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AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

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Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I do. But what gives me joy with art is that it's a communication from one person to another. It's not about pretty sounds (or pictures, or whatever the medium is). If that communication isn't there, then the art has no real value to me regardless of how pretty it is. If I think I'm talking with a person and it turns out that I'm talking with a machine, I've been duped and will likely be angry about it. Ano…

>But what gives me joy with art is that it's a communication from one person to another Maybe if a person generated 50,000 songs, not even listening to them, you could have a point. Although, even in that case, regardless of the lack of an "artist's intention," there is the interpretation of what people will take from that thing. And that interpretation is often different from what the author originally had in mind.…

> Although, even in that case, regardless of the lack of an "artist's intention," there is the interpretation of what people will take from that thing.

Of course. My interpretation is an important part as well, but that comes from me, not the artist, so is a bit different. Well, maybe I should say that the meaning and importance of a song is in the confluence of the artist and myself. I did want to clarify something, though -- I'm not really talking about the "artist's intention" here. That's a different thing, too.

The emotional communication I'm talking about happens even if I have no idea what the artist's conscious intention was, or even if I don't know who the artist is.

> And I do believe a sufficiently advanced AI model would be able to mimic or synthesize human knowledge/worries/dramas in such a profound way that, regardless of "intention to communicate," it would be able to create things that people would relate to and take deeper meaning from.

Perhaps so! But that kind of simulacrum is something I have absolutely no interest in. In fact, I find the idea of it a bit repulsive.

> someone might have used AI, but they were still involved in all parts of the creation process, like writing the lyrics

If an artist actually created the thing, then it's not an AI generated song. It's a human created song that may have involved AI as a tool. I'm talking more about if a human just describes the song they want to an AI and the AI creates the rest.

That said, I'm particularly averse to AI vocals, because vocals are particularly intimate for me. A song that has a machine as a singer is a song I'll reject even if the rest was created by a human.

> the very fact of them choosing a song and saying, "Hey, I liked that, I will share it with people," would already be a communication.

Technically true, but that's nowhere near the kind of communication I'm talking about. That has little value to me unless the person sharing it and myself know each other very, very well. Then, it's a communication/connection between that person and me, which can make it a great thing even if the song wouldn't resonate with me on its own.

I mean, art is inherently about human experience and emotion. Each of us resonates with certain types of art and doesn't resonate with other types. All I'm trying to do here is explore and maybe explain what resonates or not with me. I am in no way saying that anybody else should share my tastes.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#412

I'm not ideologically opposed to making music with AI, but the dream would be new songs which which showcase the new sounds and musical forms that AI enables, like Believe for autotune, or Rumble for electric guitar, or Autobahn for synths. I want a friend to message me like "Hey, there's some interesting stuff happening in the AI music scene, check out these tracks". But everything I've seen is pastiche, either nove…

Yes, it's really easy to argue against AI music and find that you're making exactly the same argument that was used against DJs and sampling in the 90s. "Real musicians" thought they were being ripped off by "non-musicians" who didn't know how to play an instrument, just a turntable or an AKAI. But it turns out that turntables and samplers are instruments if you allow people to get creative with them, and now we have entire genres of music that exist because sampling is legitimate (though the copyright wars did make it more expensive than the original guerrilla days). I mean, do we seriously think DJ Shadow isn't a musician?

You could regard AI as being literally just a very advanced form of sampling. I've seen and heard some very creative uses of AI tools, and it would be a terrible shame if that baby got thrown out with the bathwater.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#413
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a musician and I don't think it's that amusing. IMO this isn't an "AI can't be art" discussion. It's about the fact that AI can be used to extract value from other artists' work without consent, and then out-compete them on volume by flooding the marketplace.

