Edit: slop not slob
This seems harder than you suggest. I suggest things to my streaming platform and it reverts to what I call "cruisy shit" within 5-10 songs as though it's playing a game of "6 degrees" between my chosen starting point and what it wants to play.
For me, "The Algorithm To Engage" is more of a "the beatings will continue until morale improves Algorithm".
The idea that only humans can make music is absurd.
> I guess she can listen to slob but maybe just look around a little instead?
The idea that AI generated = slop is absurd.
Humans create just as much, if not more slop. Look at 99% of "professional" output in creative fields. It's awful.
A human with taste steering AI tools can be better than a "classical" human with hard skills but no taste.
The old world is going to be run over:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWZYP5jn5w4
Completely. Run. Over.
AI is a tool.
Artists and engineers using AI as a tool can get further than people not using it at all.
I don't mind that Opus and Codex were trained on my code.
I don't mind that Seedance and Veo were trained on my YouTube videos.
I benefit from the models.
Purely a economic argument but also the rare good music from AI I am still looking its generally speaking not that cohesive and for unremarkable. A lot of human work is that to but the discovery of good music from people feels much less daunting
That's not to say you can't make effortful novel content using AI, but this is just lazy hollow stimulation. Like all the laziest of AMVs, nothing to say outside of "isn't this cool?".
We want to see the person underneath and what ideas they explore through the medium - AI is just a fancy new tool of the times.
Who cares what brush or canvas Vincent used to make Starry Night? Without his name on it, it's just another oil painting.
Social media already shows people love this stuff. It's only the 1% of terminally online whiners that have to project their take on it.
And I've worked with enough artists that kick ass with these tools to know this is the new normal.
People on social media follow creators who make novel content irrespective of how they made it.
AI generated content will always be lower quality because the entry level is literacy, hence YouTube intervention with their "it's probably not worth your time" label.
Have the ick for AI-gen, fine. But dismissing the things it solves puts you in a position where you'll never understand other people.
Spotify algorithm not kind to everyone I suppose… I’m enough of a normie with music it works for me. Crate digging doesn’t feel too time consuming at all (as easy as throwing on quirky California college radio stations).
I listen to SomaFM (https://somafm.com/) and FIP (https://www.radiofrance.fr/fip), they have online streams by genre. When something gets me interested, I look up the artist, and I keep discovering lots of new names, independent labels, etc.
Someone could get studio quality tracks for $10 a month, and add their own vocals and have a high quality sounding song. Is it slop if you pour hours of work into it tweaking every detail? At that point using a DAW is slop then (which I'm sure some people hate music made that way, but a lot of music is made this way).
Sometimes there is. Sometimes it's just made up shit with no real backing in the same way a lot of stories told in comedy routines are. Not all of it is genuine expression.
I love music and I frequently go to live shows, so the bar for me has kind of become "Can I go see this artist live, OR is it so good that I don't care that I can't?" If it passes that, I'll listen. I've found one AI generated song that has made it onto my top 100 favorite songs I've ever heard.
The thing that really shits me with AI music is when it outputs default ChatGPT sounding lyrics. There's certain tells and boy do they give me the ick.
I don't necessarily agree. Read the lyrics to the "irony is a dead scene" EP by the Dillinger Escape Plan and Mike Patton. It's nonsense. Still genuine expression.
Most Carpenter Brut songs don't even have lyrics and there is endless expression there. I know that I consume music in a very different way than most people, and that's probably why I have such a strong opinion here.
Aren’t you curious how a modern solar panel works so well with no moving parts?
The problem isn't about it being "easier", it's about people who want the praise and attention of being a maker but don't want to put any thought or effort into it. They have no thoughts and nothing to say and what they generate reflects that.
I smile when I come across the term 'qualityslop', which is an oxymoronic term to indicate very good human content.
If it didn't take effort to make it, if you can repeat it a hundred times in a week, it's slop. It's a good descriptor, even if to an untrained ear it's convincing.
Previously web search, YouTube, and Reddit would have been my go to but they have all been enshittified.
You can see new releases almost daily on e.g. NewRetroWave[0].
I feel like this trope is strongest amongst musicians-feeling-underappreciated, but that the idea seeps in to all manners of creative work: that, because you’re rightfully proud of what you do, the audience is wronging you (or “lazy,” or “sad,” or “cheap,” or “tasteless”) by not appreciating it. It doesn’t make me feel a lot of sympathy.
