I'm not against some AI uses, I use LLMs myself where it makes sense, but music is one of the things that we were told AI would free up all our time to do!!
Why not? The experience of working with a freelancer for a piece of creative art is more or less like prompting except they take longer to reply, understand better most of the time, write/spell worse, but produce way better results, especially after two/three iterations ("prompts").
It really depends on what you want/need, augment/extrapolate your own creativity with AI tools, or invite someone else's.
The AI debate is for now most often centered on whether AI is capable of replacing individuals, but replacing the results you get when you put multiple humans together is another dimension entirely.
Then, if the project lives and grows long enough to be published, you start soliciting involvement from human artists but with minimal budgetary commitments. If your project gains momentum, you start allocating more realistic incentives for human collaborators.
I'm a very long way from that though.
While the advisability of this particular project is up for debate, I do think it's something that could only exist with an API like eleven's.
Hiring someone is work and takes effort, and can take a few tries. People, especially solo creators, generally don't want to bother, and are excited at what they can now do without requiring people to fill in skills they haven't acquired. This ironically goes for creatives as well!
I think it's been telling past week, when Astra demonstrated a step change in 3D modeling/art abilities. I have a few friends who are indie game devs, and who had been excited about AI because it allows them to create without requiring programmers all of a sudden. And they reacted with dismay to Astra - like what many programmers were feeling two years ago. But previously they had not quite been able to empathize and were in no way hiding their enthusiasm about making games without being handicapped by programmer inavailability.
This won't replace pop stars; those remain analog because they sell better. This is why South Korea for example went all-in on the idol system of kpop: South Korea had pervasive broadband before most other markets, so when MP3 came along physical album sales crashed over night. Music companies shifted to the most analog product they could think of: People. (I'm almost literally quoting J.Y. Park.)
It might well replace the session musician you hire to sing the demo tape that's delivered to those pop stars to model their performance on, though.
The moral debate also isn't entirely new to music production, with software emulations having replaced many physical instruments and having put plenty of instrument or gear makers out of work.
Counter-example: This is pre-AI, but I also have a friend who runs a very successful small company in a niche he's all but cornered. When he started he needed a programmer, and he found this almost-no-cost kid working from his parents' home in a small village in Argentina on a platform like Fiverr or something. It worked out so well he offered to make him a 50% partner, and now they're both incredibly well off and the kid, now in his 30s, is the richest man in his village. This could be you, but chances are you'll give the money to Sama or ElevenLabs because it's the path of least resistance.
I'd still do this again however, because I really enjoyed the feeling of the community of people contributing our wedding and all the little stories attached. "I prompted ElevenLabs for this!" wouldn't be a memory; a fellow human spending some hours of their life on making this for us and what lead to it is.
There's often value in the provenance of things.
So yes, there'll be demand, no people won't often know it.
https://melodysechochamber.bandcamp.com/track/some-time-alon... (not in French language)
https://endlessfloods.bandcamp.com/track/rites-futurs (French language)
I think it's a bit unfair to draw the line here. Some of the most memorable music in my life has been from video games and I'd hate to lose the human touch here just as much as I'd hate to lose the human touch at live shows.
DOOM 2016, FTL, the Donkey Kong Country games, Mega Man and the Mega Man X series - and of course anything Koji Kondo's done - just to mention a few off the top of my head. I've never really been the type to listen to game music outside the context of a game (unless I've got a particularly bad earworm), but man, I do appreciate good game music.
> we were told AI would free up all our time to do!!
You were told you'd do it for your soul, not money, so the AI can't block it. And your specific religion might not even codify that AI assistance kills the soul ("it's just a tool"), so there is no this downside either.
But, I'm generally open minded to new things, and I won't claim I hold some absolute truths here, so if anyone heard anything generated that feels like it really pushes some horizon and actually innovates, creates something new or similar, please link it so I could hear it too and I promise I'll hear it with an open mind! :)
In my experience they are inexplicably excited by how easy it is to make something shitty.
Not everyone is a born musician, just like not everyone is a born writer, sprinter or mountain climber. But it takes a certain kind of person to hit the "easy" button and still feel like they accomplished something.
Example: This one is easily a replacement for people who listen to linkin park type music passively: https://elevenmusic.io/tracks/6aa1ca95740e34b282c33b0a Well except the vocal only pre-drop part, that was horrendous lyrical flow from the clanker.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/EDM/comments/1mq3s5p/just_noticed_t...
Every time a barrier drops (samplers, synths, autotune, GarageBand, sample packs) this argument gets made and it is partly right. Plenty of what gets made on our platform is complete slop but if your only contribution to a song was a "make a pop song" prompt that's what you deserve. You are right that nobody was ever short of music - but many people are short of a way to make it so we build for them.