7 ms·

Genuinely confused how people think AI will "democratize" music by allowing people to "create without a gatekeeper". What exactly does this mean? Music has alre

by nluken 3y ago

Genuinely confused how people think AI will "democratize" music by allowing people to "create without a gatekeeper". What exactly does this mean? Music has already been democratized. You don't need a label to release music and build a following anymore. Mainstream acts like Radiohead and Chance the Rapper have proven this over and over again. The catch here is that you need to do something new and original to attract a following that way. Training a computer to generate a Drake song (or imitate McCartney's voice) doesn't empower new artists like AI evangelists think it does. If UMG can pay someone else to copy Drake's flow and release a new Drake track for 1/10 the cost, that isn't "democratizing" artistry, it's extricating the artist from the art altogether. If you do want the support of a label for your own work, you need to meet the right people. AI-generated music doesn't change that. The only "gates" these people want to get by are ones put up by practicing music enough to make something novel. AI might be useful as a tool to assist actual musicians in their processes, but in my experience the musicians that create interesting music do so because they have a strong vision, not because they're exceptionally technically proficient.

steppi 3y ago
A Radiohead album is an incredibly sophisticated feat of audio engineering requiring a team of people beyond the band itself to make. The production costs are substantial. It takes more than just practicing enough to make something like that. If AI gets to the point where I can record something in my bedroom with similar production values, I’d count that as democratization.
- dmbche 3y ago
  What do you think the AI could do that you couldn't by searching the web? And is the difference between the hypothetical bedroom-produced version of the same Radiohead album and the actual album actually that noticeable? I work in film/video, and you definitely can produce something that would have cost millions of dollars 10 years ago by yourself, with minimal costs. I struggle to compare the scale of engineering needed to make albums versus movies.
  - Swizec 3y ago
    > What do you think the AI could do that you couldn't by searching the web? Create enough hours in the day to do the work. No amount of skill or knowledge will get me over the hump that it takes hundreds, maybe thousands, of person hours to produce a Radiohead album.
    - dmbche 3y ago
      I'm sorry - hours of doing what exactly? Ok computer took two months of mixing, and some time for the mastering. 80% of it were live takes. What's the AI supposed to do?
      - Swizec 3y ago
        The 2 months of mixing
        dmbche 3y ago
        I don't know what to tell you brother, two months of mixing is very doable for humans beings... As it was done by two people to make OK Computer? I don't think having an AI will change much for your music production if 2 months of mixing is too much work. Don't even know what you'd ask it to do - you'd probably have to readjust it until it's the way you want it...it would probably take the same time don't you think?
        Swizec 3y ago
        So we’re talking about democratizing production yeah? Imagine I’m a schmuck who can croon into a microphone. It’s just me. I have a dayjob because this is a hobby. “Just a quick 2 months of work” is a total nonstarter. I’ll just keep crooning in the shower “Just 2 months, it’s not a lot” is like telling someone “Oh cleaning the house is easy, just ask your maid”
        dmbche 3y ago
- mjr00 3y ago
  You don't need AI for this, you can do it now. Any analog music production gear in existence has a software emulation that's 99.99% accurate and available for a few hundred bucks at most (and of course can be easily acquired for free, as with all software). High quality audio interfaces are available for cheap. Most expensive thing would be renting out a studio to record vocals with a good mic, and even that is arguably unnecessary. Plenty of in-the-box musicians and producers are making top quality songs with not much more than their Macbook.
  - steppi 3y ago
    I’ve recorded at home with a similar setup. Getting things to sound just right takes a lot of effort and tinkering though which I just don’t have time for due to the demands of work and family. I might have a couple hours per week to devote to music. If I could go from writing a song to making a professional sounding recording in a couple hours, that would be amazing. This isn’t a hypothetical either. I’m an ML researcher and plan to experiment with stuff like this when I have time. Making it stupid easy to produce professional sounding recordings would absolutely be democratizing in my opinion.
    - mjr00 3y ago
      Already lots of magic tooling for exactly this, some of which (allegedly) uses AI. Look into Gullfoss for AI assistance with mixing and iZotope Ozone which has an "AI mastering assistant." And there's even more basic "one knob sound good" plugins of varying effectiveness, like OTT, Sausage Fattener and Soundgoodizer.
      - steppi 3y ago
        Thanks for the recommendations. All of my music equipment is in storage now, but I hope to set up a small studio later this year. Will definitely check this stuff out.
  - raydev 3y ago
