First trickle of generative AI music videos

[Circlepit]

For me the issue with that cover is not the means by which it was created, it's the Bach that it's shit.
He referenced the cover for Legion. That's a lot cleaner looking and more menacing for it. It doesn't hurt that Legion is a monster of an album. Maybe if this new one turns out to be brilliant it won't matter.

[Bürggermeister]

Sure, immediately concerned parties are currently focused on their income being taken away, and that's understandable. But the deeper threat, which Napster and photocopying/taping/etc., never posed, is imo the actual creative activity itself being taken away or at least massively reduced across society as a whole. What we're looking at is more like the shift brought about by the advent of recorded music itself; prior to that, if you wanted music somewhere, you needed performers and so live music was much more prevalent in society. Napster had no impact on this dimension of things; it took away some recording income but also opened up audiences for smaller performers and had no negative impact (that I know of) on sizes of live audiences paying out to see live performances.

Did lads playing records and waving an arm in the air make live bands disappear? There are DJs playing their fucking laptop to stadiums now, not even a record in sight, and no-one there cares. Do you care if the jingle for washing powder or the design of the box was done by some marketing stooge or a robot? Not me.

Like music, people who have the drive to create will still create it, people who want to pay for something they feel is more valid or authentic will still pay for it. The business side will just have to adapt, like musicians did - and will have to do again as AI music isn't going to vanish quietly either.

People who want "real" music will probably have to work harder to find it but that kind of music won't vanish because the same people will have the drive to create and listen to it. I know I always operated at a loss and will forever continue to do so. Was Era Vulgaris a financially profitable exercise overall? You still did it, though, even though if you factored in your time, gear, rehearsals and all the other expenses it cost you a fucking fortune and I bet you'd do it again, no? 

Human creativity won't go away, the people who create will create. Human art won't become invalidated by any of this. It will, however, give the masses greater options and they'll go with what they want, for better or worse. They'll pick shit, every time, we all know it. It's not AI that's the problem, it's the audience. C'est la vie. 

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I'm not predicting any radical immediate changes, but thinking more long term, and more on the creative than the receptive side, although both are important.

On longer scales, things do profoundly change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. And really nothing of what I'm saying hasn't already featured as warnings in science-fiction since the 1930s: the more creative and intellectual "burden" we delegate to machines (of one form or another), the more we risk (everything is probability, nothing black and white) deterioration of some of our own cognitive capacities. Some of this may have very real impact on things like mental health, as more people become pure content consumers without even the facade of interpreting at a distance some kind of meaning put out there by a fellow human (i.e. the artist). The impending possibility of on-demand 100% bespoke entertainment, responding purely to what an individual wants at any given moment, is a real risk for shared experience. That could be the "shit" of the future, but it's a very different kind of atomized individualistic shit to the popular shit of the past which, at the very least, functioned as a kind of social glue of common experience. Even soap operas filled such a social function.

Again, I'm not predicting that X, Y, Z are necessarily going to happen, but I do think it would be wise (wiser than can be expected of our society) to consider things like impact on experience of life, which is just another way of saying impact on mental health. I don't see current AI direction getting more people to create, to learn to create in any kind of experientially meaningful/mentally healthy way. Conversations still exist, but clearly social media has done something to society which leaks beyond its own digital boundaries. Generative AI imo has similar if not even more powerful society-altering potential.

[Kos]

AI song generator, fill yer boots   

https://app.suno.ai/

Been trying to generate some instrumental surf rock based on black metal but it mixed up the genres and generated me this instead which to my surprise is very decent:
https://suno.com/song/edfdfd27-15e2-4e30-9694-fcd22594a155

Some proper version of Russian Circles? So random but would definitely see this live.

Also, friend did this french coldwave prompt...
https://suno.com/song/c4d9b7ba-1819-4d0d-9639-754f481e2e53

[astfgyl]

I'm not predicting any radical immediate changes, but thinking more long term, and more on the creative than the receptive side, although both are important.

On longer scales, things do profoundly change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. And really nothing of what I'm saying hasn't already featured as warnings in science-fiction since the 1930s: the more creative and intellectual "burden" we delegate to machines (of one form or another), the more we risk (everything is probability, nothing black and white) deterioration of some of our own cognitive capacities. Some of this may have very real impact on things like mental health, as more people become pure content consumers without even the facade of interpreting at a distance some kind of meaning put out there by a fellow human (i.e. the artist). The impending possibility of on-demand 100% bespoke entertainment, responding purely to what an individual wants at any given moment, is a real risk for shared experience. That could be the "shit" of the future, but it's a very different kind of atomized individualistic shit to the popular shit of the past which, at the very least, functioned as a kind of social glue of common experience. Even soap operas filled such a social function.

