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AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

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Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#431

Post by GoatInGrey »

codexon wrote: post #242
yellowapple wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a key factor there is that programmers (in the actual sense, rather than so-called “vibe coders”) are more likely on average than (current) artists and musicians to have intimate knowledge of how AI works and what AI can and can't do well — and consequently, the quality of their output is high enough that it's harder to notice the use of AI. Eventually that'll change, as artists and musicians continue to expe…

AI music from suno sounds indistinguishable to non-ai generated music to me. In terms of how well it works, the quality of AI music is far better than art or code. In art there are noticeble glitches like multiple fingers. For code, it can call non existent functions, not do what it is supposed to do, or have security issues or memory leaks. From what I can tell, there is no such deal breaker for AI music.

The tells in music are there. The most common being: vocals have a subtle constant hiss to them, voices and instruments sound different in the second half than they did in the first, the hiss filter gets more prominent and affects all instruments towards the end of the song, auditory artifacts like volume jumps or random notes/noises near transitions.

More subjective tells: drums are hissy and weak, lyrics are generic or weird like "Went to the grocery store to buy coffee beans for my sadness", weirdly uniform loudness and density from start to finish, drops/climaxes are underwhelming, and (if you've listened to enough of them) a general uncanny feel to them.

I've generated about 70 hours of AI music and have listened to all of the songs at least once, so it's become intuitive for me to pick them out.

Some examples for listening for the hiss filter:

https://suno.com/s/qvUKLxVV6HDifknq (Easiest to hear at 0:00 with the inhale)

https://suno.com/s/QZx1t0aii0HVZYGx (Really strong at 0:09)

Some examples for more hiss and other (subjective) tells like weak drums:

https://suno.com/s/tTYygsVFo88SX6OV

https://suno.com/s/CzFgC6dxSQLWyGSn

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#432

Post by rambojohnson »

astrange wrote: post #314
rambojohnson wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI takes all of that old school idm and electronic music and repackages it without a human story to tell, ripping off actual musicians in the process. AI didn’t magically ‘make old IDM its own.’ It scraped decades of artists’ work, stripped out the context and intent, and reassembled the surface features. There’s no human arc, no lived constraint, no risk and no culture. What’s being repackaged isn’t a new instrument…

I know a few EDM producers and the culture seems to consist of doing the most drugs of anyone you've ever met. Which is quite risky, true.

[flagged]

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#433

Post by neom »

egypturnash wrote: post #424
neom wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure except half my classes in art school ended up in debates on what "art" even is/means - some people thought if it involved commerce at all it's not art, some people about the process, some people about the human, some people about the final work itself, is it high or low brow, fine art or emotive? So when you say "co-opt what "art is." - sure, but...not sure. On barging into creative spaces and how that should be…

Most of the artists I know, including me, have kinda given up on DA after its pivot to AI.

I was there in the beginning getting it off the ground, I've not looked in a very long time but dA is owned by WiX now so I'm not surprised. A lot of people left when we started to highlight vector art/pop art, a big wave left when we started to support suzi9mm and co, this wave will be AI. Here is the idea we built it on: https://x.com/dissenter_hi/status/2011183228154188111

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#434

Post by munificent »

lukevp wrote: post #225
drittich wrote: post #112

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…

> Or are you also extracting other artist’s work and using it as inspiration for what you do?

Yes, when I make music, I am taking inspiration from all of the other artists I've listened to and using that in my music. If someone listens to my music, they are getting some value from my contribution, but also indirectly from the musicians that inspired me.

The difference between that and AI is that I am a human being who deserves to live a life of dignity and artistic expression in a world that supports that while AI-generated music is the product of a mindless automaton that enriches billionaires who are actively building a world that makes it harder to live a life of stability, comfort, and dignity.

These are not the same thing any more than fucking a fleshlight is the same as being in a romantic relationship. The physical act may appear roughly the same, but the human experience, meaning behind it, and societal externalities are certainly not.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#435

Post by rambojohnson »

CapsAdmin wrote: post #400
rambojohnson wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI takes all of that old school idm and electronic music and repackages it without a human story to tell, ripping off actual musicians in the process. AI didn’t magically ‘make old IDM its own.’ It scraped decades of artists’ work, stripped out the context and intent, and reassembled the surface features. There’s no human arc, no lived constraint, no risk and no culture. What’s being repackaged isn’t a new instrument…

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…

except that what you’re describing is the CONSUMER SIDE of meaning, not the SOURCE of it.

yes, listeners project their own memories onto music, no one’s disputing that. but that doesn’t make the creator, context, intent, or labor irrelevant. treating music as interchangeable stimulus is how you end up defending systems that strip human work of attribution, risk, and livelihood while still feeding on the cultural residue artists created in the first place.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#436

Post by munificent »

derefr wrote: post #102
officeplant wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most human derived goods markets need to filter low effort attempts at monetization in general. I'm tired of going to Renn. Faire / Farmer Markets / Artist Alley Markets only to find they've started letting in "Joe Blow with a poorly configured 3d printer #35." These places have become infested with people selling the exact same piles of thingverse trash in a rainbow of colors. It sucks that a lot of these types of m…

After 3D-print slop infested craft fairs, and fake AI-slop products infested Etsy, it's got me to wondering: is this just an evolution in an existing scummy business model? Consider how easy it would have been, any time in the last decade, to get a booth at any "local hand-made goods craft fair", selling "hand-made" copper jewelry... that you happened to buy in bulk lots off Alibaba. The jewelry was "hand-made"... ki…

The fundamental scam is:

People want to feel a meaningful connection to others. One facet of that is wanting to own objects that were made by an actual person who put craft into creating the object and who cares about the owner being happy with it.

