Still more laws and regulations. We're already drowning in regulations.
If you start to require such things, then you should also require that labels declare whether the artist indeed sung him/herself, and whether it was their real voice or some autotuned stuff.
> If you start to require such things, then you should also require that labels declare whether the artist indeed sung him/herself, and whether it was their real voice or some autotuned stuff
How do you complain about regulations, and then insist on more regulations? These seem like two completely orthogonal things to me. One is to prevent unmitigated spam on music platforms. The other corrects your pitch slightly.
"If *you* start to require such things, then *you* should.."
> prevent unmitigated spam on music platforms
That's not the true reason. The reason is that some clever people have found out how to earn money with fake musicians. As a musician myself I can tell you, that such operations make the already completely unjust compensation scheme even worse for real musicians. But even if this scam was avoided, we still would suffer from the exploitative and abhorrent compensation scheme imposed by the record monopolists (who simultaneously claim to represent the interests of artists while primarily lining their own pockets).
If you are interested instead whether it was a real artist or just an AI (or a "stunt performer" pretending to be an artist, which includes all people who can't sing in tune without autotune), then you should be as consistent as the food industry. Personally, I'm more interested in the music itself. It's nice to know who played it, but that doesn't change the musical quality.
No that is the reason. The fact that AI music can be created, marketed, and flooded off of prompts that, themselves, can be automated, is remarkably unhealthy for the music space. And saying the music industry is fucked anyway is not very convincing.
> or a "stunt performer" pretending to be an artist, which includes all people who can't sing in tune without autotune
Really? Sorry but I don't consider people like that stunt musicians. There's a wide range of human expression to be shared beyond singing technically well. A stunt musician would be someone doing nothing. Like prompting an AI.
Since you're keen on gatekeeping, I'm a musician. My whole family is. You may very well play music, but are you a musician? Your comment is genuinely more offended with auto tune than AI music. I can't imagine working myself to that conclusion, and I think that says a lot about your values, and they're not in line with any musician I know. They're more in line with a developer or A&R
The GP never explicitly mentioned law. Now's would be a great time for the recording industry to prove their value by instituting a framework for self-regulation. They could actually differentiate themselves from things like Bandcamp if they had some proper enforcement on this topic. But of course, we know that they're purely extractive, so that won't happen.
The fellow said "It should be required to include the AI model as a featured artist"; the common means is laws and regulations, like in the food industry.
> They could actually differentiate themselves...
Instead, it will go in exactly the opposite direction: the record monopolists will use AI themselves to further improve their already high margins. They have already secured the technology for this, if you have been following the news about Suno and Udio.
Per the video it seems the songs are not being listened to so much, but rather artificially boosted by fake traffic and/or (less likely imo) Spotify itself.
Spotify is definitely pushing these "fake artists". They do the same thing for real artists that they propagandized as "up and coming basement artists", while they were instead carefully engineered to be successful on their platforms.
It is utterly unbelievable to me that these platforms haven't done anything about generated content yet.
Hell, a music streaming company could make bank with simply a draconian, human-enforced ban on slop. (I understand it's not a simple problem, but there doesn't even seem to be an attempt at fixing it).
I was a Spotify user for 5 years and a Duolingo paid user for 3 years. When I got recommended slop in a random playlist twice, I unsubscribed and have no intention of ever returning. I cancelled my Duolingo subscription as soon as the imbecile CEO made a big stink about replacing workers with LLMs.
Fuck those companies, we shouldn't even give them a chance at rehabilitation.
A lot of these platforms are actually generating the content themselves to stick into playlists so that when users listen to them, they get 100% of the royalties.
I went on a short camping trip with my 60+ year old neighbor a couple months ago. He loves country. He had his Spotify playing songs for him the entire trip, and about 20% of the songs were slop. I felt like I was riding with Jerry listening to Human Music (from Rick&Morty).
It initially surprised me that Country music was one of the genres infested with Clanker tunes. Then you realise that modern country music is already very formularised in the same way dance music is (another heavily infected genre).
One recommendation that came up on YouTube music for me was Ella Langley and I had a hell of a time working out whether she was a clanker or not. I think she’s real but there are Ella Langley AI generators now and half the music videos of her songs are clanker morgs.
It’s getting confusing and annoying but country music itself might have to share some of the blame for making itself so homogenous.
If you are sick of AI music just start stealing it. AI generated media is not copyrightable. The people shoveling all this AI music can't claim ownership of it. It's generated from models trained on copyrighted content. Also wholly generated media is not covered under copyright laws to begin with if a human wasn't involved in it's creation.
So just start reposting and monetizing music from AI generated 'artists. Undermine it's value and the market for it. Eventually the time and cost of producing it would be more than the profits someone could generate monetizing it. Then people will stop wasting their time on it.
I have no problem with AI music, but it's absolutely crazy to let labels pretend they're real people.
It should be required to include the AI model as a featured artist. Or maybe it's labeled like DJs, where the prompter is the artist.
As an aside, I think you're going to see a real resurgence of live music that let real artists showcase their real skills.
That would require people go outside, and pay for stuff. No one want to go outside, and no one can afford anything.
All you need are screens.
Still more laws and regulations. We're already drowning in regulations.