Again, I'm not predicting that X, Y, Z are necessarily going to happen, but I do think it would be wise (wiser than can be expected of our society) to consider things like impact on experience of life, which is just another way of saying impact on mental health. I don't see current AI direction getting more people to create, to learn to create in any kind of experientially meaningful/mentally healthy way. Conversations still exist, but clearly social media has done something to society which leaks beyond its own digital boundaries. Generative AI imo has similar if not even more powerful society-altering potential.

I don't even have an argument for once 

I have long dreaded what the likes of AI would do to creativity but I suppose it's inevitable and the new creators will be the prompt Kings soon enough. Problem with it all for me is the cheapening of it all, like real photographers pics vs photos edited on a phone. Nobody wants to see your photos on your phone and I'd imagine if everyone can make a song without learning anything then no-one will want to hear your songs either. Everybody will simply generate what they want to hear and all dancing to their own beat. What will happen to gigs then?

It might not be the death of popular bands but it just as much might be

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I've said it before, but I can't help myself finding it all fairly poignant that Dune--set in a future where the production of machines designed to think like humans has been forbidden--should be having its brightest moment in the sun right now, just as the experience shallowing potential of AI is beginning to dawn on us.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Metal Archives statement on their policy towards AI generated music:
https://www.metal-archives.com/news/view/id/296

Recently, there has been a noticeable uptick in the number of bands being submitted to the site which have AI generated music. We want to make it clear what our position is on these bands, and how we plan to move forward in assessing them.

It went without saying, at least up until now, that when we imagined growing the largest and most complete database of metal music, part of that vision was the preservation of art and human expression through music. Until AI, that was a given. The music described on the site is, in some way, played, programmed, and composed by a human being. That still remains an important criterion for us, and it is our belief that AI generated music does not satisfy that requirement.

With the above in mind, we won't be accepting bands with AI generated albums, and we will scrutinize more thoroughly submissions suspected of having AI generated music.

For those users submitting bands, if you have a band suspected of having AI generated music, we may call upon you to provide evidence to prove otherwise, whether it's behind-the-scenes material, statements from the band or its label, evidence the band played live, promotional material showing the band is genuine, and so on. The more evidence we have to show that such a band is real, and its music composed by a human being, the better. Our goal isn't to make this harder on you, or anyone for that matter, but we do want to stay true to our vision for the site.

This policy isn't perfect and is a work-in-progress which may evolve over time. We know there will be some bands with AI generated music mistakenly added to the site, and we also know mistakes can be made and bands without AI generated material may be flagged for having AI generated music. With your help, we hope to avoid this as much as possible.

Thank you. \m/

[Don Gately]

AI generated artwork who gives a shit.
AI generated music get the fuck out. But how to tell the difference?

[Bürggermeister]

Interesting perspective on the whole thing. Seemingly Spotify are already adding AI generated music to playlists, the motiivation being that they don't have to pay royalties, even the shitty royalties they pay, for content they own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibMd_Jx9daw

[open face surgery]

Beato is great.

[ochoill]

Interesting perspective on the whole thing. Seemingly Spotify are already adding AI generated music to playlists, the motiivation being that they don't have to pay royalties, even the shitty royalties they pay, for content they own.

I must watch that Beato video but on Spotify: this is a few years old and already a little dated but shows how in a sense they were already at this, using AI just extends it further.
https://youtu.be/whQ8UBoz-To?si=c-R649rMxlwCO-Fy

Some of the last section goes into their fake artists trick, where they fill playlists with short songs made my musicians that have absolutely no profile, online or otherwise, whatsoever.  On investigation all of them are "signed" by the same label and company, all of them are very likely a handful of musicians tasked with churning out content for these playlists, and the group themselves are one of Spotify's largest investors.

[Bürggermeister]

Yeah, as if I didn't loathe Spotify enough already. It's such an utter bastard of a scam but, in the end, the audience gets what they pay for. He reckons the streaming services (including Netflix, Disney, etc as well as music ones) are not financially susatainable and can't repay the investors who helped them get started. They started with the valuation of their content too low and are now having to jack up the prices while also compromising the service with tricksy shit like this. I remember being at a lecture in the early 90's, when the average CD cost IR£15, maybe more, and, even then, the guy said that music was massively undervalued. A book was around the same price which someone would read once, maybe a handful of times more, but that a great album is something someone would listen to again hundreds, if not thousands, of times throughout their lifetime, all for 15 quid. Spotify is just a cuntwagon.

[astfgyl]

Spotify is mock. Watching that Beato vid there now and yeah it's in line with my general thinking on it.

We need a new punk DIY ethics movement but it'll probably be DIY AI, such is the way of the world.

There'll be a market for non augmented stuff for sure though even if it is only me.

[Eoin McLove]

It would be funny if an ultra underground elitist AI black metal scene emerged that was closed off to humans.

[Bürggermeister]

AI bands whose names contain only vowels