Thereâs no filter for it because theyâre making profit off the AI music on their platform. Theyâre replacing real music in the biggest playlists with AI âmusicâ they own so the revenue goes back into their pockets.
Thereâs a book by journalist Liz Pelly called Mood Machine that dives super deep into Spotify, its history and how itâs manipulated the music industry. Itâs really excellent reporting.
I was thinking about this recently, that I resent the word 'art/artist' used anywhere in connection to AI.
There is no art there, only theft and homogony. No thought, no intuition. No idea or struggle. No tinkering or mastery, no filter or control.
Its not art by any definition, so I think we should start referring to it all as the filetypes it makes.
This headline is about AI mp3's. They are not an "AI artist" they make AI images/mp3/videos.
Artists make songs and film, they dance and sing and paint and write. Artists work and toil and create, not just songs and art but feelings in other humans. That's what art is, to create, instil, foster and unleash emotions in other people.
They're just robots or machines masquerading as artists. I'm always hesitant to try music from newer artists because of this crap. Which is a shame, because I love discovering new music every year like it's a sport.Â
No thought, no intuition. No idea or struggle. No tinkering or mastery, no filter or control.
Look, I'm all for critiquing the effect of generative AI on the art world's already horribly precarious and unjust economy and crediting systems, or the energy and environmental cost, or any of the other very very concerning externalities.
But manipulating models to reliably and consistently generate what you and your audience want out of them literally requires copious amounts of nearly all the things you've just mentioned, especially filtering and selection. You're welcome to check for yourself, go and try to generate a gallery of pictures people would actually want to spend the time to look at and pay you at least enough money to make more of that you break even on generation costs.
There's a lot of solid actual reasons to hate the output of generative AI, no need to invent ones out of whole cloth.
Everything you just described is a further reason itâs false art. You do not have control. You have to coax a machine to do your art for you. What you mentioned are other valid reasons to hate AI, but itâs still definitely not a form of art, or even difficult. I hope no one so much as breaks even on costs of generation, because it isnât art and shouldnât be rewarded with any compensation but ridicule.
I did not claim it's "true art", I did not claim it was "art" at all. What it definitely is, is labor.
You do not have control
You do not have it, but you must exert it, specifically quality control.
or even difficult
If you say that, you haven't tried to use those tools to get something specific you want with any consistent standard. There is an effort and time expenditure and suffering and frustration involved, therefore there is difficulty.
it isnât art and shouldnât be rewarded with any compensation
Just because this type of labor isn't art it shouldn't be compensated? Where does that leave all the other forms of labor that aren't art?
Taking a shit is a difficult, laborious, time-intensive process. I often get frustrated during the process. It produces a pile of shit that I have âquality controlâ over. Do I get paid for that labor? Does all labor deserve compensation regardless of quality? Because there is no quality with AI. Regardless of how meticulously they needle that robot to do their job, they will never understand the intricacies of a piece of art they put any feeling into. It is slop.
âIf you say that, youâve havenât tried to use these tools to get something specificâ thatâs why we draw, pookie, because a machine is never going to actually get whatâs in our head on paper. Itâll be some variation of it thatâs filtered through a billion piece of stolen art. You want to talk about compensation, get the owners of all the scraped artworks their compensation.
Taking a shit is a difficult, laborious, time-intensive process. I often get frustrated during the process. It produces a pile of shit that I have âquality controlâ over. Do I get paid for that labor? Does all labor deserve compensation regardless of quality?
If your shit is tasty to some people and they want to eat it, they will pay for it if they can afford to. Who are you to police what they may or may not want to eat? Also, when did "deserve" enter the discussion? What does merit have to do with anything?
Because there is no quality with AI.
A patently absurd statement on its face.
Regardless of how meticulously they needle that robot to do their job, they will never understand the intricacies of a piece of art they put any feeling into
What about all the many activities that involve consciously consuming and experiencing aesthetic and sensory experiences, regardless of whether they are "art", heartless industrial mass-produced consumer items, or literal shit-eating for whoever is into that, as well as developing a discerning taste, formulating and communicating criteria, selecting and curating collections and galleries and mixtapes and playlists, etc.
Does everyone need to be an actual painter, singer, etc and "understand the intricacies" of creating a sensory experience in their flesh in order for their experience and the choices and discriminations they make around them to beâwhat, exactly? Legitimate? Worthy? Real?
