Did AI Just End Music? (Now it’s Personal) ft. Rick Beato

"This is all backwards. AI was supposed to do my chores while I enjoy doing what I like. It was not supposed to do what I like so that I can focus on the chores." - A comment I saw some time ago.

"I can't wait till computer take over all the terrible jobs so that humans can spend their time doing creative things" 'Oh, turns out the creative things are actually way easier for the computers to do. Looks like you'll have to keep the terrible jobs going'

Considering how low the bar is now for a no. 1 Billboard hit, it's not too surprising that AI will be able to compete.

I'm not surprised. People claim they want something new, but all they really want is a variation / derivative of something they already know and want. AI is amazing at that.

Video game music is gonna be 99% ai generated in the future

So ironic how "art" was the main subject people said that Robots would never be able to replicate. We ended up getting AI art even before commercial humanoid robots. Edit: That's some spicy comment section right there 🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶

I personally think every social media app you log onto should show the option to block AI content such as images, video and music right off the bat, and people should be forced to tag all their AI creations appropriately or risk getting their accounts removed.

So as far as I can see, all these GenAI/LLM applications are for exactly one thing: getting creative work without paying an artist to do it, while also using millions of examples of actual artists' work to train the machine, also without paying them. GG.

As a music professional who has scored a lot of TV series that were (are) very well known, I can say that sampling technology absolutely impacted the live recording scene significantly in Los Angeles. My first two Disney series in the late 90s were with live players, anywhere from 15 to 46. By 2001 the sampling technology had progressed to the point where Disney stopped using orchestras for their TV series. Even so the technology was such that Orchestration for live players and Synthestration for samples in a MIDI studio were two different ‘arts’ or processes. That started to change when VSL came in the scene and you could, to a large extent, orchestrate for samples the way that you orchestrated for a live ensemble. Today sampling technology is so good that even when live orchestras are used in film, the samples often remain in the final mix. So the drum machine story that Rick (who is awesome) mentioned is much more complex than the simple, ‘drummers started playing like drum machines and their jobs were safe’ narrative. Having written that, I have no plans to buy a T-shirt of my favorite AI musician. The human act of creating art will always matter for the simple reason that we ourselves are not machines.

Now Skynet will be singing 2000s R&B while murdering us

Every time I see a video or read an article about AI going to dominate or take over the music industry, I literally come to tears. And I am not embarrassed to say that. 90% of my life I've been in the music industry and been in the music industry all my life. Music industry got me out of very hardship times. And if it were not because of music and me being in the music industry, I would have parted this life a long time ago. It was what kept me going in life. And now lately I have been watching as the music industry are getting more into AI music. I am afraid that within 10 to 20 years, every piece of music created will be created by someone in their apartment or basement in their moms house pressing 1 button, or a few keystrokes on a keyboard, and they release music to the masses. To the point that eventually they will win Grammy's on music they in reality did not create. I am watching the music industry crumble. I come from the disco days and of when Salt N Peppa first release their single "Push It" when I went to college, Madonna "Isla Bonita" first released. White Snake "Is This Love", Diana Ross "Upside Down", Journey "Faithfully", Starship "Sara", Foreigner "I don't want to live without you", and other artists like Phil Collins, Tears For Fears, Chaka Chan, Richard Marx, and so many others. I am watching the world k!!ll the music industry. It's bad enough that the world in 2024 is putting out nothing but garbage & noise, and most talents out there are null and void compared to the talents of the 80's. That now people have decided to make matters even worse and k!!ll the music industry with AI generated music. I am just in tears, literally in tears. 😢 Humans are literally burning the world. That is what it feels like.

I'm certain I share the same fears and anger as much of the creative world-community as a whole when AI is mentioned in relation to making 'art', 'literature', 'music' etc, but I'd like to put forward a more optimistic viewpoint that has recently emerged from the shadows of my darker, moodier thoughts about all of this - that it could well come to pass that human-made art of all kinds, actually INCREASES in value, depth, meaning and purposefulness, for all beings with a soul and beating heart, people who are still wanting to be moved by the myriad ways human experience and emotion can be expressed. Seeing a great painting or sculpture in a gallery, or listening to and watching musicians and dancers performing live for example, rather than on an illuminated digital screen, will draw us away from our devices and back into the real world, especially when we become aware that most of the images, words and sounds we will come to experience on our phones, tablets, VR headsets, will be AI generated. Anything AI creates will always be 'unimpressive' if you consider it has an almost godlike processing/scanning/filtering/producing/plagiarising 'ability', and especially this will become apparent when the novelty wears off. Our humanity will be our strength, because we can give artforms something AI will never be able to give - soul, mortality, experience, love. Our slow, imperfectly perfect creative labours, over many years of dedication, will always have more value.

I asked Udio to create a track in the style of Chopin and got a message saying "We do not generate artist likeness without permission, we have replaced Chopin with: romanticism, western classical music..." Then it proceeded to write something that within 2 seconds reminded me of the Nocturne Op. 62 No. 2. Incredibly impressive, but that text doesn't seem to mean a lot.

You know, there’s something that wasn’t mentioned here that’s going to be a real issue. The judge ruled that AI art can’t be copyrighted, but you absolutely know there’s going to be artists out there who will generate an entire song with AI and re-record it themselves to get around this. Lots of major artists have song writing teams behind them.. but I can see those people getting replaced pretty quickly. I work in this industry and it’s just depressing really. Never would’ve thought I’d be questioning if my favourite artists have generated a song or wrote it themselves without any AI assistance.

I worked in the music biz for 20 years. I’ve done work for every major artist and producer, and I made a very good living. In 2013 I sold off all the tech I developed, and I left the industry because I saw that it was dying off, financially speaking.

thank you for involving the amazingly professional Rick Beato

Whoa! This is a crossover I hadn’t expected.

This happened FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: I played drums for ten years. I went over to my friend's place and his Son was in the basement writing a song with synth, including a separated drum machine. I told him the drum track sounded a bit too perfect, or artificial. He turned what might be called the slop knob, and that drum track sounded PERFECT, with TINY imperfections that drummers have. You could hear some 1/2 notes from the Snare Drum, hit dead center, and a few hitting slightly off center! I couldn't believe it! Like I say, that was fifteen years ago.

Maybe as everyone gets dumbed down people that can actually play and write music will become rare but held in high regard. I was at a vinyl store yesterday and it was packed with young people…the human spirit will push back and crave for something real…

I’ve been playing sax since 1968. I wonder how well AI will be able to improvise John Coltrane’s Giant Steps live in front of an audience.