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How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

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Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#31

Post by thatguy0900 »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #8
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #4

AI is best stated as a tool to permit wealth to access skill without skill being permitted to access wealth. I've been called a Luddite so many times on this website asking basic questions of how in a world where your labor is required in order for you to earn a living these entire reams of people are meant to continue living, and nobody has an answer.

I also wonder what everyone is supposed to do if skills are simply AI’d in to uselessness. The usual answer is something about how rich people want to rule the world and not pay for labour … but then that world will become pretty unpleasant for them to live in so that doesn’t track to me.

Rich people seem to be content with building a luxurious emergency bunker in new Zealand and then just rolling the dice on whether the world will go to shit or not. The only conclusion I can really come to is that they know the world will be going to shit no matter what they do or something.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#33

Post by ddingus »

mingus88 wrote: post #12
renewiltord wrote: post #2

Does anyone ever comply with these "As listeners we must band together" things? I couldn't care less. I like the lo-fi sound myself and put on some Nujabes while in the kitchen. It's a good time. But whether any specific artist gets to play or not doesn't concern me that much. I've found that single artists rarely preserve the feel so much as ones in a genre.

[flagged]

Punching down is rarely helpful.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#34

Post by nonrandomstring »

> For us listeners, it’s more important than ever to seek out real artists.

I can understand listening to genai music as a background space filler but music has more functions.

It is a signifier and mnemonic, and sets mood for production.

Everything on https://cybershow.uk is made in house, on the fly as needed. We mostly use Ardour, Audacity and some weird old computer music tools like Csound, Puredata, Supercollider for all the beds and backings, many of which are in the old-skool, lo-fi styles because these sit behind talk as 'beds' very nicely.

It would be easy to grab licensed tracks or use "AI" to make music, but we don't do that. That's mainly because its better to keep control over the feel and exactly craft everything. An example is this poetry episode [0] where everything is cut specifically for the poem, and this latest episode "Owned By Bots" where the grungy "crime beat" is a main feature [1]

[0] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=13

[1] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=38

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#35

Post by ToucanLoucan »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #25
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #4

AI is best stated as a tool to permit wealth to access skill without skill being permitted to access wealth. I've been called a Luddite so many times on this website asking basic questions of how in a world where your labor is required in order for you to earn a living these entire reams of people are meant to continue living, and nobody has an answer.

I think you’re arguing against continued development of AI? (Apologies if I’ve misunderstood) I won’t use the word “Luddite”, but your argument could be applied word-for-word to automatic looms: “[The automatic loom] is best stated as a tool to permit wealth to access skill without skill being permitted to access wealth… how in a world where your labor is required in order for you to earn a living these entire reams…

Truthfully, I don't give a shit about AI. It's a tool to generate mediocre garbage, be that writing, be that images, be that music, whatever, and in those tasks, it can largely succeed. If you want a lifetime of generated Lo-Fi to listen to, it will do that. If you want a lifetime of generated hentai to fap to, it will do that too, and the outputs meet your standards, congrats, you are an average consumer of mediocre art, one among millions, perhaps billions. I wish you personally no ill will.

What I care about is all the musicians, the designers, the artists, the writers, who to be clear, are already and have been for many years struggling to earn a living plying their craft, who are in for even more torment for trying to just... live. For trying to turn their given and practiced talents into money so they can not freeze to death.

And I'm frustrated that they need to go without a means to live because billionaires, apparently, need more billions. And I'm angry that our society has allocated power solely to those billionaires to make those decisions. And I'm nursing a visceral hatred of every single one of them who are preparing to break the social contract to millions of people so they can have another, and I can't stress this enough, absolutely meaningless massive amount of money, to go with their already massive amounts of money...

For. Doing. Nothing.

So yes, I am a Luddite. I see monied classes financially backing new technology that will allow them to generate more products of lower quality using fewer (if any) human laborers so they can pocket even more money while fucking over working class people.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#36

Post by roywiggins »

eppp wrote: post #16
roywiggins wrote: post #13

> We can support musicians we like by adding them to our personal playlists and playing their music every day. We can also just buy their albums like ye olden times. Buy tracks for $1.29 like ye slightly less olden times! If you have disposable income, buy albums! It's easy and also fun.

Who gets the money?

if you are putting $12/mo into a big pot via Spotify there's way less money available to pay artists than if you buy a few albums outright a month, it takes a lot of Spotify streams to earn an artist a dollar. If you stream an album a few thousand times on Spotify maybe it works out in the artists' favor, I suppose.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#37

Post by hassleblad23 »

qoez wrote: post #7

AI seems like a scapegoat here when I think the real answer is simply that it was a tired genre that died out like many music fads over the years. (Everyone could learn how to make these with a 10 minute youtube tutorial which flooded the market, independent of AI.)

But that doesn’t diminish its utility.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#38

Post by perfmode »

roywiggins wrote: post #13

> We can support musicians we like by adding them to our personal playlists and playing their music every day. We can also just buy their albums like ye olden times. Buy tracks for $1.29 like ye slightly less olden times! If you have disposable income, buy albums! It's easy and also fun.

I’d love a way to directly Cash app or Zelle my favorite artist

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#39

Post by hassleblad23 »

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #28
qoez wrote: post #7

AI seems like a scapegoat here when I think the real answer is simply that it was a tired genre that died out like many music fads over the years. (Everyone could learn how to make these with a 10 minute youtube tutorial which flooded the market, independent of AI.)

> Everyone could learn how to make these with a 10 minute youtube tutorial which flooded the market That is a strange way to view music to me. Just because people can make music doesn't mean others will enjoy it. It isn't really obvious to me that overwhelming the supply would decrease demand. I mean, look at any extreme pop genre. One would assume that there are more complicated economics at play.

But that doesn’t diminish its utility.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#40

Post by atoav »

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #28
qoez wrote: post #7

AI seems like a scapegoat here when I think the real answer is simply that it was a tired genre that died out like many music fads over the years. (Everyone could learn how to make these with a 10 minute youtube tutorial which flooded the market, independent of AI.)

> Everyone could learn how to make these with a 10 minute youtube tutorial which flooded the market That is a strange way to view music to me. Just because people can make music doesn't mean others will enjoy it. It isn't really obvious to me that overwhelming the supply would decrease demand. I mean, look at any extreme pop genre. One would assume that there are more complicated economics at play.

As a musician I agree that "regular people can make it without sacrificing their soul" is not an indicator of bad music. Some of the greatest, most creative music I had the honor to listen to was made by drunk teenagers who didn't know how to tune their instruments after all.

But the thing about fads: if everybody and their dog knows how to make "proper" punk, low-fi-hiphop or whatever, the result will be bland, uniform, shapeless and generic. That doesn't mean the genre stopped producing great music, it just means you will have to wade through the bland stuff to get through the gold. And few people are willing to keep doing just that.

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