Virtually everyone, not just rich hipsters, wants this. People seek it out and are happy to pay a lot extra for it.

However, "made with care" (and not just "by hand possibly in a sweatshop") is a fairly intangible property and hard to distinguish from just looking at the object. Instead, you really need some amount of provenance tracking to tell the "made by someone who gives a shit" from the slop.

Maker fairs, Etsy, farmer's markets, and many other venues exist basically to offer up that claim of trusted provenance. But the very large price difference between what you can sell a made-with-care object for versus the very low price you can make an indistinguishable object using factories, sweatshop labor, or AI makes those venues a honeypot for scammers who want to sell, essentially, fake meaning.

I keep feeling like the ultimate answer to everything going on in the current zeitgiest is some kind of real trust tracking system so you know where a piece of media or object actually came from.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#437

Post by autumnstwilight »

marknutter wrote: post #249
olivierestsage wrote: post #16

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…

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?

If you saw a video of a person doing something cool, and later found out it was AI generated, would you still be impressed?

Of course, it's not exactly the same situation, but if I listen to a song and appreciate that the vocalist sounds cool and they're doing some technically difficult things, I am definitely less impressed to find out it's a computer program. And it also means I can't find other songs with that vocalist's same artistic sense because they don't have one, they're a computer program who can sound like anything.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#438

Post by jatora »

roywiggins wrote: post #130
jatora wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

They literally thought it was odd and generic, checked, and found it was AI and got pissed off. How is that "emotional cope"? They correctly guessed something was weird about it based on how it sounded!

i was moreso responding to this statement:

"What matters is that the song is actually an expression of humanity, not the tools used to make it."

which is complete nonsense

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#439

Post by leptons »

gambiting wrote: post #335
nobody_r_knows wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the worst (best?) AI "artists" on Spotify have millions of views. It's tragic what it says about us. That most of us not only can't tell, but actually prefer this kind of uni-tone, blase, on-the-nose, emotionally manipulative crap.

There's music and there's music. When I want to listen to Music then I pick an artist and album manually. But 99% of the time, I just need something to play in the background when I'm working or cooking or cleaning - then it just has to sound pleasant, the value of that for me is exactly zero. Some of the best mixes I find for that are ai generated because they have a uniform pleasant sound for a long time, without a…

The sterility of AI generated music will lead to a sterility in creativity of humans if "AI" generated music ever becomes dominant. The world is messy, and human music reflects that. But good for you if your life is so uncomplicated that human-created music seems offensive to you, I guess?

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#440

Post by alisonatwork »

derefr wrote: post #102
officeplant wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most human derived goods markets need to filter low effort attempts at monetization in general. I'm tired of going to Renn. Faire / Farmer Markets / Artist Alley Markets only to find they've started letting in "Joe Blow with a poorly configured 3d printer #35." These places have become infested with people selling the exact same piles of thingverse trash in a rainbow of colors. It sucks that a lot of these types of m…

After 3D-print slop infested craft fairs, and fake AI-slop products infested Etsy, it's got me to wondering: is this just an evolution in an existing scummy business model? Consider how easy it would have been, any time in the last decade, to get a booth at any "local hand-made goods craft fair", selling "hand-made" copper jewelry... that you happened to buy in bulk lots off Alibaba. The jewelry was "hand-made"... ki…

This kind of thing already existed for a long time, but not as a scam. The people selling these products were selling their ability as "tastemakers". They knew about all the various distributors who could provide "artisanal" products from around the world, they took the time to leaf through all the catalogs and find the best knick-knack that they felt would fit with the theme of their stall and do good business in their local market. And then on the day of the market they would chit-chat with the customers about the process.

The funny thing is that what makes the scammer version a scam is that they go through exactly the same process but then try to pass the products off as their own artisinal work, presumably because they think that will net them more money. But in reality most people browsing for tat at a market aren't going to pay more or less for local artisinal versus imported artisinal versus mass produced, they just enjoy the experience of browsing the different stalls and chatting with vendors and feeling like they have connection with their local merchants. So the scam was wholly unnecessary, the vendor didn't need to make up a story, they just needed to be open to chatting with their customer. They're shooting themselves in the foot by lying about their products because if/when they're found out then they lost the trust, which is the actual product they are selling. People who choose local markets over chain stores or online shopping are doing it exactly because they are looking for a more trustworthy experience, so when you take that away you have nothing to sell.

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