream for that group of listeners.

It's quite obvious the CEO being paid reportedly around $300m a year is pocketing money that indie artists generate for the site. Most of these tech sites aren't really interested in delivering value into the communities they serve... Musicians need to wean themselves off of jumping into these types of old "gig economy" schemes, as they really don't provide any return on the huge amounts of time invested in building them up... :/

i frankly do not understand how Apple pays as much as it does - both Spotify and AM pay 70% of revenue to artists, so it might just be that there are far fewer streams on Apple. (plus Apple is a premium only service)

On an AM family plan, if they are really paying out 0.01 per stream... then anyone streaming more than 19 songs/day is a money loser for apple.

It probably helps that Apple isn't carving out $250 million of their subscription revenue just for Joe Rogan.

Spotify has cheaper family and student plans. To my knowledge there’s no way to make AM cheaper. In addition there’s no ad free version of AM that’s being supported by paying subscribers like there is for Spotify - though I haven’t heard the numbers on P&L on these free users.

paying Spotify subscribers don't support the plays from free subscribers. it's two separate pots of money. they explain this in their section for artists

Musicians are already undercompensated. Spotify playing AI music means those musicians aren't compensated at all. Someone who funneled their music into an n-dimensional matrix gets the money, and how much do you want to bet that's Spotify?

Mostly a company called epidemic sound making bank off artists and buying out full rights for pennies

> Fundamentally, there is just way too much supply of music for it to be a well-compensated endeavor for most.

This has been true for at least half a century. Probably many centuries.

I'm scared artists will give up because audiences won't have enough trust to pay enough attention to distinguish them from AI spam. But I wonder how that equation changes when artists can authenticate that something came from them. (This goes for other kinds of art too.)

Artists create because they have an innate drive to create and express something. They need enough pay to get by so they can keep creating. AI will eat into their pay but their drives will keep driving. Yes they would love to be paid more but the only people driven by money are the corporations. Artists understand life is more than money, and that there is something else to live for besides more money. Unfortunately, that is also why they get taken advantage of by the money folks.

How will you get your music instead, or what alternatives are you considering?

Bandcamp seems to have survived changing ownership and is still a good service. More specialized e-tailers like boomkat and bleep are also good for some genres.

music.youtube.com is fantastic. My playlists are 80% classics from the 60s to 2000, so the source actually probably doesn't matter. I'm not interested in most styles of new music anyway I suppose!

The algorithm still suggests some forgotten classics. On YT music I can find entire albums of somewhat more obscure yet excellent artists that are completely missing from Spotify.

I pay for Youtube with a family sub. Good value for me.

I'm a YTM subscriber too, have been since Google Play All Access beta. While it works for my needs, I fear that AI is coming, if not already, since anyone can upload anything and classify it as Music. I usually stay with well-known artists, but like to listen to ambient stuff, which is a prime target for AI generation.

I've been using soundcloud since forever and pray it never goes, plus with soundcloud paid you get access to a lot of music that isn't just "soundcloud dj music"

Apple Music has algorithmic playlists like Spotify.

Doesn't promote AI songs, has high-res, lossless sound quality and pays artists more.

As an Apple Music customer, I am heartened to hear that they do not promote AI songs and that they pay artists more.

There is no source saying they don’t promote cheaper music just like Spotify does.

Also they pay to the rights-holders exactly the same as Spotify, which is 70% of your subscription. It just happens that Spotify has on average a lower revenue per stream, but for your particular use they both pay the same thing.

Bandcamp, soundcloud, and Presto music's classical-focused streaming service are what replace Spotify for me.

Built a collection of favorites via Lidarr and search for similar acts

My Analog Journal is a great YT channel to zero in on old world music hidden behind the marketing noise of American pop

As for new artists yeah, making art to pay bills is not making art. It’s boring capitalism. IMO it’s why music by humans sucks now. Back in the day there was financial demand to unicorn off one album.

Marketing and advertising, VC are a box. Middle men with no skills but keeping that hand out

> This treats music as a fungible commodity.

This is only going to accelerate. Until the labels die, the universe will find every way to route around them.