I feel sympathy for people who made something that was reappropriated by those without strong ethics.
People like what they like, sure. And if someone was particularly into the idea of machines making music, or even take some cynical enjoyment out of this on the full understanding of what it is they are doing. Sure, whatever.
But someone acting like listening to AI generated music is their only choice due to their taste in music? Come on, that's a sci-fi nightmare right there. Not even going full-on ecologist here, but the resource expenditure alone is so out of whack for something only a single person will listen to.
I don't even consider myself a musician, just a human being baffled at the total lack of humanity and how that lack of humanity is being normalized. Talk about sympathy.
If somebody told me "I choose to only read AI-generated books" I would also silently judge them.
With AI, even if you enjoy it as bad, as soon as you know it’s AI it loses all interest because there’s zero story behind it. The answer to all those questions becomes “a statistical algorithm made it that way”, and that’s objectively a boring answer.
Romance readers got tired of being judged for decades and decades by people who dont read at all, people who read pure power fantasies or what not.
You are free to judge people for liking AI music, or in fact anything obviously. We all judge, and must live with judgement. But is this judgement supposed to be of any particular importance given it is equally likely someone is passing judgment on you for something they may personally dislike?
It just often feels as if there is an assumption that one's own standards are that which is "normal," while everyone else's are the weird ones. But to plenty of other people, our own interests, values, hobbies, or lifestyle choices would may be considered equally rubbish and worthy of judgement, according to their worldview and experience.
I would say, judge people if you want. As we all largely do, though I try not to do. Provided it comes with the realisation you're not somehow standing outside the exact same process.
Note: I do not willingly consume AI content, nor do I have any particular interest in doing so. But I have had people very openly judge me for things that for many of us here would be considered entirely normal, including my choice to work with computers for a living. So I do not have a tendency to give any particular weight to the "judgement" of others, silent or otherwise, where my choices do not materially impact that individual or society at large.
To lighten the mood a little more, I am quite openly judged (and silently I expect) because I have a particular enjoyment for Russian hardbass :) Which many if exposed to it I would expect consider it to be total garbage. But it does nothing to reduce my enjoyment of it and nor would I allow it too.
There's not much AI music I like either, but there's at least one genre where it's really, really hard to find anything both new and authentically human, so AI scratches the itch occasionally.
similarly, firing up a music gen system rather than listening to a billy joel song for the 30,000th time seems less lazy.
say what you want about AI systems, people that I used to see idly sit at a screen and ingest things all day purely are creating things they like now and sharing them. The thing is easier but the engagement seems greater for a lot of people. It's not as black and white as "oh you're lazy." -- and, by the way , that seems so wildly inappropriate to label an unknown third party as site-unseen -- dare I say that seems lazy?
Like what? People say this kind of stuff all the time and it's either not true or they're generating things with very questionable taste.
But consider an album I found a couple of years ago, called "The Unfinished Violin". A UK folk musician, Sam Sweeney, bought a violin he thought sounded really good, noticed a name in it. Researched who he was. Turns out he was a music hall performer from Leeds. He had made the parts for the violin, but before he could assemble it, he was sent to fight in WW1 and died in Flanders. The violin had laid unfinished in an envelope for the better part of a century. Sweeney arranged a lot of time-appropriate, military related music for the album, and wrote a few himself too.
I didn't know any of this when I first heard "The highland soldier" on Spotify DW. I just thought, wow, that was a beautiful tune. And it sounded like it meant something to someone. And it, turned out, it did. It meant something to Sweeney, it meant something to the folk music collector George Butterworth who wrote it down (and then also died in WW1), it meant something to the people he recorded it from.
If I heard a Suno tune, it's entirely possible I'd also think, wow, that's a beautiful tune. But there's almost no human connection. Nobody cared about that music. It's not entirely devoid of humanity, because of course Suno was trained on the music of people who cared and had something to express, and there's an echo of it. But the link is severed. It has no human provenance.
You can cut yourself off from humanity, just use audio as a drug and not care where it comes from. Certainly a lot of people did that long before AI. But why, when there's so much human music to connect with?
