I appreciate all your insight!
I suppose my next question to yourself and anyone else who listens and says "this is AI slop" would be thus; if it was presented on Spotify or some other platform and not advertised as AI generated, would you still be able to tell the difference? Would your target audience?
This is where it gets fuzzy, for me. Lets say I make an album with 10 tracks of low-fi hiphop and want to sell it for $15USD with a liberal license that allows for use in commercial product. Let's also say that Bob uses GenAI to make a low-fi hiphop album that sells for $8USD assuming the same license. Which do you think the solo unpaid game dev who needs vibe music for her new cozy urban farming game is going to go for?
It's not just about consumers being able to tell the difference between GenAI product and human product, which they have proven pretty terrible at when we look at code, visual art and writing. The HN crowd is perhaps more adept at it, but as much as I enjoy this site, the HN crowd represents a tiny fraction of the available market despite what certain egos around here may think.
That is what takes the wind out of my sails; not that the GenAI can easily produce electronic music that sounds like mine, but that it can do it on a speed and scale that renders me not competitive.
To clarify, I never intended to make it my full time job. I like electronic music, saw a lot of artists on Bandcamp selling albums and doing music for games and figured hey, I think I can do that and maybe supplement my primary income a wee bit...you know, because here in the US, rather than fixing the predatory economy, we just push everyone into turning every hobby into a side-hustle. To your point about why I am engaging in a hobby where motivation is so easily lost, well...I will need to chew on that a bit. I am the type of person who enjoys trying different things to learn what I like and what I don't before investing in it more. I also wonder if there's a difference in the fact that I make electronic music with, well, electronics (into a bit of circuit bending, as well), versus someone who plays a guitar or oboe, which takes significantly more dedication and practice than what I enjoy doing.
Was I relying on making money off music? Nah. I am not even remotely close to that level, yet. But would it have been nice to put up a few albums to sell on platforms like Bandcamp? Sure! But the advent of GenAI makes me wonder if my limited free time would be best spent on other hobbies that stand a better chance of both satisfying my desire to create and putting a few extra bucks for lunch in my pocket once in awhile.