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Another opinion popular with no one: AI will have on artists the same impact that Spotify had on the music industry that is, it will kill any revenue flow for

Another opinion popular with no one: AI will have on artists the same impact that Spotify had on the music industry that is, it will kill any revenue flow for anyone outside of the publishers and big artists/players. Spotify basically killed any money coming from the physical distribution - Worse than piracy, which was inevitable too at the time, but at least you didn't have to pay your lawyers to renegotiate with your label on top of NOT getting any money. Adobe, OpenAI, whatever: they want artists to draw for them for peanuts to train their model, sign a waiver saying "I'm ok not getting any money from any AI art made from this", and then resell the output for $$$ on something like Splice[1], at the same time overtraining such models in ways that make extremely obvious whose artist made them in first place. At the end of the day the model itself is going to be basically irrelevant, while knowing whose works were actually used to train it being the truly differentiating feature. But you know, "the AI did this picture, so we don't have to pay you." [1] https://splice.com/features/sounds https://splice.com/features/sounds

easyThrowaway 3y ago
Also, if you're wondering "Well, I could get better terms for my art" - Like I said, when Spotify arrived and you were signed on a label you HAD to sign the part that said "Yes, you can put my music online on Spotify and I will get paid peanuts" or else, unless you were Madonna or Taylor Swift. Or, sure, you can also terminate your record deal. Hope you have 500 grands around just for that. Frankly I don't see it ending much better for visual artists.
- munk-a 3y ago
  There was another path here - collective bargaining. When small individuals are bullied by large corporations it's because those corporations want something from the small individuals... they certainly don't care about one or two small artists walking away from the platform - but if artists can organize and bargain as a group they can ensure a fair outcome. I think the modern world has become too complacent in terms of labor organization - the time of plenty left a lot of people content to take whatever was given to them because there was such a glut of excess that it was freely shared. That sharing is coming to an end and we're returning to a time when we need to demand fair and equitable treatment.
  - EatingWithForks 3y ago
    Freelancers in the united states are not allowed to bargain collectively for better prices, as that's considered market manipulation/price fixing. ["Independent Contractors" are literally banned from forming a union in the USA.]
    - Buildstarted 3y ago
      Serious question: Are actors, writers, etc not considered "Independent Contractors" in the US?
wwweston 3y ago
> Spotify basically killed any money coming from the physical distribution - Worse than piracy, which was inevitable too at the time, but at least you didn't have to pay your lawyers to renegotiate with your label on top of NOT getting any money. It’s even worse than you say — it was murder on digital retail too, right at the time when it was on track to compete with or exceed old physical sales. Spotify adopted the economics of piracy and stamped them with the false veneer of legitimacy.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  Fundamentally, neither spotify nor piracy matter. People enjoy making music. Today, there are more people able to make and publish music then ever, but the day still only has 24 hours, you can't listen to more music then before. Unlimited supply, limited demand.
  - ddq 3y ago
    Fundamentally, the artists getting paid doesn’t matter because they enjoy making music? As a musician, your comment is completely ignorant, self-centered, and totally irrelevant to the discussion of people getting economically screwed.
    - developer93 3y ago
      What's your opinion of bandcamp?
    - raincole 3y ago
      No? You completely misread what he said. As more people are able to produce music (due to cheaper tools like DAWs, more accessible music theory education, etc etc), if the demand of music doesn't grow proportionally, the average income of musicians/songwriters would decline. The above will happen regardless of Spotify's existence. Thus, Spotify doesn't matter (much).
      - skinner927 3y ago
wslh 3y ago
The Spotify example is similar to the Google impact: the last mile is the search engine UI that controls your access to content. Spotify is another UI as they are streaming services, etc. Seems like a natural iteration in the ordering of complex systems. Beyond legal regulations it would be great to start to think about new solutions, if they ever exist.
vouaobrasil 3y ago
I agree completely, and I have been constantly speaking about how AI will be a wealth concentrator, replacing a mass of jobs more diverse than previously seen. Unlike previous machines which can take 1-2 jobs, when humans get REALLY efficient at training AI, it will replacing hundreds en masse. AI will also have an additional effect: it will be isolating in the sense that the need for other humans will decrease. These two points alone, strengthened by many others, have led me to conclude that the world is MUCH better off with AI and that tech companies are ruining the world with their abominations.
- badpun 3y ago
  > Unlike previous machines which can take 1-2 jobs There are many machines replacing hundreds or even thousands of people- farm equipment, trains, tunnel boring machines etc.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    I meant KINDS of jobs.
