AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

This demonstrates where a lot of the mismatch in impressions of this tech arise. The thousandth amateur Wonderwall rendition is not at all interesting as a piece of recorded music, but for the performer (and those listening around them) it can be a fun and playful experience. The same could be said for AI generated music: it could be a fun and playful experience in the present moment, even if the resulting product is totally worthless to the market. This would still be a valuable thing for the human experience.

Arguably this is a return to a more traditional way of experiencing music from before the invention of recorded music. Before this, music was an entirely transient and often communal experience. Once the musician stops playing, the music is over. Songs from these times have largely unknown authors, and likely don't even have any single author or for that to even be a coherent concept. They were simply part of the shared culture that many had contributed to. Now music is owned by specific people and you can play back their performance as much as you like (for an increasingly insignificant price).

This tech may be a negative thing for the market of recorded music, but it needs to be argued that recorded music is the only authentic way to experience music, and that this is why that's how most people experience music currently, rather than that being an historical anomaly due to the technology available. Once you step away from treating music like it's only valid when it's a product for a market, the problems of AI music seem a lot less catastrophic.

> but generative AI didn’t catch on by "imitating instruments."

My bad. As the first part of my comment suggested, what I meant to say here was "imitating instruments and the performers thereof".

> which streaming platforms and record labels then repackage and outsell you with

But that's the thing: it doesn't seem very likely that they'd ever succeed at actually outselling very many actual musicians, for the same reason those cheap keyboards that can play pop songs at the press of a button don't actually replace any actual musicians: not just because the quality sucks compared to even amateur performers, but because even if the quality didn't suck, the end result is about as interesting to the audience as a karaoke backing track or musak playing in an elevator. If anyone can press a button to make some statistical average of popular music, then that's gonna get real boring real quick, while the actual musicians will be making actual, novel music. It's just like what happened to the “vaporwave” and “nightcore” genres: they got flooded with “new songs” that are just slowed down / sped up (respectively) versions of existing songs, and nobody bothered seeking out those songs unless they were really into vaporwave/nightcore for their own sake or they were trying to put together one of the umpteen bajillion “anime girl studying while listening to lo-fi beats” playlists out there.

That is:

> false analogy.

Then here's another “false” analogy for you: just like with synthesizers, just like with vaporwave/nightcore, just like with all sorts of other musical phenomena where all of a sudden people with no skill could very easily and cheaply make musical slop, this new AI-driven wave of slop will, too, consume itself until it's yet another layer of background noise against which the actual musicians distinguish themselves and push the boundaries of music. It's a wildfire burning away yet another underbrush of mediocrity and creative stagnation, and while it's absolutely terrifying and dangerous in the present, it paves the way for a healthier regrowth in the aftermath.

AI music is the same. There is no surprise. No human element. No interest. No intention.

Pretty sure Deezer did a in depth article about how they detect and remove AI music. But it seems more likely they are detecting artifacts of the current tools, not something that would be impossible to bypass eventually.

Same.

I like the idea of my money going to the artists. And, you can "buy the catalog", give an artist $150 or so to get ALL their music. I have a couple composers who I adore so that was a no-brainer. If I was going to pay them for most of their work anyway, why not give them the money now?