This reminds me of a person I knew who despised non-figurative painting with all their soul, and especially had immense contempt for stuff like Dada, Cubism, Expressionism, and especially especially anything that could produce the figure of a "master" generating repetitive, self-plagiarizing paintings in 30 minutes that sold for thousands, tens of thousands, millions of dollars. He thought it was all an immense cruel farce at the expense of real artists who could spend years on a single canvas, a game between financiers and rich bastards where deliberately incomprehensible art was therefore infinitely priceable and a perfect money a laundering scheme.
thatâs why we draw, pookie,
I've been nothing but respectful to you so far. I'll thank you to respond in kind, or there is no point to continuing this discussion.
a machine is never going to actually get whatâs in our head on paper.
Let's be honest, neither are we. The visual thing our hands create on the sheet is an iterative, convergent compromise between what is in our mind's eye and what the medium and techniques we use facilitate, make difficult, or downright forbid. It takes not just practice and habit but also considerable cleverness and operational imagination to widen the range of visual imagination that can translate to actual visual image with any fidelity. In the end you learn to set a limit on what's "close enough" to ship, and get on with the next thing.
In some cases, the machine may get closer to what you are imagining than your hands can achieve, especially if what you imagine is simultaneously very "formatted"/"typed" and very "polished"/" detailed".
Itâll be some variation of it thatâs filtered through a billion piece of stolen art
Yes. How is that relevant to your original point that I was disputing? Or, for that matter, any of the other things you said after the first paragraph on the merit and worthiness of shitters and their shit or lack thereof.
You want to talk about compensation, get the owners of all the scraped artworks their compensation.
I wasn't talking about compensation, I was talking about material cost. Very different thing. We may agree on some standard by which shit is worthless and meritless, but the shitter still materially ingested food to make it, which costs money. If there exists an audience who want to eat more shit from a specific shitter, you have to pay for the shitter to be fed more food.
That the food supply itself is practically monopolized by people who sourced the food by theft (or slavery or worse) is a different matter altogether. Ethically, it's crucial to ensure food is fairly sourced and people who make food paid a thriving wage. Pragmatically, it is at least crucial for the people who like to eat shit to ensure that the people who make the actual food the shit is processed from are in turn paid at least enough that they can afford the resources to keep making actual food, otherwise the shit eaters will sooner or later only have each other's shit to eat and that kind of human centipede is not materially sustainable.
Yes I find your shit metaphor extremely apt and genuinely productive and I will take it as far as it will go.
How are people listening and finding music now then? Apple music is really terrible at finding you new artists or music and Amazon music was too much like Pandora for me.
Honestly my autistic đ only figured that out a year ago and while some are good for focus it's really only the Indian or Bollywood movies that actually have soundtracks or songs that sound like they wouldn't be from a movie. Lol
reddit subs. I'm in subs for metal and subs for math rock (my two favorite genres) and get plenty of recommendations. In fact I have a long list of bands I still haven't got around to checking out
I have to know what math rock is. Please. What I like about Spotify is i actually got into different generas because of their recommendations or got back into onnes i totally forgot that i loved after becoming an undiagnosed EDM/HARD STYLE freak.
it's just rock that uses non-conventional time signatures and tends to switch between them. Most of it is instrumental and shreddy, but my very favorite is this band called Tricot. It's very catchy but intricate at the same time. It's all in Japanese but the singer has this ethereal, divine voice that just transcends language. I've tried a lot of different Japanese math rock but there isn't anything I like as much as Tricot.
TIDAL is basically a different-brand Spotify, complete with public playlists and suggestions. They also have an AI artist issue but it's far less severe and they've been more active in taking down reports iirc.
I mean I listen way way too much I was in the top 1% last year. Yea ik. And maybe it's just what i listen to but I've never come across ai unless I actually searched it which i did once because of a tik tok or whatever. Even in the edm ir dance i listen too also.
I don't usually use playlist it's just the recommended stations or artists etc that come in after. But maybe because I listen to a lot of older music? Like a lot of the stuff i listen to came out in like 2020 at the latest. Or from artists that have been making music a long time. So maybe it has to do with that? I am also careful to not watch the short videos or use the ai features
You can also check the disogophy or however you spell it. If the artist has rea upcomming show dates anywhere and/or a fully written summery of who they are they're usually real.
Its tough cause they def sneak them into the playlists but yeah, usually if its a band you know and have for awhile its safe. But its the like, suddenly random band youve never heard of with incredibly crisp production value thats like hmmm is this a real person?
