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AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

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Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#561

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

likium wrote: post #532
AlexandrB wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music is art, code is engineering. "Hackers and painters"[1] was always wishful fluff, unfortunately. When it comes to code, I don't think anyone cares how the sausage is made, and only very rarely do people care by whom. The only question is "does it work well?" Art is totally different. Provenance is much more important - sometimes essential. David is a beautiful work, but you could 3d print or cast a replica of "D…

If someone painstakingly hand sculpted an exact replica of "David", does it make it art, or a forgery? Is hand written code to produce generative art not art? It's difficult to pin down the line. Ultimately it's up to the individual to define them. "The relationship to art, and this kind of painting, to their work, varied with the person entirely."[1] [1]: https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/03/31/berkeley-voices-transfo.…

> If someone painstakingly hand sculpted an exact replica of "David", does it make it art, or a forgery? Is hand written code to produce generative art not art?

No and no.

If you raise and teach a child and they generate a painting, are you the artist?

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#562

Post by Semaphor »

alexjplant wrote: post #339
miki123211 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spotify failed and continues to fail to verify the provenance of the music on their platform. They also routinely allow bedroom EDM and trap producers to associate their releases with older artists just because they have the same name. If they have hundreds of millions of dollars to sign podcasters to exclusive deals then they certainly have the resources to respond to these egregious cases of misclassification. Unfo…

> Spotify failed and continues to fail to verify the provenance of the music on their platform

FWIW, so does BC. Stuff gets eventually deleted, but last year there was a leaked pirated copy of an album for sale for over a week, over a month before release.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#563

Post by Semaphor »

vjerancrnjak wrote: post #34
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…

I miss what.cd, bandcamp almost a replacement

I miss Oink’s pink palace, what.cd was only almost a replacement

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#564

Post by huimang »

larodi wrote: post #549
prmoustache wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI as tool is included inside almost every daw (or can be through VST) and there is no way bandcamp could enforce a strict "non AI has been used in the process" policy. I think it is sane to separate cases where a record is entirely generated by a single prompt vs AI used as instruments/tools.

Precisely - every reverb is impulse response, lots of other effects are effectively some sort of convolution with neural networks that we otherwise call AI. Arpegiattors are AI and the random jumps between patterns in Ableton are a Markov Chain. What does Bandcamp really mean? Perhaps sampling others voices and music is barred, not these mini-AIs that are everywhere ?

Please stop being intentionally obtuse. Convolution, arpeggiators, impulse responses are not at all comparable to output from generative AI / LLMs.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#565

Post by Semaphor »

foresto wrote: post #521

I recently learned about Bandcamp Fridays: "on which we waive our revenue share and pass the funds directly to artists & labels" https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/bandcamp-fridays I'm still sad about the company's sale to Epic and then Songtradr, but glad to see that the service hasn't turned to garbage yet.

Convenient helper site: https://isitbandcampfriday.com/

I usually buy stuff on release day, but when I find older albums (or the rare ones I preorder), I wishlist them to get on BC Friday

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#567

Post by troupo »

rpdillon wrote: post #297
troupo wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then you'll get a lot of tracks that they don't need to pay royalties for I love this conspiracy theory. Which track doesn't Spotify pay royalties for? Considering that it licenses 100% of its music from external distributors.

> The program, according to Pelly’s reporting in Harper’s Magazine, is designed to embed low-cost, royalty-free tracks into Spotify’s most popular mood- and activity-based playlists. Produced by a network of “ghost artists” operating under pseudonyms, the tracks are commissioned with the intent to reduce the company’s royalty payouts to artists, per Pelly. https://edm.com/news/spotify-using-ghost-artists-minimize-ro.…

> operating under pseudonyms, the tracks are commissioned with the intent to reduce the company’s royalty payouts to artists, per Pelly.

As I already wrote elsewhere, no one, including the article's own authors, understood a single thing from the article.

Spotify doesn't produce its own music. It licenses 100% of its music from external distributors. Apart from a few scammy companies there are dozens of companies whose entire repertoire and catalog is ambient/background/noise/elevator/shopping mall music etc. that they commission from ghost composers.

There is literally money being paid to distributors for these tracks. To quote the original article you didn't even read, this one: https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...

--- start quote ---

Epidemic’s selling point is that the music is royalty-free for its own subscribers, but it does collect royalties from streaming services; these it splits with artists fifty-fifty.

--- end quote ---

Wait, what about "no royalties" crap? Oh, all of that is just "per Pelly". Though I'll admit that there are probably companies that license music for a flat fee (though I assume those would be rare).

Also note: Spotify doesn't pay artists. Spotify doesn't have direct contracts with artists. Spotify pays distributors and rights holders. And then those, in turn, pay royalties based on their contracts with artists. (According to one of the ghost artists interviewed, he is paid significantly more than he would be if he was trying to release music himself, BTW).

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#568

Post by troupo »

vintermann wrote: post #350
troupo wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then you'll get a lot of tracks that they don't need to pay royalties for I love this conspiracy theory. Which track doesn't Spotify pay royalties for? Considering that it licenses 100% of its music from external distributors.

Yet another person who plays the bogeyman card of "conspiracy theory" when what is described is garden variety corruption, only takes a trivial amount of secret coordination in a group smaller than your average terrorist cell, and could probably even be defended as legal with a small legal team (Spotify probably has a big one). There are a billion ways you could cash in on this. A dead easy one is "music written for…

> Yet another person who plays the bogeyman card of "conspiracy theory"

> Even if Spotify is not doing the slightest thing like this, suggesting that they might is...

...textbook definition of conspiracy theory

Also note how your entire text is just unsubstantiated claims. Including emotionally charged words like "terrorist cell" that give your words so much weight and meaning.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#569

Post by troupo »

james_marks wrote: post #364
troupo wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify doesn't hire any artists because if it did, major labels would immediately pull their contracts. No one actually understands what's written in this article, including the authors themselves. Also note how you didn't provide a single track that Spotify allegedly pays no royalties for.

You’re missing the concept of session musicians that can improvise for hours. No license, flat fee.

Again. Spotify doesn't pay musicians directly. Spotify pays distirbutors and rights holders.

Literally in the very article everyone links to but is incapable of reading there's even this text:

--- start quote ---

Epidemic’s selling point is that the music is royalty-free for its own subscribers, but it does collect royalties from streaming services; these it splits with artists fifty-fifty.

--- end quote ---

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#570

Post by das_keyboard »

somenameforme wrote: post #547

I wonder if YouTube is next; not just AI music, but videos. My recommendations are getting completely hijacked by AI generated garbage filled with comments complaining about the exact same thing. Ironically their algorithm is probably currently promoting that as 'engagement.' I see no way that this isn't greatly diminishing the overall 'value' of YouTube. At the minimum they're going to need to start downranking AI g…

My prediction is that YouTube will do the opposite. Completely embrace AI content (mostly short-form) and inject their own generated clips.

Having short form content that captures users without having to pay shares to content creators seems to a believable goal for the service

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