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AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

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Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#611

Post by vintermann »

JohnFen wrote: post #330
parpfish wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internally, they refer to it as “perfect fit content” (pfc). It used to just be stuff like white noise and rain sounds, but it has expanded to essentially be a modern Muzak replacement. For situations when people don really want “music” and just need “contextually appropriate aesthetically pleasing sound”

That makes all the sense in the world to me. I'd call that an entirely legitimate use for AI generated music.

Sure, as "content".

But unless these tracks are treated differently in Spotify's payout system, they're extremely profitable, and because payments come from a common pool, they hoover up payments which would otherwise have gone to artists people actually like.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#612

Post by somenameforme »

das_keyboard wrote: post #570
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

I had pretty much the exact same experience as the peer comment in this thread. They were videos I was interested in, or at least got clickbaited into, but the fact that they were AI generated destroyed their value. At scale I think the most likely outcome of this is not that people embrace AI for this sort of stuff, but rather that it also destroys the value of genuine content by making people doubtful of the authenticity of anything that seems improbable.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#613

Post by gibsonsmog »

WD-42 wrote: post #82
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’ve been doing the same over the last few months. The best part for me is going to record stores again. CDs are SO cheap now, especially used ones. I’ll usually pick a few out of the dollar bin just based on vibes and the cover and rip them when I get home. I’ve found some cool stuff. It’s like a treasure hunt. Don’t miss Spotify one bit.

If you can, find an old tape deck at a thrift store and look into cassettes as well. They're super fun to find and you can buy new ones from groups on Bandcamp usually way cheaper than any other merch offerings and still get the high quality FLAC files. I spent some time last year going through a variety of tapes that were up to 40+ years old and was shocked at how good some of them still sounded.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#614

Post by runarberg »

torginus wrote: post #554
patates wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't CD players just reading digits? I'm not anywhere close to a hifi expert but it must be all about the DAC, no? Or do you mean the ones with a built-in DAC?

I've had a bad experience with this just a couple years ago. I have an old DVD/CD player which at some point I realized I had no way of connecting to my new TV. The old one was a decent looking premium unit, that I got from my parents (who paid good money for it), The industry has collectively decided that since CDs/DVDs are just about converting digital bits into other bits deterministically, there's no value left t…

Generally DVD players make lousy CD players. Most of the annoyance is in the UI which is optimized for watching movies, not playing CDs. But there are also sometimes problems like a small buffering pause between songs, etc. which you don’t get with quality CD players.

I say this as my primary CD player is actually a Panasonic DVD player from the year 2000. This is the exception that proves the rule. At the turn of the century many quality DVD players were sold and marketed as primarily CD players with the added capability of being able to sell DVDs.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#615

Post by Anamon »

jatora wrote: post #438
roywiggins wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why do you think it is nonsense?

Making music involves writing and arranging the score, playing the instruments, writing lyrics, singing, recording, mastering... each of these steps is hard work, takes practice, and by that fact alone will be unique to every person because, in some way, their whole life experience flows into it.

GenAI music is writing a few words about how you'd like the result to sound. That's it. That's the entire original contribution. There is no individuality to it beyond that, because it's not someone making music, it's someone deciding about the weights in averaging together existing music that other people have actually worked for.

That's not nonsense to me (and judging from the reaction to this news, neither is it to a large number of music fans). It's an absolutely massive, huge, decisive, qualitative difference.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#616

Post by vintermann »

troupo wrote: post #327
ivarv wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify hires musicians to churn out content that fits certain criteria. see https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...

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.

The major labels own a good chunk of Spotify directly. Used to be even more. As long as they get their cut they'll jump on any opportunity to screw over their artists (yes I know "unsourced statement" blah blah, sit down lawyers. I won't explain the reasons for my low opinion of these companies right now.)

The allegation is that Spotify pays out to entities which are ultimately owned by themselves, or that they get kickbacks in other ways like ad purchases (probably illegal, but hard to prove if you're at all clever about it).

I remember I found a track a few years ago, by the artist Mayhem. No, not the metal band. The background music artist Mayhem. Which only ever released two tracks. One of which, "Solitude Hymns", happened to get featured in one of Spotify's playlists, and managed to rack up more plays than any track by the more famous metal band at the time.

They haven't scrubbed it. Just look it up.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#617

Post by jamesrcole »

KaiMagnus wrote: post #94

Completely understandable. I had this opinion for a long time, but only recently was I personally affected, but that made me even more convinced. I was listening to my new releases playlist on Apple Music and listened to a track that sounded nice, but also a little generic. I don’t know exactly what prompted me to check, but it had all the signs of something fishy going on like generic cover image, the artist page sh…

We're in the very early stages of AI generated art. What will it be like in 10 years time? 20? 50? You might think it won't get much better. I think that's unlikely.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#618

Post by throwaway777x »

wrs wrote: post #412
sharkjacobs wrote: post #164

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…

We have had algorithmic composition for a long time. Here is a brief history of algorithmic composition from 1999 https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~blackrse/algorithm.html

What is meant by "AI Music" is not works by Iannis Xenakis or certain Autechre albums.

We should be defining all this better but we won't. It is also that there is no "AI music" equivalent of the amen break to invent new forms of art. The cultural structures and norms that made that possible no longer exist.

It really is the difference though between art and porn. A blurry distinction on paper but quite obvious in practice. Quite obvious in motivation.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#619

Post by Anamon »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #478
mapontosevenths wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

IIRC it's not just actual artifacts, but also statistical measures, i.e. songs that are "inhumanly average".

If they're not doing it already, I think some metadata analysis, going by things like upload patterns, would also work well.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#620

Post by frm88 »

cigar_cigar wrote: post #284
sharkjacobs wrote: post #164

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…

I'm a moderately frequent user of Suno and have encountered some unusual AI-generated effects that I've not come across before in more traditionally synthesized music. One is when it attempts to generate vocals without a lyrics prompt. It's gibberish but just on the edge of comprehensibility. Sometimes it'll be entirely spoken word with no accompaniment. Very uncanny. Another is transitioning between vocals and instr…

Another is transitioning between vocals and instrument in the same melody line. Like a humanesque voice holding a steady note at the end of a verse which...

Cantabile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantabile

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