    The gear has indeed gotten cheaper, but you need to - record one or more sounds - have extensive knowledge about filters, mixing, mastering Without the latter, even if you're amazing musician/singer and you have decent gear and a nice interace and good ideas, you still need to sit down and mix the thing so that it sounds good in the car/airpods/phone/laptop. > Plenty of in-the-box musicians and producers are making top quality songs with not much more than their Macbook. I'll bet you money that if one of their songs has repeat status in your music player, that song is likely not the first song they've ever recorded. They had to build mechanical skills first. AI-generated music skips that.
- oldtownroad 3y ago
  One of the highest selling songs of the decade, Old Town Road, was made by some kid on a laptop in his bedroom. He has outsold Radiohead, the song went 16x platinum. Production value means nothing in the success of music, even some of the most successful major artists with major label backing put out badly mixed garbage and still outsell Radiohead. Music is like code: consumers don’t care about the input. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Town_Road https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Town_Road
- EyeSayUntoThee 3y ago
  "democratization"!? It wouldn't be YOU or another PERSON gaining these capacities, in such a scenario, it would be the tool, and you would be the toolmakers customer. ATM, LLM's of reasonable sophistication for such tasks are not running on your laptop, and at the point they do, something else will be getting all the limelight, and it won't be within your reach. As a lifelong musician and composer and producer, it's just automating things away that I don't want automated away. Producing music is about making decisions. You act as if Radiohead just inserted money and out came pro music, but really you appear to be wishing to skip any hard work and appear to be asking for instant gratification. Well, I can tell you, as someone who could readily train AI in music, that you only cheat yourself by cutting corners. Knowledge is power to do what you actually really deeply want to. Handing off the minute decisions that add up to making a masterpiece = cheating oneself of being a creator.
  - KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
    Somebody's about to become like illustrators and copywriters — mostly irrelevant unless you are the very best at what you do.
thefz 3y ago
My generation at the dawn of the public internet has contributed to it pouring in a constellation of mini local cultures and experiences, "scenes". Into forums and boards. Hell, even in deviantart and myspace, blogs and newsletters. The current generation's culture is instead what they obtain from the internet itself. Make a word viral and everybody will repeat it, worldwide. "content". What will the AI generation do, rehash this "content"? Value is lost forever, everything is now the same everybody stops there.
- syntheweave 3y ago
  I think there are roughly three eras of the commercial Internet's culture now, and we're entering the fourth: Through ~2001: Pre-broadband - early web, dot-coms. Everyone got email. If they were more adventurous, they made a home page, got on IRC or Usenet. This era inherited the "US college student with campus internet access" dynamic that dominated the earliest years of the Internet. "The Internet is for porn" etc. There's a lot of overlap between this era and the next one because broadband added so many capabilities that it was like two sibling versions of internet, akin to 8-bit vs 16-bit personal computing. 2001-2008: Web forums, instant messengers, early Web 2.0. A much broader set of people came online and were courted by the new platforms. This was both a broadening and an erasure of any prior history or culture - the "toxic gamer" archetype, the start of influencer trends in various categories(photos, fitness, tech products...), etc. But commerce and community was broadly mediated through "your own web site" rather than platforms. 2008-2020: Post-iPhone smartphones, dominance of centralized internet platforms and algorithmic news feeds. Now the Internet's culture really was accessed by "everyone" and this became clear by around 2012 as more and more social media-driven movements swept through the world. Status-seeking behavior online became very conspicuous, with a ton of activity, styles of messaging, etc molded to juice algorithmic KPIs. 2020 marks the line where we went to full Internet dependence. And... it's also roughly when ordinary people started expressing more agency over how their news feeds should work, and when the really rapid generative AI breakthroughs started. So all at once the blind status seeking of the smartphone era is breaking down, and the new challenges involve finding appropriate sources of truth and filters in an ocean of spam content.
ChatGTP 3y ago
The catch here is that you need to do something new and original to attract a following that way. Before generative AI, you would've had people copying your style, but that took effort and there was ethics involved, many artists wouldn't like to outright copy someone because it's lame (it is). Now though, there is zero cost to copying someones style and it can be done in a more faceless way. I don't think there is much inventive anymore to make something original and post it online. Maybe just play live only?