Actually it seems to me like what the friend was doing required a lot more effort than "searching for new music". This isn't the 80s where you have to get in with the "in crowd" to listen to bootlegs or limited prints. You're talking about going through search results at a computer, right? She's actually involving herself in the music creation process, in some small way.
Nobody generating anything on Suno is showing any kind of creativity. It's somehow worse then regular plagiarism.
It's normal to hate AI being pushed down our throats, but it's a completely different thing when we call people names, who enjoy it on their own.
I'm not sure how using AI to generate songs will save anyone from the burnout of searching for songs, but what I understood from context is "intellectual laziness" and I see that as an insult. I'm not a native speaker though, so thanks for offering another perspective.
The "intellectual laziness" you describe can be seen as a way to not spend attention and effort on things, you don't care for, in other words being rational and mindful.
Not that I agree with this, there is tons of good music from the past centuries, which I already can't all hear in my lifetime, that I don't need to start consuming never ending output from greedy, soulless and evil corporations. I also don't like modern music that much.
> I'm not a native speaker though
Me neither.
Like this, made by a guy who clearly understands who to use ai?
https://youtu.be/6YTjH_7QUT0?t=42
Ai is a great enabler for people who have ideas but don’t have chops.
I doubt she has exhausted all the (old) music made in the 80s and 90s. It's not a problem with supply, but discovery. Ironically, Suno probably had to overcome that challenge while gathering training data.
My styles are orchestra and symphony pop, which I find rare these days. Even if it exists, the lyrics might not be something that I enjoy.
So I just write my own lyrics, decides on the melodies, and put it to AI to create a polished version.
Do I feel emotional when I listen to it? Of course, its my own lyrics that I wrote. Of course I sing along with it because its the melodies I chose.
And its even more emotional because I relate to it.
Someone can create some songs with billion listeners and emotional for others, but if it doesn’t relate to me. What am I supposed to feel?
My listener wont be able to relate with me personally because they don’t know me. But they might be able to resonates with my songs because it triggers specific memories or emotions for them. And for me that’s enough. Let the songs be the one that they resonates with.
People have made music before, and I hardly believe they only made It for other people, but als themselves.
We are talking about people who rather generate some random Suno songs instead of just searching for some playlists of which there are thousands upon thousands. There is something deeply dystopian about that.
Extrapolate this idea for a second: 10, 20 years from now, people generating their TV shows, their porn (including the illegal kinds), their music of dead musicians. That's individualism at its most extreme. Culture is a shared experience, you can talk to other people about the same music, same fiction, same art, because it's out there and exists in the world. When on the other hand people normalize consuming their own custom AI-generated culture, that shared experience is completely lost. At best you'll get a friend or two to watch your sitcom episode, it's not going to be a water cooler conversation at work.
It's literally dehumanizing.
But without this incentives I could imagine a future where Smartphones where actually good and have a more positive impact.
But back to culture. I don't see the problem of people listening to their own created music. Even now a lot of people make e.g great photos just for them selves. As long as we don't force people to do so that's fine in my books.
Still if the incentives are bad, this can go very go wrong in very distopian ways.
I love me some Deleuze and Hegel, but my life is full of "interesting" bits already. Sometimes you need something simple. Your example is wrong as well: he did not create his own music, he directed it and yes I would definitely love to read a book about some weird sci-fi ideas I have written in some style I love but myself cannot reproduce.
Which in this case, my need is to recall the memories and emotions when I write the song?
Of course, that doesn't mean I don't want to listen to new music by other people, or create more of my own. I'm simply sharing what it is to experience songs written by yourself. I saw Sting the other day talking about the very same thing to Rick Beato regarding songs he wrote 40 years ago, and I remember Brett Anderson of Suede saying that he loved listening to his own music. In fact, wouldn't it be weird if you didn't want to?
The song that I wrote has more values because it carries memories, emotions, and my internal state. I'm not saying other songs doesn't have values. It's just harder to resonate with, unless the melodies or lyrics align with my emotional state.
I listen to my own songs because I am songwriter, and still am even when I stopped doing it professionally. I am not doing it for the sake of "I just want to listen to my own songs and I will never listen to others". I listen just because "This song is meaningful for me"
And the "this song" in that quote above, can be mine, or other's.
It's just I don't go and explore songs actively. If my playlist suddenly randomize itself (which YouTube Music usually do even when I already selected a specific playlist), I usually just keep it randomizing the songs, I either skip the songs based on the intro or just the title.