And you create music without ever having heard music before? Or are you also extracting other artist’s work and using it as inspiration for what you do? AI music is the same as AI code. It’s derived from real code, but it’s not just regurgitated wholesale. You still as a person with taste have to guide it and provide inputs. Electronic music made it so you didn’t have to learn to play an instrument. Auto tune made it…

> less gatekeepy to make music

Is "gatekeepy" how we're referring to skill now? "Man I'd like to make a top-quality cabinet for my kitchen, lame how those skilled carpenters are gatekeeping that shit smh"

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#414
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you create music without ever having heard music before? Or are you also extracting other artist’s work and using it as inspiration for what you do? AI music is the same as AI code. It’s derived from real code, but it’s not just regurgitated wholesale. You still as a person with taste have to guide it and provide inputs. Electronic music made it so you didn’t have to learn to play an instrument. Auto tune made it…

> less gatekeepy to make music Is "gatekeepy" how we're referring to skill now? "Man I'd like to make a top-quality cabinet for my kitchen, lame how those skilled carpenters are gatekeeping that shit smh"

Gatekeepy to not like something that's not to your taste

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly not getting the human story thing when it comes to music and maybe art in general. I mean I get what it means, but I don't think it describes why people enjoy art. To me, it seems more like people place their own meaning in art. A particular song might remind one individual of the good times they had in their teens, while the actual meaning of the song is completely different. Bachs 5th symphony (or what…

> Bachs 5th symphony (or whatever) might be extremely annoying to someone because they had to listen to it every day at work. Or Beethoven's 9th. For different reasons...

"little of the old ludwig van"?

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#416
post #221

Every major platform needs to also do this. They've all become overrun with literal trash.

No one in these threads ever discusses how you would identify and remove AI-generated music. E.g. how is this worse and needs to be removed: https://youtu.be/L3Uyfnp-jag?si=SL4Jc4qeEXVgUpeC but crap that top pop artists vomit out into the world doesn't

I can think of half a dozen ways to detect AI music in it's current form, btu I'm not sure anyone has actually bothered implementing such a system.

Is anyone here aware of one? I might give it a go if not.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#417

Funny to see this right now. Spotify's promotion of AI music bothered me so much that it has actually pushed me to Bandcamp and the practice of buying music again. It's really fun to build a collection knowing you're supporting the artists, download FLAC files, organize your little "collection" page ... Feels like a renaissance in my relationship with music, the most fun I've had since what.cd. Anyway, love this stan…

What do you search for or listen to that gives you ai generated music?

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you came across a song and fell in love with it, only to find out later that it was generated by ai, would you stop loving the song?

This happened to me last month. After the first song, I suspected so I checked the cover and the artist profile. It was AI generated. I enjoyed the album nevertheless. You can find AI music enjoyable. People also hated DJ music before. And recorded music before. And electro amplified live music performances before that. This is just another category of music. Doesn't take away from human music. What people are right…

I agree entirely. Well, not entirely. I think anger would also be an understandable response if the music were misrepresented as being by human musicians if it weren't. Like it would be understandable if people got mad if they thought they bought easy listening and actually got acid metal. Or vice versa.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bandcamp continues to be the best place to organically discover new artists. If I'm ever bored I go to their front page and browse by genre. It feels like the digital version of Sam Goody or whichever 90s record store had the headphone kiosks where you could listen to songs before buying the record. Spotify, on the other hand, induced a level of visceral disgust I'd never felt before when I stumbled across an AI-gene…

This is not Spotify, it's Spotify fraudsters. It's like being mad at your bank that somebody stole your credit card on the subway and made purchases with it.

> It's like being mad at your bank that somebody stole your credit card on the subway and made purchases with it.

It's being mad that a store sold me a counterfeit rolex, actually. Spotify might claim to just be a "marketplace" like every other platform these days, but they're still the ones hosting that page that passes off slop as legitimate work by another artist. Spotify has a responsibility to govern what is hosted and sold on their platform.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#420
post #412

I'm not ideologically opposed to making music with AI, but the dream would be new songs which which showcase the new sounds and musical forms that AI enables, like Believe for autotune, or Rumble for electric guitar, or Autobahn for synths. I want a friend to message me like "Hey, there's some interesting stuff happening in the AI music scene, check out these tracks". But everything I've seen is pastiche, either nove…

Yes, it's really easy to argue against AI music and find that you're making exactly the same argument that was used against DJs and sampling in the 90s. "Real musicians" thought they were being ripped off by "non-musicians" who didn't know how to play an instrument, just a turntable or an AKAI. But it turns out that turntables and samplers are instruments if you allow people to get creative with them, and now we have…

Yeah, I want the Paul's Boutique of AI music, but I'm not interested in wading through the AI equivalent of a hundred thousand acoustic guitar covers of Wonderwall
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