by nluken 3y ago

steppi 3y ago

A Radiohead album is an incredibly sophisticated feat of audio engineering requiring a team of people beyond the band itself to make. The production costs are substantial. It takes more than just practicing enough to make something like that. If AI gets to the point where I can record something in my bedroom with similar production values, I’d count that as democratization.

dmbche 3y ago
What do you think the AI could do that you couldn't by searching the web? And is the difference between the hypothetical bedroom-produced version of the same Radiohead album and the actual album actually that noticeable? I work in film/video, and you definitely can produce something that would have cost millions of dollars 10 years ago by yourself, with minimal costs. I struggle to compare the scale of engineering needed to make albums versus movies.
- Swizec 3y ago
  > What do you think the AI could do that you couldn't by searching the web? Create enough hours in the day to do the work. No amount of skill or knowledge will get me over the hump that it takes hundreds, maybe thousands, of person hours to produce a Radiohead album.
  - dmbche 3y ago
    I'm sorry - hours of doing what exactly? Ok computer took two months of mixing, and some time for the mastering. 80% of it were live takes. What's the AI supposed to do?
    - Swizec 3y ago
      The 2 months of mixing
      - dmbche 3y ago
        I don't know what to tell you brother, two months of mixing is very doable for humans beings... As it was done by two people to make OK Computer? I don't think having an AI will change much for your music production if 2 months of mixing is too much work. Don't even know what you'd ask it to do - you'd probably have to readjust it until it's the way you want it...it would probably take the same time don't you think?
        Swizec 3y ago
        So we’re talking about democratizing production yeah? Imagine I’m a schmuck who can croon into a microphone. It’s just me. I have a dayjob because this is a hobby. “Just a quick 2 months of work” is a total nonstarter. I’ll just keep crooning in the shower “Just 2 months, it’s not a lot” is like telling someone “Oh cleaning the house is easy, just ask your maid”
        dmbche 3y ago
mjr00 3y ago
You don't need AI for this, you can do it now. Any analog music production gear in existence has a software emulation that's 99.99% accurate and available for a few hundred bucks at most (and of course can be easily acquired for free, as with all software). High quality audio interfaces are available for cheap. Most expensive thing would be renting out a studio to record vocals with a good mic, and even that is arguably unnecessary. Plenty of in-the-box musicians and producers are making top quality songs with not much more than their Macbook.
- steppi 3y ago
  I’ve recorded at home with a similar setup. Getting things to sound just right takes a lot of effort and tinkering though which I just don’t have time for due to the demands of work and family. I might have a couple hours per week to devote to music. If I could go from writing a song to making a professional sounding recording in a couple hours, that would be amazing. This isn’t a hypothetical either. I’m an ML researcher and plan to experiment with stuff like this when I have time. Making it stupid easy to produce professional sounding recordings would absolutely be democratizing in my opinion.
  - mjr00 3y ago
    Already lots of magic tooling for exactly this, some of which (allegedly) uses AI. Look into Gullfoss for AI assistance with mixing and iZotope Ozone which has an "AI mastering assistant." And there's even more basic "one knob sound good" plugins of varying effectiveness, like OTT, Sausage Fattener and Soundgoodizer.
    - steppi 3y ago
      Thanks for the recommendations. All of my music equipment is in storage now, but I hope to set up a small studio later this year. Will definitely check this stuff out.
- raydev 3y ago
  The gear has indeed gotten cheaper, but you need to - record one or more sounds - have extensive knowledge about filters, mixing, mastering Without the latter, even if you're amazing musician/singer and you have decent gear and a nice interace and good ideas, you still need to sit down and mix the thing so that it sounds good in the car/airpods/phone/laptop. > Plenty of in-the-box musicians and producers are making top quality songs with not much more than their Macbook. I'll bet you money that if one of their songs has repeat status in your music player, that song is likely not the first song they've ever recorded. They had to build mechanical skills first. AI-generated music skips that.
oldtownroad 3y ago
One of the highest selling songs of the decade, Old Town Road, was made by some kid on a laptop in his bedroom. He has outsold Radiohead, the song went 16x platinum. Production value means nothing in the success of music, even some of the most successful major artists with major label backing put out badly mixed garbage and still outsell Radiohead. Music is like code: consumers don’t care about the input. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Town_Road https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Town_Road
EyeSayUntoThee 3y ago
"democratization"!? It wouldn't be YOU or another PERSON gaining these capacities, in such a scenario, it would be the tool, and you would be the toolmakers customer. ATM, LLM's of reasonable sophistication for such tasks are not running on your laptop, and at the point they do, something else will be getting all the limelight, and it won't be within your reach. As a lifelong musician and composer and producer, it's just automating things away that I don't want automated away. Producing music is about making decisions. You act as if Radiohead just inserted money and out came pro music, but really you appear to be wishing to skip any hard work and appear to be asking for instant gratification. Well, I can tell you, as someone who could readily train AI in music, that you only cheat yourself by cutting corners. Knowledge is power to do what you actually really deeply want to. Handing off the minute decisions that add up to making a masterpiece = cheating oneself of being a creator.
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
  Somebody's about to become like illustrators and copywriters — mostly irrelevant unless you are the very best at what you do.

