AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart • Hacker News Board

Re: AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart

#111

Post by Gigachad » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:16 AM UTC

setnone wrote: post #40

notatoad wrote: post #30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHQevuohJH8 my music tastes are pretty mainstream, and this just does absolutely nothing for me. it's exactly what i'd expect AI music to sound like - completely forgettable, with nothing interesting about it. i'd be willing to believe that this music was legitimately charting if it had at least some redeeming qualities, but i can't imagine how this could honestly get eleven spots on t…

the comments are very suspicious and very scary

A lot of them read like twitter bots with generic “wow beautiful ”

Wherever there is profit to be made on the internet, you have massive amounts of weird abuse and botting to game the system. Maybe not even literal bots, but paying a sweatshop in India to leave thousands of generic comments to boost your rankings on the algorithm.

Re: AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart

#112

Post by RiverCrochet » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:17 AM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #108

DrJokepu wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this kind of music has a name, it’s called production music and it’s been long expected in the industry that AI-generated music will compete with the lower-end production music, basically elevator music or background music for corporate training videos etc. It is unlikely, however, that it will get much traction in scripted long form productions, partly because studios believe it’s a legal minefield, and partly du…

> and partly due to resistance from creatives My favorite example of resistance from creatives was the space shuttle landing gear button. The space shuttle orbiter was technically capable of performing an automated mission, with the exception of opening the landing gear doors. This was ostensibly so that there would be no risk of the heat shield being compromised, as the landing gear doors were in the heat shield. Bu…

Red herring. The Puritan work ethic that seems to always resolve to "human value=human income" (regardless of the ethic's stated intentions) is what causes this, not creatives in and of themselves.

Re: AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart

#113

Post by fipar » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:20 AM UTC

greedo wrote: post #104

tzs wrote: post #95

I wonder how well it would work to use AI as a front end to Band-in-a-Box? Band-in-a-Box is a commercial program that has been around since 1990. What it did then was let you specify a chord progression, style, tempo, and instruments and it would make a generate a MIDI track. I think it might have also been able to take a melody and come up with a chord progression for it in a style/genre of your choosing. The target…

I remember watching a youtube video that was kind of a Star Wars fan fic. It had a great soundtrack, that was a cross between John Williams and Michael Giacchino. The YouTuber was using some commercial program that included samples of all the orchestral instruments and you could use it to compose lush scores. I never used it since it was expensive, but I always dreamed of tools like that, like GarageBand on steroids…

The code is only a (very important) part of this type of program. The samples are critical and (for the time being anyway) can't be generated by AI.

Especially important if you want orchestral instruments that sound realistic. Just think of the many ways that a single note can be played by a professional player and multiply that by the range of the instrument.

Edited to add: not orchestral instruments, and also not samples, but this gives an idea of the complexities of capturing the characteristics of an amplifier so that it can be modeled faithfully: https://neuraldsp.com/quad-cortex-updates/introducing-tina (I'm not related and I'm actually a Line6 customer, but I saw this at work in an interview by Rick Beato and though it was super interesting)

Re: AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart

#114

Post by Gigachad » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:21 AM UTC

HDThoreaun wrote: post #66

notatoad wrote: post #30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHQevuohJH8 my music tastes are pretty mainstream, and this just does absolutely nothing for me. it's exactly what i'd expect AI music to sound like - completely forgettable, with nothing interesting about it. i'd be willing to believe that this music was legitimately charting if it had at least some redeeming qualities, but i can't imagine how this could honestly get eleven spots on t…

The AI comment push on that video is certainly an interesting look into the future. Record labels have their work cut out for them in this brace new world.

At least what I’m seeing in dance music is online sales and streaming seem kind of dead, and everything is about events, personalities, and unreleased tracks that all the big names have but you can’t get for a year after if ever.

If you go on soundcloud/spotify/etc there is infinite EDM slop that isn’t worth listening to. But if you listen to real event recordings on YouTube, they are all playing mostly the same stuff by actual artists with new/unreleased music that people get hyped to hear since you can’t find it anywhere else.

Re: AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart

#115

Post by chromacity » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:22 AM UTC

I find the production and consumption of AI music to be uniquely... anti-human. You can make utilitarian arguments for most other uses of AI. For example, the code you're generating didn't exist before, and it would take serious time or money to write it. So, I get it, the economic argument is compelling enough.