Hopefully concert venues are next.

How are musicians are going to perform live before large audiences?

I'm referring to the Ticketmaster / Live Nation monopoly.

If you're not familiar, the company has a corner on the market for concert venues and all associated services (booking, ticket resale, food and liquor vendors, point of sale, etc.) They use this to inflate ticket prices.

How is shoveling AI generated songs going to take down ticket master?

Sorry but music in the genre "generic background track designed to go unnoticed" is in fact fungible and interchangeable.

Double sorry but Brian Eno’s Music for Airports or Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works II is not interchangable with AI drivel

In my opinion, Aphex Twin is way overrated. Only a few tracks on SAW2 are listenable. I agree with the sentiment though and on calling out Brian Eno.

It's ok if you don't like it. Good even. It being weird and not of mass appeal is part of the charm.

They are not even interchangeable with each other!

You'd consider those generic?

He wasn't the one calling ambient music generic unnoticed music.

Parent comment said generic, he offered these as counters, so he called them generic.

"I like ambient music"

"Elevator generic background music is trash. Good riddance. "

"No, X and Y in the genre are good bands"

"So you agree it is generic elevator music?"

Hmm, I wouldn't summarize it that way on first read, but I can understand and perhaps agree with the interpretation.

How I read it, the second comment is saying that AI music competes with machine-replicable human music, a subset of human music, but not all.

Frankly, while Brian Eno's Music for Airports was monumental in the history of ambient music, in 2024 people unfamiliar with it aren't going to be able to tell it apart from select AI clips (as much as that will hurt to admit). That's less about it being generic and more about how good AIgen can mimic humans. Just like how humans couldn't tell apart human from AIgen in impressionist art: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-did-you-do-on-the-ai-ar... -- we wouldn't use that example to say that human art is just generic slop.

On re-read, I do think the thread started off on the wrong foot by using the word generic. Ambient music is simply some of the easiest music to machine generate being minimalist with heavy use of synthesizers, and much of it was machine generated in the first place in a DAW.

Fair. Your characterization of AI music is a bit ambitious. AI still can't write a breathtaking short story or poem: it can write a mediocre one of standard themes indistinguishable from a student, but that's it. I would argue that AI images is a special case: a photograph is after all not truly "art".

Triple sorry but if these aren't generic, then by definition they weren't what the parent comment was talking about, since it did say generic.

I wasn’t replying to generic, I was nailing “designed to go unnoticed”

As music historians note the profundity of their work with that explicit aim in mind

Then you invented your own thing which they never said, and complained that it's wrong.

I’m quoting them verbatim

You just said you cherry picked a subset of what they said to respond to.

I don't know them but if they're designed to be offensive airport noise fillers then yes, they are.

They're not. Is your search engine broken?

I have absolutely zero interest in listening to any music that is defined by the words "ambient" or "generic" or that is in any way at risk of being outcompeted by AI. I prefer interesting music.

I think your categorical dismissal of a genre that defies categorization (including one of the undisputed most influential eletronic artists ever!) disqualifies you from being able to identify "interesting" music. You sound like a boring person.

yikes

Over the past year I’ve become a big fan of Japanese music. I started with Yoasobi and then Spotify led me to Vocaloid (I knew of Hatsune Miku but I'm not into that). Nowadays I mostly listen to Vocaloid because it’s so expressive and different. This is why I'm excited about ai music - it’s a powerful and accessible tool that can help talented people explore new forms of music. That’s what music is all about for me.

Vocaloids are specialized synthesizers in the traditional sense, the producer has a huge amount of control over the sound. They're not even remotely comparable to typing a prompt into Suno and letting it barf out whatever.

I think this has become slightly more nuanced as of late. For example Synthesizer V now has an AI edition that produces retakes with deep learning.

I wonder how people will feel about this long-term as it blurs the line between generated from scratch and tool-assisted. Clearly the intent is to make it easier for producers to get the results they want. How easy is too easy?

I believe in the near future there will be more discussion about specific parts of songs being derived from AI even if the rest is traditionally composed. Because that is the natural result of creating more efficient tools to solve specific needs that artists have, when "generate my song for me" is not an option they would ever consider (given today's rapidly changing norms, at that point it becomes an issue of integrity over efficiency).