thefz 3y ago

My generation at the dawn of the public internet has contributed to it pouring in a constellation of mini local cultures and experiences, "scenes". Into forums and boards. Hell, even in deviantart and myspace, blogs and newsletters. The current generation's culture is instead what they obtain from the internet itself. Make a word viral and everybody will repeat it, worldwide. "content". What will the AI generation do, rehash this "content"? Value is lost forever, everything is now the same everybody stops there.

syntheweave 3y ago
I think there are roughly three eras of the commercial Internet's culture now, and we're entering the fourth: Through ~2001: Pre-broadband - early web, dot-coms. Everyone got email. If they were more adventurous, they made a home page, got on IRC or Usenet. This era inherited the "US college student with campus internet access" dynamic that dominated the earliest years of the Internet. "The Internet is for porn" etc. There's a lot of overlap between this era and the next one because broadband added so many capabilities that it was like two sibling versions of internet, akin to 8-bit vs 16-bit personal computing. 2001-2008: Web forums, instant messengers, early Web 2.0. A much broader set of people came online and were courted by the new platforms. This was both a broadening and an erasure of any prior history or culture - the "toxic gamer" archetype, the start of influencer trends in various categories(photos, fitness, tech products...), etc. But commerce and community was broadly mediated through "your own web site" rather than platforms. 2008-2020: Post-iPhone smartphones, dominance of centralized internet platforms and algorithmic news feeds. Now the Internet's culture really was accessed by "everyone" and this became clear by around 2012 as more and more social media-driven movements swept through the world. Status-seeking behavior online became very conspicuous, with a ton of activity, styles of messaging, etc molded to juice algorithmic KPIs. 2020 marks the line where we went to full Internet dependence. And... it's also roughly when ordinary people started expressing more agency over how their news feeds should work, and when the really rapid generative AI breakthroughs started. So all at once the blind status seeking of the smartphone era is breaking down, and the new challenges involve finding appropriate sources of truth and filters in an ocean of spam content.

ChatGTP 3y ago

The catch here is that you need to do something new and original to attract a following that way. Before generative AI, you would've had people copying your style, but that took effort and there was ethics involved, many artists wouldn't like to outright copy someone because it's lame (it is). Now though, there is zero cost to copying someones style and it can be done in a more faceless way. I don't think there is much inventive anymore to make something original and post it online. Maybe just play live only?