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Show HN: Sonauto API – Generative music for developers

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Re: Show HN: Sonauto API – Generative music for developers

#11

Post by wryoak »

zaptrem wrote: post #6
naltroc wrote: post #3

how did you create this without committing grand theft musica

In my opinion training on all music is no more theft than Taylor Swift listening to the radio growing up (as long as we don't regurgitate existing songs which would be bad and useless anyway). I think an alternative legal interpretation where all of humanity's musical knowledge and history are controlled by three megacorporations (UMG/Sony/Warner) would be kinda depressing. If the above is true we might as well shutd…

I’m skeptical about how much value AI art is going to really contribute to humanity but as a lifelong opponent of copyright I have to roll my eyes when I see people arguing against it on behalf of real artists, all of whom are thieves in the best case and imitators in the worst.

Re: Show HN: Sonauto API – Generative music for developers

#12

Post by mvdtnz »

zaptrem wrote: post #2

One thing I've been thinking about is how to do a better hobbyist plan system. It would be cool to do a flat rate unlimited plan, but we wouldn't want that to then be abused by larger customers/companies. Are there existing API providers you think solve this particularly well?

Why would a hobbyist need an unlimited plan?

Re: Show HN: Sonauto API – Generative music for developers

#13

Post by bongodongobob »

wryoak wrote: post #11
zaptrem wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion training on all music is no more theft than Taylor Swift listening to the radio growing up (as long as we don't regurgitate existing songs which would be bad and useless anyway). I think an alternative legal interpretation where all of humanity's musical knowledge and history are controlled by three megacorporations (UMG/Sony/Warner) would be kinda depressing. If the above is true we might as well shutd…

I’m skeptical about how much value AI art is going to really contribute to humanity but as a lifelong opponent of copyright I have to roll my eyes when I see people arguing against it on behalf of real artists , all of whom are thieves in the best case and imitators in the worst.

Yeah every musician has a story of writing a new song, bringing it to the band, and they say "oh, this sounds just like [song]." It's almost impossible to make something truly novel.

Re: Show HN: Sonauto API – Generative music for developers

#14

Post by zaptrem »

mvdtnz wrote: post #12
zaptrem wrote: post #2

One thing I've been thinking about is how to do a better hobbyist plan system. It would be cool to do a flat rate unlimited plan, but we wouldn't want that to then be abused by larger customers/companies. Are there existing API providers you think solve this particularly well?

Why would a hobbyist need an unlimited plan?

E.g., in the case of a future "LibreMusic" open source UI or an integration into their DAW they work with on the weekends. I'd get pretty annoyed if I had to keep putting a coin in the machine to adjust Logic Pro effects.

Re: Show HN: Sonauto API – Generative music for developers

#15

Post by patcon »

tombot wrote: post #7

What is the point of generating this low quality AI slop music, what real use case do you have in mind?

I made little gift songs for friends for awhile. It was nice and fun. Making a roadtrip theme song for friends on a vacation is way fun, and kinda locks in the moment

I also used it when I was living in New Orleans to help a friend come up with a riff for a live set he had, which had some unusual constraints (only had a singer, drummer and trombone, but no others, in an echoey space). He used the generated song hook as inspiration for that nights' arrangement

There's lots of stuff, and song of it supports artists who have tight timelines and want creative support

Re: Show HN: Sonauto API – Generative music for developers

#16

Post by Xelynega »

zaptrem wrote: post #6
naltroc wrote: post #3

how did you create this without committing grand theft musica

In my opinion training on all music is no more theft than Taylor Swift listening to the radio growing up (as long as we don't regurgitate existing songs which would be bad and useless anyway). I think an alternative legal interpretation where all of humanity's musical knowledge and history are controlled by three megacorporations (UMG/Sony/Warner) would be kinda depressing. If the above is true we might as well shutd…

Megacorporations owning copyrights to the majority of IPs(music, games, etc.) is a capitalism/monopoly problem. How does getting rid of copyright and allowing your company to profit off other peoples work in any way solve that issue?

Re: Show HN: Sonauto API – Generative music for developers

#17

Post by gazebo64 »

zaptrem wrote: post #6
naltroc wrote: post #3

how did you create this without committing grand theft musica

In my opinion training on all music is no more theft than Taylor Swift listening to the radio growing up (as long as we don't regurgitate existing songs which would be bad and useless anyway). I think an alternative legal interpretation where all of humanity's musical knowledge and history are controlled by three megacorporations (UMG/Sony/Warner) would be kinda depressing. If the above is true we might as well shutd…

The difference being that a musician being influenced by other musicians still has to work to develop the skills necessary to distill those influences into a final product, and colors that output with their own subjective experiences and taste. This feels like a conveniently naive interpretation to justify stealing artists' work and using it to create derivative generative slop. The final line in your comment is pretty telling of how seriously you take this issue (which is near-universally decried by artists) -- some other massive company is doing a bad thing, so why shouldn't I?

edit: I have to add how disingenuous I find calling out corporations owning "all of humanity's musical knowledge and history" as if generative AI music trained on unlicensed work from artists is somehow a moral good. At least the contracts artists make with these corporations are consensual and have the potential to yield the artist some benefit which is more than you can say for these gen-AI music apps.