But music? There's basically an inexhaustible supply of human-created tracks that can be accessed for next to nothing. Millions upon millions of them, in every conceivable style, for every conceivable mood. There's nothing you gain by listening to AI music day-to-day, so what's the argument for it - other than utmost indifference to human creativity?

Re: AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart

#116

Post by simmonmt » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:26 AM UTC

chromacity wrote: post #115

I find the production and consumption of AI music to be uniquely... anti-human. You can make utilitarian arguments for most other uses of AI. For example, the code you're generating didn't exist before, and it would take serious time or money to write it. So, I get it, the economic argument is compelling enough. But music? There's basically an inexhaustible supply of human-created tracks that can be accessed for next…

If you consider say elevator music - music that's just there to fill space, rather than to be listened too - then I don't think there's that much difference between using AI to produce it and using AI to produce clip art or boilerplate code.

Re: AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart

#117

Post by greedo » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:34 AM UTC

fipar wrote: post #113

greedo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember watching a youtube video that was kind of a Star Wars fan fic. It had a great soundtrack, that was a cross between John Williams and Michael Giacchino. The YouTuber was using some commercial program that included samples of all the orchestral instruments and you could use it to compose lush scores. I never used it since it was expensive, but I always dreamed of tools like that, like GarageBand on steroids…

The code is only a (very important) part of this type of program. The samples are critical and (for the time being anyway) can't be generated by AI. Especially important if you want orchestral instruments that sound realistic. Just think of the many ways that a single note can be played by a professional player and multiply that by the range of the instrument. Edited to add: not orchestral instruments, and also not s…

Agree 100%. The multivariate ways a note can be expressed is almost unlimited. For example, I first heard Bach's Cello Suite #1 played by some random cellist. Fell in love with it and listened to it endlessly. Then I heard Yo-Yo Ma play it and it was a completely different piece.

IIRC the samples in this program were actual performances, so I'm curious how they captured all the variations...

Re: AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart

#118

Post by chromacity » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:39 AM UTC

simmonmt wrote: post #116

chromacity wrote: post #115

I find the production and consumption of AI music to be uniquely... anti-human. You can make utilitarian arguments for most other uses of AI. For example, the code you're generating didn't exist before, and it would take serious time or money to write it. So, I get it, the economic argument is compelling enough. But music? There's basically an inexhaustible supply of human-created tracks that can be accessed for next…

If you consider say elevator music - music that's just there to fill space, rather than to be listened too - then I don't think there's that much difference between using AI to produce it and using AI to produce clip art or boilerplate code.

Well, code and visual art is more differentiated, so the thing you need probably doesn't exist and it would take effort & money to procure it. Not always, but often enough to make rational people default to AI.

With music... if there's a style you like, no matter how eclectic, there are probably thousands matching human-recorded tracks you can listen to today.

Re: AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart

#119

Post by marcus_holmes » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:40 AM UTC

simmonmt wrote: post #116

chromacity wrote: post #115

I find the production and consumption of AI music to be uniquely... anti-human. You can make utilitarian arguments for most other uses of AI. For example, the code you're generating didn't exist before, and it would take serious time or money to write it. So, I get it, the economic argument is compelling enough. But music? There's basically an inexhaustible supply of human-created tracks that can be accessed for next…

If you consider say elevator music - music that's just there to fill space, rather than to be listened too - then I don't think there's that much difference between using AI to produce it and using AI to produce clip art or boilerplate code.

Music as wallpaper vs music as artistic paintings.

We are fine with mass-producing wallpaper with machines. People buy this every day, no problem.

We are not fine with mass-producing framed paintings that are "art".

Both hang on the wall as decoration. Essentially the same purpose. But we have very different feelings about them and hold them to very different standards.

Music is the same. We have muzak - background music that isn't supposed to be listened to, it's just wallpaper. I don't think many people object to this being machine-made in bulk. And then we have music that is art and is supposed to be listened to explicitly. We hold this to a higher standard and expect it to be the product of human creative urges.

Re: AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart

#120

Post by smallerfish » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:49 AM UTC

chromacity wrote: post #115

I find the production and consumption of AI music to be uniquely... anti-human. You can make utilitarian arguments for most other uses of AI. For example, the code you're generating didn't exist before, and it would take serious time or money to write it. So, I get it, the economic argument is compelling enough. But music? There's basically an inexhaustible supply of human-created tracks that can be accessed for next…

Is formulaic pop music produced by a corporate label that's designed to push all the right buttons more "human" than the average track you find published on Suno? I wouldn't say so. Pop music was already to some extent a commodity.