Sometimes, I only write the lyrics without any melodies, or just give a base chords for the AI to work with without any melodies, and AI might surprise me on how it suddenly chose a certain melodies or chord progression.
So you can say I'm exploring, but only within the boundaries of the lyrics that I wrote. Or when YouTube Music randomly plays a song for me and I immediately resonates with it.
What a perfect illustration that while you typed on a keyboard you're so far away from making art.
PS: how many pieces of art that moved you were made by artists you knew or met?
I was moved by a lot of songs made by artists I never met. But I was moved because of the song, not because of the reason why the artist wrote it. If I can truly understand the emotional state of the artist when they wrote it, I might be able to empathize with them. But that's me empathizing with the person that made the art as a human. Nothing stopping me from doing that as a human, even when their song didn't move me.
I publish my songs under a pseudonyms. They can infer what am I as a person based on the songs that I wrote. They can infer what emotions and feelings that I am experiencing while I write the songs. But it's all inference, unless they know me behind the pseudonyms, they won't be able to relate with me personally, as my real self, not as the songwriter. And I am okay with that.
You can find a ton of this on archive.org [0]. One of my favorites is from K-Mart background vinyl. AI can't quite do this yet.
[0] https://archive.org/search?query=subject%3A%22Kmart%22&and%5...
I constantly find myself discovering new 90s Boombap, Hip Hop beats and tracks from underground artists. Unfortunately a ton of these aren't on Spotify, although they exist on YouTube in near endless capacity.
A lot of my favorite songs of all time aren't great just because they sound nice, but they are great because they have immense meaning. Alice in Chains is one of the all time greatest bands and their lyrical messaging means so much, with the passing of Layne from a drug overdose the songs have a raw, visceral feeling. Many of their songs are explaining the struggle, they are deeply personal. That is lost with AI Music.
“Slop” is specifically about AI content lacking in effort, quality, meaning. You may not like Zimmer, but saying it lacks in those areas seems a tad too much. “Formulaic” isn’t an indicator of slop either, most stories are formulaic following a variation of the hero’s journey. It’s especially not problematic when you’re someone like Zimmer who invents or popularises the formula.
Also formulaic art isn't necessarily bad, because human appreciation does follow some patterns.
There could be lazy, uninspired but technically competent as ai art (my pet peeve is many “instrumental guitar albums” that are just pentatonic scale and standard licks in all shapes and forms) and ai art can be good.
I will say even more. I’m sure that soon we will get new albums from old stars (like let’s say) that will be great. Critics will be in ave “triumphant return to old form” and everybody will avoid looking in the eyes and say the truth about how they were able to write new good songs, given that they weren’t able to do it in like decades.
In fairness, you did say “even worse”. That’s not an expression one tends to use unless calling something bad. I can’t imagine someone saying “this is the best album ever, and even worse this is the second best”.
> There could be lazy, uninspired but technically competent as ai art
There’s no technique involved to typing words in a box. Even the people who used to wax lyrically about “prompt engineering” have mostly subsided. AI pictures (not necessarily “art”, I don’t think that term should apply to any random image, even from humans) created with prompting can look technically competent (e.g. faking an oil painting) but not be technically competent.
> and ai art can be good.
What is “good” here? Aesthetically pleasing? Then sure, that’s a subjective matter of opinion. Even the yuckiest of gore can be aesthetically pleasing to the right person. Cronenberg has a cult following for a reason.
> I’m sure that soon we will get new albums from old stars (like let’s say) that will be great.
Again, what is “great” here? Does it mean you like it? Then sure, can’t argue there. Personally I believe “greatness” has to stand the test of time at least for a few decades, so we may never know for sure. I do highly doubt your scenario, though. Why would an old star be interested in generating a simulacrum of their old music without doing it themselves? Apart from a shameless cash grab, that is.
For “even worse” - I meant different, and I think your analogy is unfair.
One can say something like “this is not your best job. It is solid product of a carpenter. Even worse, I know you could do much better, like a woodworker”. And nothing here says that the job is _bad_.
But again, my native language is not English and the way I say things may surely sound unnatural.
——
How going back to your argument. You already subtly move goalposts and give humans mich more benefit of the doubt and leeway than you give to ai.