Re: Show HN: Sonauto API – Generative music for developers

#18

Post by zaptrem »

gazebo64 wrote: post #17
zaptrem wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion training on all music is no more theft than Taylor Swift listening to the radio growing up (as long as we don't regurgitate existing songs which would be bad and useless anyway). I think an alternative legal interpretation where all of humanity's musical knowledge and history are controlled by three megacorporations (UMG/Sony/Warner) would be kinda depressing. If the above is true we might as well shutd…

The difference being that a musician being influenced by other musicians still has to work to develop the skills necessary to distill those influences into a final product, and colors that output with their own subjective experiences and taste. This feels like a conveniently naive interpretation to justify stealing artists' work and using it to create derivative generative slop. The final line in your comment is pret…

I don't see how the amount of work that went into it changes the core fact that all art is influenced by that which came before, and we don't call that stealing (unless you truly believe that "all art is theft").

My point re: LLMs wasn't meant to exclusively be a "they're doing it" one, the hope was to give an example of something many people would agree is super useful and valuable (I work much faster and learned so much more in college thanks to LLMs) that would be impossible in the proposed strict interpretation of copyright.

edit responding to your edit:

Re: moral good: I think that bringing the sum of human musical knowledge to anybody who cares to try for free is a moral good. Music production software costs >$200 and studios cost thousands and majoring in music costs hundreds of thousands, but we can make getting started so much easier.

Is it really consent for those artists signing to labels when only three companies have total control of all music consumption and production for the mass market? To be clear, artists absolutely have a right to benefit from reproduction of their recordings. I just don't think anyone should have rights to the knowledge built into those creations since in most cases it wasn't theirs to begin with (if their right to this knowledge were affirmed, every new song someone creates could hypothetically have a konga line of lawyer teams clamoring for "their cut" of that chord progression/instrument sample/effect/lyrical theme/style).

Re: Show HN: Sonauto API – Generative music for developers

#19

Post by gazebo64 »

zaptrem wrote: post #18
gazebo64 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being that a musician being influenced by other musicians still has to work to develop the skills necessary to distill those influences into a final product, and colors that output with their own subjective experiences and taste. This feels like a conveniently naive interpretation to justify stealing artists' work and using it to create derivative generative slop. The final line in your comment is pret…

I don't see how the amount of work that went into it changes the core fact that all art is influenced by that which came before, and we don't call that stealing (unless you truly believe that "all art is theft"). My point re: LLMs wasn't meant to exclusively be a "they're doing it" one, the hope was to give an example of something many people would agree is super useful and valuable (I work much faster and learned so…

I think we intuitively allow for artists to derive and interpolate from their influences because of a baseline understanding that A) it is impossible to create art without influence and B) that there is an inherent value in a human creating art and expressing themselves. How that relates to someone using unlicensed music from actual humans to train an AI model in order to profit off of the collective work of thousands of actual human artists, I have no idea.

edit:

> I think that bringing the sum of human musical knowledge to anybody who cares to try for free is a moral good

Generative AI music isn't in any way accomplishing this goal. A free Spotify account with ads accomplishes this goal -- being able to generate a passable tune using a mish-mash of existing human works isn't bringing musical knowledge to the masses, it's just enabling end users to entertain themselves and you to profit from that.

> Is it really consent for those artists signing to labels

Yes? Ignoring the fact that there are independent labels outside the ownership of the Big Three you mention, artists enter into contracts with labels consensually because of the benefits the label can offer them. You train your model on these artists' output without their consent, credit or notification, profit off of it and offer nothing in return to the artists.

Re: Show HN: Sonauto API – Generative music for developers

#20

Post by haswell »

zaptrem wrote: post #18
gazebo64 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being that a musician being influenced by other musicians still has to work to develop the skills necessary to distill those influences into a final product, and colors that output with their own subjective experiences and taste. This feels like a conveniently naive interpretation to justify stealing artists' work and using it to create derivative generative slop. The final line in your comment is pret…

I don't see how the amount of work that went into it changes the core fact that all art is influenced by that which came before, and we don't call that stealing (unless you truly believe that "all art is theft"). My point re: LLMs wasn't meant to exclusively be a "they're doing it" one, the hope was to give an example of something many people would agree is super useful and valuable (I work much faster and learned so…

I think there are a few fallacies at play here:

1. Anthropomorphizing the kind of “influence” and “learning” these tools are doing, which is quite unrelated to the human process

2. Underrepresenting the massive differences in scale when comparing the human process of learning vs. the massive data centers training the AI models

3. Ignoring that this isn’t just about influence, it’s about the fact that the models would not exist at all, if not for the work of the artists it was trained on

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