I think it is also interesting how revered Vocaloids have been in certain fandoms stretching back to the late 00's in spite of their artificiality. Whereas a lot of the autogenerated content today is derided for being artificial, "not the real thing." I guess because the vastly wider gap and set of limitations of Vocaloid compared to human singers causes creative workarounds that wouldn't be considered otherwise. But the creator is the one who needs to plan and execute those workarounds, as it confirms to their artistic preference.

Maybe in the future the AI art tools that are seen to be most ethical are the ones that preserve the artistic vision of the user. An aspect that artists are lamenting the loss of. Less outsourcing and more deliberate collaboration.

I understand that and how Vocaloid works. The point I am trying to make is that AI will allow people without technical musical knowledge create music. If that means writing a prompt to create a banger then so be it.

There is no aspect of creation. All of the creative process is offloaded to something else. It's the middle management of art, people pretending they're creators by doing none of the work. Fundamentally what you are doing is no different than sending money to an artist to request them to draw you something. Except instead of a transaction which involves an actual artist doing work somewhere down the line, you are dictating to a model using stolen art to create something for you and then claiming you made it.

I have seen amazing works of art and music from people with zero technical knowledge. It may be rough or weird but the jagged edges is what makes it art.

This right here exemplifies my fundamental issue with GenAI.

Paint a picture without painting a picture!

Write a novel without writing a novel!

Compose a melody without composing a melody!

There was an absolutely insane comment on HN a few months ago where the poster said that they felt a sense of accomplishment after "producing" a song on Suno. I mean... how could that possibly be true? They didn't compose the melodic motif, figure out the chord progression, structure the song, or even write the lyrics. The world is getting a bit too kafkaesque for my liking.

Suno to me has only produced the most trivial garbage but music is really hard to produce.

I could see how someone with no background in music could feel a sense of accomplishment with this.

It is like a gen z version of playing the ironman or smoke on the water riff on guitar. It is just not that hard to play the ironman riff either.

As someone who has put thousands of hours into learning music, anything that gets people into music is a positive to me.

It seems like generative AI art and music really triggers tech people who have nothing to do with art and music.

"Kids these days starting off programming a web app with a language model. In my day we had to take adderall and debug assembly code just to print an underscore to a dot matrix printer. That is the right way to start and anything else is WRONG"

It's a bit like taking a photo and it coming out surprisingly good.

You just pointed the thing and pressed a button. Yet you feel accomplishment.

Sure you might have chose a lens, depth and tried to point the things somewhat precisely. Then you sat at your computer to cut enough of the edges and fiddled with some curves so it feels nice for you. But ultimately you didn't make any of it. Machine made it all. You just guided it with the knobs provided for you. Yet you feel accomplishment if you make something good because you also made hundreds of it that were crap.

> There was an absolutely insane comment on HN a few months ago where the poster said that they felt a sense of accomplishment after "producing" a song on Suno. I mean... how could that possibly be true?

They "created" something that, until now, would have required skills they didn't have. You don't see how someone could feel a sense of accomplishment for the end result, the thing they poofed into existence and like?

We use tools to make things (even art) easier to create. I don't make my paints from scratch (anymore), or string my paintbrushes (anymore), or now sometimes choose my color palettes or general composition -- tools (like genAI) exist to let artists create art easier, and saying "you didn't put in enough thought/work/etc for it to count as art!" feels dismissive of the creative process and the joy people find in expressing themselves, regardless of how they got there.

In that case yes, things like Suno make it easy to create music in the same sense that ChatGPT makes it easy to write a novel.

Eh, a novel has to hold coherence over many hours, while a song only runs for a few minutes.

It was possible to do a credible job composing algorithmic music in many genres before the current AI frenzy. Before long, you won't be able to tell the difference between human-composed and machine-composed music in any genre.

It will be quite a while before that happens with novels and screenplays. Wouldn't bet against it in the long run, though.

You like Creepy Nuts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6FUBWGSOIc

Love them!

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