> There’s no technique involved to typing words in a box.
There sure is. And that’s what separates results. Most of the things that I enjoy are clearly have good deal of thought in inventing lyrics (again, I watch lore channels and the way the lyrics are made is clear that there is a good amount of thought, prompt and maybe even manual tinkering), in doing montage of videos. I’m skeptical about prompt engineering but your criticism here is as same as painters criticizing photographers: “they just press the button”.
> created with prompting can look technically competent (e.g. faking an oil painting) but not be technically competent.
I used to thing along this line too, but later I realized that this is not an argument in any favor. Look at like any professional reviewing let’s say old movies. Thousands of errors - costumes of wrong epoch, or made wrong way, or worn wrong way. Wrong guns, wrong ammo etc etc etc. I saw some pro criticising ai generated picture of a woman on a horse, and it was about same - the things used to steer the horse are like upside down, some other things don’t make sense. And then it clicked to me - it doesn’t matter. It isn’t unique to ai. Humans did same stuff forever. As long as result is enjoyable, it’s fine.
> and ai art can be good. What is “good” here? Aesthetically pleasing? Then sure, that’s a subjective matter of opinion. Even the yuckiest of gore can be aesthetically pleasing to the right person. Cronenberg has a cult following for a reason.
This is strawman and arguing in bad faith by subtly associating my position with liking gore etc. On first albums of Metallica you almost can hear how they are learning and getting better (except drummer). Yes, if it’s pleasing enough people and bringing joy to their life then it’s ok. It doesn’t matter is it ai or human. Again, there are many cases in music when apparently the solos weren’t played by artists but by uncredited session musicians. Is it slop? Musician acted as tool here.
> Again, what is “great” here? Does it mean you like it?
Fans like it. Not only me. It brings new fans or even casuals may enjoy it
> Personally I believe “greatness” has to stand the test of time at least for a few decades, so we may never know for sure.
You do you. It’s fine.
> I do highly doubt your scenario, though. Why would an old star be interested in generating a simulacrum of their old music without doing it themselves? Apart from a shameless cash grab, that is.
Why Metallica does new albums? They already have enough super hits, that stood test of time even By your definition (decades) to not care. Why other bands do the same?
—-
In very short. To me it feels that there is an attempt to steer into public conscience that
Ai = slop
Human Slop = Ai slop = slop
Thank you for clarifying.
> One can say something like “this is not your best job. It is solid product of a carpenter. Even worse, I know you could do much better, like a woodworker”. And nothing here says that the job is _bad_.
Except no, that doesn't make sense. It is not clear at all to say “This is not your best job. It is a solid job. Even worse…”. That is very confusing communication. “Even worse” means “something was bad but then it got even badder”. “Even better” is the opposite: “something was good and became even gooder”. Using “even worse” to mean “this part was good but this other part was bad” is incorrect. The word “worse” already requires things to be bad. It is an adjective adding to the situation, never contradicting it.
See the definition of the word: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/worse
See how all of them are “more <bad>”, “<bad> to a greater degree”? Worse always means something was already bad.
> How going back to your argument. You already subtly move goalposts.
I don’t think I have. But because you only made the accusation without explaining your reasoning, you’re not giving me any fair chance to clarify any position. Considering we’ve already established, by your own admission, that English is not your strong suit (not a criticism), doesn’t it seem more likely to you that you’ve misunderstood my point? Or perhaps that you should consider that a possibility? As per the HN guidelines, assume good faith. I assumed good faith in your argument and responded respectfully and clearly (to the best of my ability) to it. I would appreciate the same courtesy.
I started updating my comment above as soon as I saw that I posted reply (the one that your answer addresses). Hope that clarifies my position and gives you an explanation where I disagree with your comment.
> Look at like any professional reviewing let’s say old movies. Thousands of errors
Mistakes are not the same thing as slop. It’s not at all related. Here’s the definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop
> This is strawman and arguing in bad faith by subtly associating my position with liking gore etc.
I like gore. I find Cronenberg and old Japanese movies and anime aesthetically pleasing. I have done work based on gore. Not only am I not making a straw man or arguing in bad faith, I’m not insulting or discrediting you in the slightest. Please stop making assumptions and responding to those assumptions in your head. I didn’t use gore as an example to discredit you, I used it because it’s an example of a niche art that I understand and respect. It‘s the exact opposite of what you took from it.