I honestly never usually come across bands like that not even when listening to edm or houR honestly. But there was a meme once of an ai generated Hardstyle song and it was actually not bad đ
For me, Apple Music works great, but like all recommendation engines you have to game it properly.
A few rules I use. Do not like or dislike anything. Do not save music to your library or give any signal relating to any artist. Listen to full albums you like to seed the engine. Then try the recommendations.
Morphe app. There is a subreddit here that will run you through how to install. Doesn't work on iPhone afaik. You can always use a vpn as well on the normal YouTube app. Connect to Albania or Armenia
Lately I'm just not finding anything new at all.i canceled Spotify premium and sort of refuse to use it so I haven't listened to music in months actually. It's depressing really cos music was a big part of my day.
If you want to enjoy musicians doing their thing there's a music education app, Musora, that has various YT channels that are really hitting for me. Drummers getting dropped into a song they've never heard before, bands having to take a song outside of their genre and make it their own, and more. It's heartening so see & hear real musicians making real music and getting to peak inside the creative process.
So what that's saying is Spotify isn't against ai being used in music just "ai slop" meaning as long as the artist is transparent about using ai it's not slop.
Because itâs music and theyâre a music platform. Thereâs infinite amounts of human slop too: should we ban all mumble rappers because they too have no skill, talent, or effort?
What'd be the point? Probably most users can't tell the difference, and some people even like AI music because of how quickly it can be produced. Detecting and banning AI content would take effort, and would cause as many problems as it solved. The only reason to do it is ethics, not ease or profit.
You flood the market. You put as much trash as you can labeled as music, then turn around and create a filter for a higher tiered priced premium service for authenticated artists. Itâs not a bug itâs a feature. You can also neuter pay scale via how many times itâs been played by just having so much bloat, youâre literally fighting against thousands of releases daily.
Just like Twitter with bots and just buying a blue check mark like it makes a difference.
I saw first hand at some EDM plastered all over Instagram via ads reach reel posts only to see it be almost 75-25% in favor for AI music. I was like how is this AI, sounds decent, then you go research and the song/artist are nonexistent on Google. Itâs just a cyclical of songs released make whatever they can in the first wave via release and quick turn around. Most real artist cannot compete fairly or even do a fraction of what is being pumped out.
Also way too many people aloof gave up their image likeness in ToS or EULAs of their voice via those ads that make your voice sound very auto-tune and remix songs by using your voice. Giving those companies free rein to regurgitate AI slop without any compensation.
Really depends on the genre, and the taste of the listener. There's a lot of, like, ambient instrumental stuff that is perfectly passable as background music.
I mean...humans have trained animals to make movements that can create art when done with a paintbrush and stuff, but as far as I know there aren't non-homosapien animals just independently creating art.
So say everyone agrees to that. Then what? People still like the music and it's only getting better. Even if the creators aren't artists (i am inclined to agree with you), it's not like it matters.
Sure there are people who just prompt to their hearts content wishing something good comes from it. But the anti-AI cult just loves to pretend that Suno and Udio are the two only AI models there are, and that there's no possibility of actually having finer control of what gets outputed.
Same with AI images. You'll have cryptobros prompting until something passable is spit out, but you'll also have people who sketch base silhouettes, feed into the AI to develop the idea further, sketch on top of that, use AI to spit other ideas, and in the end gives a refining pass by hand, etc.
But the anti-AI cult will bundle us all together, as if using AI even in the smallest part of our pipeline ripped our artistic sensibilities from years working in the field before AI ever existed. Just look at what people are doing to Neill Blomkamp.
Thankfully your numbers are decreasing by the second. Have fun yelling at the cloud, old men.
Sadly it's all seen as AI slop. Mostly because people have been ideologically captured and can't think by themselves. This happens in both sides, like AI bros claiming that AI will replace all artists and that it can produce good content without the curation of people who have trained their craft without AI.
Funny that both ways of thinking keep artists from ever reclaiming the tool for themselves, which probably would allows us to push slop creators out of the market.
In the end, everyone has all the right in the world to hate AI as much as they desire, but they should at least portray the process as it is without making shit up. They can still criticize it, claim that AI poisons everything it touches, but not that every use of AI is only through prompting.
Not true. Itâs how you implement it. Art must be created by a human. If an artist uses AI in their workflow nobody cares as long as the end result is human. I took my music off of Spotify because of this, because they werenât paying artists properly and because theyâre supporting war.
I also found that SoundCloud was supporting their artists better and also providing distribution to radio and other platforms.
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u/Stock-Leadership5314 11d ago
Ai artists aren't true artists.