  - lancesells 3y ago
    Not a real equivalent. Those machines are made by many, many people along the way. Industries exist from those machines. With software you could say chip makers, developers, and energy companies will get stronger but I don't think there's a comparison. The keyholders will be a much smaller group with a greater power if we stay onboard the AI train.
    - orangecat 3y ago
      Not a real equivalent. Those machines are made by many, many people along the way. Industries exist from those machines. Sure, and even taking that into account we produce far more food with far less human labor than we did 100 years ago, and that's a good thing.
  - Aerbil313 3y ago
    And they do lead to unemployment. What are the people thinking? There is unemployment, and technology causes it more than it relieves it, especially software technology.
t0bia_s 3y ago
Imagine Spotify, rather than paying to musicans, just invest and publish AI generated music. Sounds like more profitable business to me. I'm not saying that I agree with this approach.
- dsign 3y ago
  I honestly wonder if people would consume the music they know is AI generated. And by "honestly", I mean "I don't really know but I want to." I've been watching videos of Guy Michelmore in youtube. Not because I will ever write any orchestral music, but because I like his energy and envy his shed. Would I bother if Guy Michelmore were an AI?
  - ilyt 3y ago
    Entirely depends on how good it would become. It could also have some interesting avenues, like feeding some variables to the AI from say a video game (number and type of monsters on screen, mood etc.) to generate music reacting to what is happening on screen
  - paul_funyun 3y ago
    I would. Out of the bands I listen to maybe 5 of them I could name a single member. I'm a big reader but I couldn't tell you one thing about most of the authors other than their names.
  - t0bia_s 3y ago
    It depends on how you define art. You can play music or shoot film or paint a picture. AI could do it as well. But the essence of what makes good art comes from soul, from experience by living, from relationships between us... that is created for stories that inspire. That is not what AI would ever generate.
- yellow_postit 3y ago
  And absent some major technology changes Spotify in your example has no way to do credit assignment back to the training set for any attempts at royalties should they be so inclined.
Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
The music industry has always had a long tail. Its very much a go big or go home industry. Do you have any data around revenue change for small artists before and after spotify?
- easyThrowaway 3y ago
  Sorry, no hard data. Mostly the perception of the industry at the time. Lots of tales of people quitting, moving, or going on "indefinite hiatus". TBH "Fly or Die" was way more common on the US side of the industry. And even in the USA by the late '90s to the end of the 2010 it was somewhat doable if you were skilled enough to make a living solo (we're talking 60-80K/year max) as a "jobber" opening for bigger acts on local venues. Like, the entire NYC indie scene got a start from this premise. If you get a chance, give a look to "Meet Me in the Bathroom"[1], which is a documentary specifically of this timeframe. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n71c1Szjv08&themeRefresh=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n71c1Szjv08&themeRefresh=1
biogene 3y ago
Whenever there are implications to people's lively hood, its always a serious matter - but I hope people are able to transition to other roles. I think Gen AI will commoditize the mundane and "typical", and heavily push people into creating something extraordinarily unique. I think there is the same pressure even without AI, when as a creator you have to standout amongst the sea of people vying for people's attention. I believe GenAI can be useful in a way too. For e.g. If I'm an artist looking for inspiration, I can have a GenAI tool create some "random" works that I can get inspired from.
deskamess 3y ago
> "the AI did this picture, so we don't have to pay you." If the court rulings hold and AI works cannot be copyrighted then us end users do not have to pay for it either... but that seems like a race to the bottom. Like the end of a craft. Why would anyone create art if it has no/minimal downstream value? Artists need to band together in some sort of union or not agree to do art with that AI clause or perhaps only do art with a no-AI use clause. And have an allowed AI-clause that is prohibitively expensive (like in the multi hundred millions per piece). That way 'accidents that happen' have a prescribed recovery amount plus other requirements like pulling the generated artwork. "Hey, we understand it may have been accidental, but here is the bill."
- staunton 3y ago
  It's not the end of a craft, it just means that the prestige of "made by human" will increase even more and be pushed by by companies as a means of making money through copyright. That means that the few artists at the top will be rich while the niche between "art" and "craft" disappears. Professions involving visual art become like the music business.
radley 3y ago
Everyone overlooks the fact that it will still take someone (i.e. a graphic artist) to produce great AI imagery. First, AI generated art is random and disposable. Yes, you'll get a great image that you can use once, but then what? You can't build a campaign on it. Second, AI generated art can't be copyrighted, so knockoff competitors are free to use your AI-generated marketing images. At the very least, you can seed the AI with a paid graphic artist's work (seed-based AI images can be copyrighted). But that artist will do it better than your unpaid intern.