> Why Metallica does new albums?
Metallica is not making new albums with AI, are they? That has nothing to do with your original point of an artist coming back to make a new album after decades using AI. How can you, in good faith, accuse someone else of shifting the goalposts while engaging in such a textbook example yourself?
Here is the wording I was reacting to:
>> and ai art can be good.
> What is “good” here? Aesthetically pleasing? Then sure, that’s a subjective matter of opinion. Even the yuckiest of gore can be aesthetically pleasing to the right person. Cronenberg has a cult following for a reason.
To me, it feels like you are having it both ways. First, you treated my wording - “even worse” - as meaningful according to its normal English meaning, and even after I explained what I meant, you still went back to the dictionary definition. But when your own wording was quite loaded: “the yuckiest of gore,” “to the right person,” and “cult following” - and I read it that way, you dismissed my reading as assumptions in my head.
That feels like a double standard. I was expected to accept the normal meaning of my wording, but your wording was supposed to be judged only by your later explanation of intent. I should’ve known, obviously, that you like gore.
I accept your clarification, but I do not accept that my reading was unreasonable. We clearly read tone and meaning differently here.
I clearly see talented author who just didn’t had chops or resources previously to realize his vision, and now he can and I can enjoy it.
At the same time I probably feel and define slop slightly differently, for myself.
In my birth city there was a street that was closed every weekend for art sellings. You walk about 1km (or less), and there are tables with sculpitures, paintings, crafts etc. In the beginning it’s fun, but after some time (and especially after several visits) you see how repetitive and formulaic it is. Somebody chooses kittens and draws 100s of things with them, somebody chooses nature etc etc etc. I didn’t even know the word slop then, but looking back - it was it.
After watching Bob Ross (and I love the guy) it’s clear that many “creators” were producing slop that is technically similar to what Bob Ross was teaching. Did Bob Ross produced slop? No. Do people who just reuse same approach over and over again (here is how we will paint the tree by using this then than brush) produce slop? In my book - yes. And it’s fine, if they or somebody else enjoy it. I don’t judge them and I don’t judge people who use and enjoy ai.
For me art’s purpose is to invoke some emotion in person, experiencing the art. The way how art is produced is secondary.
You can have buckethead who does music, and you can have someone (even highly technical, with great timing, control, mechanical chops) who “produces song” while sitting on a toilet and an “instrumental album” in a day, by running pentatonic scale all over again. And this is the slop for me. And it has nothing to do with ai.
If you need it to be explained to you why it's a tragedy that a person's curiosity can atrophy (or fail to develop) to the extent that she can't seek meaning in what she engages with every day for enjoyment, then you might not have met the minimum requirements for this conversation.
Some people yearn for the slop.
There are several channels with pure ai Wh40k music. Some Star Wars creators are doing similar stuff.
I’m actively resisting desire to dump bunch of YouTube links, but if you want to hear what many people already vetted great, I’m happy to share.
It’s like when Etsy turned into a Made in China marketplace. MIC is fine, but if I’m going to Etsy it’s because I wanted something else.
AI Music is changing music habits ...your friend and myself arent the only ones https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/937059/n....
Give it ten years or so and i bet the Taylor Swifts type acts and the big music industry machine wont be as celebrated.
This is the distilled essence of a “first world problem.”
It makes sense to listen to music made just for you by a model that knows you. You're bound to feel more emotion from that than trying to relate to something that wasn't written about you
Massive like Temu/AliExpress products massive.
It “knows” nothing. It has a database of tokens you have given it to generate more tokens, constantly turning toward meaningless averages unless you steer it strong. Technically speaking any Meta or Google algorithm “knows you” better.
I am not religious, but I can connect into some desire for spiritual, salvation and purity in Allegri’s Miserere. I am not Catholic, I oppose many things Catholic church stands for and I certainly was not alive in .italy in 17th century, but still across the time I can share this common experience of humanity that is completely separate of my own. It is something only art can do. Without that art is just another narcissistic social media wank inherently without meaning.
>meaningless
>narcissistic
>wank
Cool insults. But my lying eyes and ears still say that AI knows me pretty well and is bringing plenty of value to my life.
