Now and then there's a headline about an AI musician going huge on some platform.
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Now and then there's a headline about an AI musician going huge on some platform. For me the most fascinating thing is that when this happens, and I look up their album or singles, their songs are almost identical. Not like when you say "all of ACDC's songs are the same." Like, they're just tons of tiny variations. Check e.g. the singles by the AI named Eddie Dalton.
Or there was another popular one called Breaking Rust, I believe, who was a sort of modern hardcore country singer. Nearly every song began with him humming, in the same cadence, followed by the same bluesy percussion. And all were some variation on the theme of being a tough guy who doesn't care about other people's opinions. Like, dozens of these songs.
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Or there was another popular one called Breaking Rust, I believe, who was a sort of modern hardcore country singer. Nearly every song began with him humming, in the same cadence, followed by the same bluesy percussion. And all were some variation on the theme of being a tough guy who doesn't care about other people's opinions. Like, dozens of these songs.
And with this sort of thing I always wonder whether it's that they're (a) gaming the system, or (b) discovered something humans actually wanted all along, in some sense, but which artists would've never produced.
I mean maybe we really just want Oasis to play 83 slight variations on Wonderwall, but they wouldn't.
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And with this sort of thing I always wonder whether it's that they're (a) gaming the system, or (b) discovered something humans actually wanted all along, in some sense, but which artists would've never produced.
I mean maybe we really just want Oasis to play 83 slight variations on Wonderwall, but they wouldn't.
@ZachWeinersmith (a)
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@b_age I dunno, like, some of these are really popular as far as I can tell. And, in my experience, people who aren't into this stuff can't tell AI from real. Or, just aren't trying to.
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@b_age I dunno, like, some of these are really popular as far as I can tell. And, in my experience, people who aren't into this stuff can't tell AI from real. Or, just aren't trying to.
@ZachWeinersmith to be honest, i can't really tell, i don't listen to that kind of stuff. i just can't imagine people are that ... gullible? there must be some rigging involved
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And with this sort of thing I always wonder whether it's that they're (a) gaming the system, or (b) discovered something humans actually wanted all along, in some sense, but which artists would've never produced.
I mean maybe we really just want Oasis to play 83 slight variations on Wonderwall, but they wouldn't.
@ZachWeinersmith I dont really know. Maybe people do like that? Maybe people don't listen too well to music and just have it in the background?
I know I dont like that. -
And with this sort of thing I always wonder whether it's that they're (a) gaming the system, or (b) discovered something humans actually wanted all along, in some sense, but which artists would've never produced.
I mean maybe we really just want Oasis to play 83 slight variations on Wonderwall, but they wouldn't.
@ZachWeinersmith I think we're experiencing a kind of "fast food" of music. That analogy works closest for me - plenty of people are happy to eat a McDonald's hamburger even though they don't know where it's from, it was made almost entirely by machine, and it's not really good for them at all. But it's familiar, accessible, and pretty much the same each time.
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@ZachWeinersmith to be honest, i can't really tell, i don't listen to that kind of stuff. i just can't imagine people are that ... gullible? there must be some rigging involved
@b_age For me the AI voice tech is still not there. Like it really sticks out. But maybe if I didn't know it was AI and it just came on spotify I wouldn't notice?
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@ZachWeinersmith I think we're experiencing a kind of "fast food" of music. That analogy works closest for me - plenty of people are happy to eat a McDonald's hamburger even though they don't know where it's from, it was made almost entirely by machine, and it's not really good for them at all. But it's familiar, accessible, and pretty much the same each time.
@mdiluz I see it as taking all the vices of SEO slop and making them automatic!
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@b_age I dunno, like, some of these are really popular as far as I can tell. And, in my experience, people who aren't into this stuff can't tell AI from real. Or, just aren't trying to.
@ZachWeinersmith @b_age I heard that it's often "popular" because the creator is using bots to "listen" to the music enough to get a significant proportion of the streams in a specific musical genre
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@mdiluz I see it as taking all the vices of SEO slop and making them automatic!
@mdiluz Like at least so far, I don't see AI media as doing worse stuff than humans do. It's just lowered the cost to basically nothing.
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And with this sort of thing I always wonder whether it's that they're (a) gaming the system, or (b) discovered something humans actually wanted all along, in some sense, but which artists would've never produced.
I mean maybe we really just want Oasis to play 83 slight variations on Wonderwall, but they wouldn't.
@ZachWeinersmith I am pretty sure the answer to that question can be found by looking at the insane number of remakes and reboots being produced right now.
They may as well be AI generated (probably not long from now), would still work.
This is what humans want, not what humans need -
And with this sort of thing I always wonder whether it's that they're (a) gaming the system, or (b) discovered something humans actually wanted all along, in some sense, but which artists would've never produced.
I mean maybe we really just want Oasis to play 83 slight variations on Wonderwall, but they wouldn't.
@ZachWeinersmith I believe with some of these, they have multiple same-y songs that are doing numbers. I am sure those songs' listeners overlap so it seems like both a and b are likely to some extent.
I have a friend who simply has spotify play country music when he is in the car. I have never seen him manually select or skip a song. I have been on four hour car rides where no more than 10 songs play in an endless shuffle. He is probably an ideal audience for this.
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@mdiluz I see it as taking all the vices of SEO slop and making them automatic!
@ZachWeinersmith yuuup. It's why I'm finally moving away from Spotify - it kept repeatedly auto-playing into AI music and while I can't deny it can sound good and I'll enjoy it in isolation, the come down afterwards finding out it was just music for music's sake and was devoid of any human connection? Ugh. Don't sneak junk food into my dinners, it's violating.
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@b_age For me the AI voice tech is still not there. Like it really sticks out. But maybe if I didn't know it was AI and it just came on spotify I wouldn't notice?
@ZachWeinersmith i already disliked mainstream-, radio-style music before "AI" came up, so i don't have a good base for comparisation but still think i can recognise that generated stuff, because it being so arbitrary, exchangable
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@ZachWeinersmith yuuup. It's why I'm finally moving away from Spotify - it kept repeatedly auto-playing into AI music and while I can't deny it can sound good and I'll enjoy it in isolation, the come down afterwards finding out it was just music for music's sake and was devoid of any human connection? Ugh. Don't sneak junk food into my dinners, it's violating.
@mdiluz Same, though I was reading a book recently that said people under age 20 or so don't make the same distinction, or not as strongly. Could be more about age than generation, though.