If you start to require such things, then you should also require that labels declare whether the artist indeed sung him/herself, and whether it was their real voice or some autotuned stuff.
> If you start to require such things, then you should also require that labels declare whether the artist indeed sung him/herself, and whether it was their real voice or some autotuned stuff
How do you complain about regulations, and then insist on more regulations? These seem like two completely orthogonal things to me. One is to prevent unmitigated spam on music platforms. The other corrects your pitch slightly.
"If *you* start to require such things, then *you* should.."
> prevent unmitigated spam on music platforms
That's not the true reason. The reason is that some clever people have found out how to earn money with fake musicians. As a musician myself I can tell you, that such operations make the already completely unjust compensation scheme even worse for real musicians. But even if this scam was avoided, we still would suffer from the exploitative and abhorrent compensation scheme imposed by the record monopolists (who simultaneously claim to represent the interests of artists while primarily lining their own pockets).
If you are interested instead whether it was a real artist or just an AI (or a "stunt performer" pretending to be an artist, which includes all people who can't sing in tune without autotune), then you should be as consistent as the food industry. Personally, I'm more interested in the music itself. It's nice to know who played it, but that doesn't change the musical quality.
No that is the reason. The fact that AI music can be created, marketed, and flooded off of prompts that, themselves, can be automated, is remarkably unhealthy for the music space. And saying the music industry is fucked anyway is not very convincing.
> or a "stunt performer" pretending to be an artist, which includes all people who can't sing in tune without autotune
Really? Sorry but I don't consider people like that stunt musicians. There's a wide range of human expression to be shared beyond singing technically well. A stunt musician would be someone doing nothing. Like prompting an AI.
Since you're keen on gatekeeping, I'm a musician. My whole family is. You may very well play music, but are you a musician? Your comment is genuinely more offended with auto tune than AI music. I can't imagine working myself to that conclusion, and I think that says a lot about your values, and they're not in line with any musician I know. They're more in line with a developer or A&R
The GP never explicitly mentioned law. Now's would be a great time for the recording industry to prove their value by instituting a framework for self-regulation. They could actually differentiate themselves from things like Bandcamp if they had some proper enforcement on this topic. But of course, we know that they're purely extractive, so that won't happen.
> never explicitly mentioned law.
The fellow said "It should be required to include the AI model as a featured artist"; the common means is laws and regulations, like in the food industry.
> They could actually differentiate themselves...
Instead, it will go in exactly the opposite direction: the record monopolists will use AI themselves to further improve their already high margins. They have already secured the technology for this, if you have been following the news about Suno and Udio.
If food can mention artificial ingredients, I see this as effectively the same regulation.
> let labels pretend they're real people
I thought AI work couldn't be copyrighted, so "pretend" might mean "hide".
If AI is able to write songs that are listened to so much, maybe pop music has just become too generic and derivative?
Per the video it seems the songs are not being listened to so much, but rather artificially boosted by fake traffic and/or (less likely imo) Spotify itself.
Spotify is definitely pushing these "fake artists". They do the same thing for real artists that they propagandized as "up and coming basement artists", while they were instead carefully engineered to be successful on their platforms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L-oNQWx48A
It's bots listening to bots.
It is utterly unbelievable to me that these platforms haven't done anything about generated content yet.
Hell, a music streaming company could make bank with simply a draconian, human-enforced ban on slop. (I understand it's not a simple problem, but there doesn't even seem to be an attempt at fixing it).
I was a Spotify user for 5 years and a Duolingo paid user for 3 years. When I got recommended slop in a random playlist twice, I unsubscribed and have no intention of ever returning. I cancelled my Duolingo subscription as soon as the imbecile CEO made a big stink about replacing workers with LLMs.
Fuck those companies, we shouldn't even give them a chance at rehabilitation.
A lot of these platforms are actually generating the content themselves to stick into playlists so that when users listen to them, they get 100% of the royalties.
I went on a short camping trip with my 60+ year old neighbor a couple months ago. He loves country. He had his Spotify playing songs for him the entire trip, and about 20% of the songs were slop. I felt like I was riding with Jerry listening to Human Music (from Rick&Morty).
It initially surprised me that Country music was one of the genres infested with Clanker tunes. Then you realise that modern country music is already very formularised in the same way dance music is (another heavily infected genre).
One recommendation that came up on YouTube music for me was Ella Langley and I had a hell of a time working out whether she was a clanker or not. I think she’s real but there are Ella Langley AI generators now and half the music videos of her songs are clanker morgs.
It’s getting confusing and annoying but country music itself might have to share some of the blame for making itself so homogenous.
If you are sick of AI music just start stealing it. AI generated media is not copyrightable. The people shoveling all this AI music can't claim ownership of it. It's generated from models trained on copyrighted content. Also wholly generated media is not covered under copyright laws to begin with if a human wasn't involved in it's creation.
So just start reposting and monetizing music from AI generated 'artists. Undermine it's value and the market for it. Eventually the time and cost of producing it would be more than the profits someone could generate monetizing it. Then people will stop wasting their time on it.
I am guessing this is the real reason they are pretending to be "real" artists - so they can claim ownership of it.
I wonder if Spotify's AI Artist push is to break into markets usually defaulted to Muzak Company