Hard disagree, there is just music people make because it's what they want to make, if all you're looking at is the top 10/pop radio music, yes it will be tailored for the largest market but by no means is there a conspiracy to only accomodate the 'young people'.
The way I use Suno is sometimes I play Ukulele and discover a tune I like; I record it and generate a song from it.
I didn't take any music lessons. I'm 100% self-taught so my recordings are a little rough but the melody comes through and Suno polishes it up nicely and adds lyrics based on a topic I've been thinking about.
I find both the creation and listening aspects relaxing and therapeutic. I'm not a musician so Suno is the only way I could actually produce and finish a song. It's very clearly my melodies, my songs but it's enjoyable to hear them as a finished product. There is definitely an element of surprise, the lyrics are sometimes quite insightful and clever too and I can actually start appreciating the poetic aspect of music in a way which eluded me before.
I suspect that by the time most musicians finish refining and producing their own songs, without AI, they're probably tired of hearing it. Suno avoids that. It's a truly novel thing to be both a producer and consumer of your own music. Perfect for an introvert like me who can't relate to anyone except himself.
It's nice to see that some other people also like my pieces though I'm not trying to make a career out of it.
How much music do you even need? Is she listening 24/7?
Lots of artists! They are not even remotely hard to find. They are literally a google search away. Typing stuff into Suno because you can't be bothered to search "new artists that sound 90s" is crazy
I'm not affiliated with it, nor am I against AI-generated music. Just a huge fan who admires the hard work people pour into making the scene work.
Suno, AI Music, and the Bad Future | Adam Neely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8dcFhF0Dlk
A detailed philosophical discussion of his point=of-view:
AI Music is Not Music - Adam Neely | Alex O'Connor
Or.. they simply like it? Regardless of what we think about it
There’s an appetite for this.
Reasonable people can believe they have a legitimate ownership right when they petition YouTube for copyright enforcement for AI-generated work. The courts might eventually disagree, but that's a different thing than knowingly making a fraudulent misrepresentations to YouTube for financial benefit. This difference makes the proposed behavior criminal fraud. I highly recommend not risking twenty years of prison time for like maybe a couple hundred dollars in ad revenue.
Besides, nobody's actually checking
Not that it still isn't depressing.
wouldn't be surprised if it's because they don't have to pay out for AI music.
That suggests you've done a good job of directing the AI to generate what people like.
I use YouTube proper quite heavily and I find it pretty easy to spot the AI stuff. At a minimum there’s usually a comment pointing it out, just like Instagram videos
I wish I had your Spotify.
Over the last few months they have served me multiple slop tracks in the discover weekly playlist. Probably more I didn't notice when just listening without focus, but several had generic artist name without bio and dozens of nearly identical tracks.
Here is a band member of the real band "Wings of Pegasus" who takes a closer look at these shenanigans in "Are you sure your favourite band is real?" [1]
Not unlike Buckethead, they seemed to prefer avoiding the direct spotlight of fame, but they still wanted to create these things and put their thoughts, feeling, and original aesthetic out there in the world.
...all of which is to say "except for the AI part" is a pretty big exception.
People praising it in the comments seem none the wiser (or perhaps they're also bots).
I admit to leaving praise on some of them, because they do sound really good, much better than what I thought AI music could be. Someone is creating music I like, and how they do it doesn't really matter; and in some ways, this makes it much easier to "separate the art from the artist".
To be honest, as long as the music is to my liking, I don’t really care all that much.
But to me this seems silly. Yes I want real artists to make music and be able to make a living not some faceless company spitting out endless music until something works. However at the end of the day if something sounds good then one should enjoy it not refuse to accept it simply because it is AI.
Because how far does their stance against AI go? They won't accept music. What about if AI created a cure that could save their child? Or what if AI could could sort through a massive backlog of evidence in unsolved murders and other violent crimes giving new leads previously missed? I am just curious if some people will simply be against it no matter what the use is. As for myself I think it has it's uses but also think it comes at a heavy price as in massive power and water consumption and other issues it comes with. Anyways
Also, re: music, if I was fine with listening to AI music, why would I listen to the output of someone else's prompt instead of creating my own?
Because you might not be as good as someone else in doing it, just like it was before AI. "Why would I listen to the output of someone else's piano instead of playing it on my own?"
> Because how far does their stance against AI go? They won't accept music. What about if AI created a cure that could save their child?
