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AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

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Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#661

Post by deng »

troupo wrote: post #567
rpdillon wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 who…

Erm... things are a bit more complicated than you make them out to be and I'm afraid you do not really know a lot about how all of this works (me neither, btw, this is all very, very messy). It is correct that Spotify pays artists through distributors (and they partly own one, Distrokid, but that's another story) or labels. But there are usually also royalties that need to be paid for songwriting, lyrics and performance, which can (and often do) go to different people. This is extremely complicated and different from country to country, but completely separate from the distributor. The artist/lyricist/performer will receive these royalties (if they registered for it) from entirely different institutions. This is the prime advantage of "royalty-free" music - you need to pay only the artist (or their representation like distributor/label), either flat or per stream/performance/whatever... So in summary: yes, Spotify most definitely saves a ton of money with steering people towards this kind of stuff. I also wouldn't be surprised at all if they actually just pay flat fees for that junk.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#662

Post by magic_hamster »

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…

This sounds cool, but:

1. Pretty sure you can do all this already, it just takes some skill in certain programs and maybe recording special samples.

2. When the AI does it, it might sound weird and new, but I feel the lack of artistic vision makes these more artifacts than art. Even if it sounds interesting, there's no meaning to it.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#663

Post by olivierestsage »

vintermann wrote: post #622
alexjplant wrote: post #77

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…

I share the disgust at slop music spam sneaking into Spotify's recommendation services last time I used them. But I absolutely don't agree that Bandcamp does recommendations well. To me, it seems like they don't personalize at all. Maybe you're just lucky enough to share the taste of the (at least human) taste makers at Bandcamp. Spotify's pre-enshittification Discover Weekly was miles better than whatever they do. M…

The main way I discover new music on Bandcamp is by browsing the collections of people who also own albums I love to check what else they bought.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#664

Post by JohnFen »

blibble wrote: post #458
JohnFen wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all about the DAC, no? Yes, it is (unless the CD player is so bad that it can't do adequate error correction). What I do is rip the CD to my music server, which is where I listen to the music from. Then the quality of the CD player isn't important, as long as it works correctly.

it's surprising difficult to rip from audio CDs in a error free manner most tools do it badly and just accept what the drive gives them in default mode, often with glitches

Huh. I've never had a problem with that, personally. Maybe I just got lucky with my tools.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#665

Post by dmm »

maples37 wrote: post #656
WD-42 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To anyone going down this route, there's a surprisingly deep rabbit hole when you look into "how copy the bits off the drive and into a .wav file". There are a lot of places where errors can be introduced: the quality of the CD drive, the condition of the disc itself, how fast the drive is spinning for the rip, etc. I didn't think this was a big issue until I got a load of cheap used discs, started ripping them with…

whipper is built on cdparanoia but uses the AccurateRip database to verify the accuracy of your rip: https://github.com/whipper-team/whipper

Or you can run EAC in wine.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#666

Post by JohnFen »

matwood wrote: post #647
serf wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the qusstion never got answered. If you liked a song that you later realized was generated would it ruin the song? If a robot ai basketball team was authentic enough to have hoodwinked me into thinking it was a real entertaining team then it has become a different question than whether or not I would knowingly participate as a spectator in an AI basketball league.

> If you liked a song that you later realized was generated would it ruin the song? This whole discussion reminds me of Milli Vanilli from the 90s. They were hugely popular with a few songs and then people found out it wasn't actually them singing. It was a big scandal and the songs because unpopular instantly. I was always a bit confused by the crash because it's not like the song on the radio changed at all. https:…

I think it's because music is a dialogue, a relationship. The artist is saying something, and your interpretation of the art is a response to that. That's why great (to you) songs often feel like they were written for you, personally, when that's obviously untrue.

If you find out that the relationship is based on a lie, then the relationship can switch from "great" to "horrible" instantly.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#667

Post by JohnFen »

vintermann wrote: post #622
alexjplant wrote: post #77

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…

I share the disgust at slop music spam sneaking into Spotify's recommendation services last time I used them. But I absolutely don't agree that Bandcamp does recommendations well. To me, it seems like they don't personalize at all. Maybe you're just lucky enough to share the taste of the (at least human) taste makers at Bandcamp. Spotify's pre-enshittification Discover Weekly was miles better than whatever they do. M…

> But I absolutely don't agree that Bandcamp does recommendations well.

I agree with that but I haven't yet seen a system that does recommendations well for me, so I don't see that as a differentiating point.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#668

Post by [deleted] »

serf wrote: post #516
SnowingXIV wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs to be more than that, I want to hear musicianship that has been honed and crafted. The struggle to find their sound. I'm fine with even an amateur musician learning their way around an instrument and being able to put something together that they tracked and mixed. If a prompt returned the most perfect song, I would still not care to listen as that to me has completely divorced any human element that I would…

Fine, but you've now established this loop where one must find and analyze the human struggle in the music before qualifying an opinion, how does this jibe with deciding whether or not a tune playing in the grocery store has a catchy beat? Do you run and grab your phone to id the artist before you decide to tap your foot?

[deleted]

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#669

Post by JohnFen »

Zababa wrote: post #636
GeneralMaximus wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think maybe we're talking past each other then. I'm saying I don't agree with the argument that music necessarily needs to have a story to be widely consumed in a positive way. I can imagine that this is true for a lot of people. There are certainly folks out there who see music as an interesting sensory stimulus. This song makes you dance, this one makes you cry, this other one makes you feel nostalgic. To these…

I don't think appreciating art separated from the author is solipsistic, in fact I'd argue the opposite. Needing a human presence to engage with art is very human-centric. Or maybe that's due to your definition of art? I can be stunned by how beautiful a sunset is, the same way that I am by a painting, even if no human had a hand in that sunset. I can appreciate the cleverness of a gull stealing some bread from a duc…

> I can be stunned by how beautiful a sunset is, the same way that I am by a painting, even if no human had a hand in that sunset.

As can I, but a gorgeous sunset is not art. It's beauty.

Re: AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

#670

Post by WD-42 »

newman8r wrote: post #530
WD-42 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been doing this for decades already, FL studio, Abelton, etc. Not sure what AI has to do with it.

Disagree. Producing electronic music with a DAW still takes considerable skill. I've used all of those and open source alternatives as well.

I don’t understand. Is the argument that you shouldn’t need skill?
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