If AI cured cancer then by definition it would no longer be the technology that’s primary use case is churning out various forms of derivative slop. And so the balance between its value vs the economic/social/environmental costs would immediately and fundamentally change.
Losing my job, spending 3x as much to replace my PC while my favorite websites devolve into a cesspool of spam might not feel worth it just because I can now vibe code a todo app in 2 minutes while listening to a 600 hour playlist of personalized elevator music.
But if it cured my dad’s cancer and my mom’s Parkinson’s? Well, that’s a different story…
A: sorry i’d love to deeply consider this topic with you but unfortunately i’m part of the fuck off ai music movement so i won’t?
Are you real? - If you can't tell, does it matter?
Most of pop music had driven any creative energy it ever had to the ground already in the 90’s and 00’s and listening music from past 10-15 years or so, even if it’s not AI -generated, it might as well be. In a way AI just brings this progression into its logical conclusion. Most people simply don’t care about art and music, and it doesn’t matter who or what made it and if it even sounds like… anything.
People do not want to communicate across oceans, cultures, and centuries the lived experience of what it is to be human, hear stories what it was, say, live as a 28-year-old (possibly gay) composer with syphilis in early 19th century vienna, or standing on the street corner slinging crack in 80’s Brooklyn. They want to stay in their own bubble bed sherts over their heads smelling their own farts. I guess that’s just fine. Just fine. Amazing.
I imagine it'll apply to anything with a SynthID watermark. https://deepmind.google/models/synthid/
So not everything like that is necessarily AI generated!
What's the difference with AI doing it instead of your script ?
If your answer to any of these questions is "yes", and your answer to "can AI create art" is no, then there is a difference between AI doing it and a script.
That said the discussion around "human" art and "AI" art often lacks nuance, and I believe there's lots of space to explore art that uses AI. Humans produce a lot of crappy art, this crappy art requires humans to invest time and effort. With AI it is possible for humans to produce lots of crappy art without investing time and effort, so an deluge of crappy AI art follows.
If I use AI to strip backgrounds instead of traditional greenscreen methods, is the end result "crappy AI art"? I'd hope no one sets those standards. I'd hope my videos would be judged as "crappy human art" since I still did the camera work the acting and the editing. If I use AI for visual effects in my video because I don't have visual effect training and don't have money to hire someone with experience (I don't make money from my occasional fun video projects), does that make it "crappy AI art"? I don't believe so. But somewhere between there and the content farm AI slop filling the Youtube servers there is a point where it becomes "crappy AI art" and I can't tell you where that point is because I'm still trying to figure it out.
I guess either way we will see. Art is only appreciated by those who appreciate it so who am I to judge.
Music for Airports is ok ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_1:_Music_for_Airports https://youtu.be/vNwYtllyt3Q ... but there are parts in there that I recognize in the loop that bring me out of it being background and into something I'm listening to).
But yea... I want a soundscape and it doesn't bother me if it was something that was generative in 2018, or in 2026... or loops of recorded sound... I want something that isn't silence and that I can not listen to for four to eight hours... bonus if its enough "noise" that it doesn't even get picked up after noise suppression in a Teams call.
Space Banjo is great ( https://spacebanjo.com be it https://youtu.be/CLnHStt4mbs or https://youtu.be/ygYfJSTc_qQ ) ... but I like to listen to that when I can listen to it more.
There's also things like https://youtu.be/_egA9RZrD5k (and in this realm, I get picky https://www.youtube.com/@resomat6474 is pretty good, but some of it hits higher notes ... https://www.youtube.com/@TheJapaneseTown-jt6fy is pretty good too).
Again, this is more about wanting sound rather than music.
I am pretty certain most comments made on youtube these days come from bots. Google does not understand that this is a problem - no real human wants to "interact" with bots or AI slop. They kind of cannibalize youtube here (not that the youtube comments system was great, but you can find real humans making comments in the past, now you can not distinguish between bot spam and real humans usually, though most short comments are made by bots).
enough music was made already, we don’t need more.
They'll use be pretty sneaky about hiding that fact (they'll like any comments that say how awesome it is and how much work was involved while hiding those calling it out as AI, and stick any disclaimer in another language in the description if at all), and it's completely overshadowing legitimate creators in the same space.
"B-b-b-but what if I create genuine wo—“
You won’t.
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