- prox 3y ago
  Also people cannot judge great art or imagery. Unless you have had the training. But the average person? Nope. You can tell what you LIKE but that’s not the same.
  - charlieyu1 3y ago
    I don’t have much training but it is not that difficult to spot AI arts which is pretty repetitive. The first couple are awesome but it gets old really fast.
- The_Blade 3y ago
  sewing machine
- karaterobot 3y ago
  Mmm, I don't know about this. At the very least AI lowers the bar for how talented a graphic artist needs to be to produce professional work, which means it'll be easier to undercut them, which means it'll get much harder to make a living as a graphic designer. It amounts to the same thing as killing off the profession, as seen from the perspective of someone in the profession as opposed to someone without skin in the game. It's like saying push-button elevators didn't hurt the profession of elevator operator, because somebody's still got to push those buttons.
  - orbital-decay 3y ago
SnowdustDev 3y ago
> Spotify basically killed any money coming from the physical distribution - Worse than piracy Any sources for this? I'm of the impression physical distribution is on the rise compared to the earlier days of digital music. This has nothing to do with Spotify, and all about the digitization of music itself. Anecdotally many people I know now purchase merchandise and media as a way to support an artist they like, rather than listen to the music they make in a physical format.
karaterobot 3y ago
No offense, I don't think this is an unpopular opinion. The comparison to Spotify is apt though.
d1sxeyes 3y ago
Recorded music was going this way whether it was Spotify or someone else that drove the final nail into the coffin. I remember when I was a child, on a Sunday afternoon, my dad would put on an album and listen to it. Just listen. Very, very few people do that now. Now we have a lot of demand for “incidental music”. Something you listen to while you do something else. Driving, reading, surfing the net, coding, cleaning… There was a fundamental shift in how people consumed music that started around the time music became portable. Spotify won the race, but if it hadn’t been Spotify, it would have been someone else.
- _glass 3y ago
  A positive effect for performers is that people still want to go to concerts, but less and less people know how to play an instrument. The market is really much better now than even 10 years ago.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  No no. Incidental music and "music you listen to while doing something" are not the same. Listening to incidental music all the time devalues music. And we do it not because we wanted it but because Spotify, Apple music etc promote it. Until then "just play random stuff that this ML thinks is similar" was not a thing. But subscriptions make them more money than if they just let you buy albums and stream what you bought. I wish more artists didn't sign up for this but unfortunately big labels did. But you can listen to non incidental music that you have specifically chosen while doing something. Even your dad could be doing something while listening to music (thinking).
  - btilly 3y ago
    An example of "music you listen to while doing something" that is not incidental music are many sea shanties. The music had a purpose.
- btilly 3y ago
  I'm curious. When do you think music became portable? The transistor radio was invented in the 1950s. And quickly became used as background music as life progressed. Also incidental music is not a new thing. Tavern musicians as background music have been around for centuries. It is hard to prove, but likely for thousands of years.
notefaker 3y ago
This is factually incorrect. If you own your master recordings, you stand to make $3,500 to $5,500 per million streams on Spotify. Apple Music and Tidal pay even better. This is why Taylor Swift is re-recording her entire Big Machine Records catalogue. While Spotify did shift consumers away from buying singles and albums as individual items, they also opened a new revenue source for independent artists.
- easyThrowaway 3y ago
  Can you point me to a current-day independent artist which hasn't been signed to a label that is pulling this amount of money just on streaming? If you're already big enough that, i.e., XL Recordings can ask you to make a record without getting rights on the master, I wouldn't count it as a good example of "indie artist".
  - franl 3y ago
    Russ EDIT: Not making Taylor Swift money, but not many are
    - easyThrowaway 3y ago
      are you sure he’s doing 5k/month just by streaming? No syncs nor shows? Also if Wikipedia is right he’s signed with Columbia Records. AFAIK the only artists making that kind money just by streaming while having no strings attached EVER (No label distro, no label A&R, no big tent agencies) are Macklemore and Chance The Rapper. Just two guys over millions of artists on Spotify.
      - franl 3y ago
        I can’t find the article from before he signed with Columbia (might’ve been a YouTube interview with him, can’t remember for sure), but yes, I’m fairly certain he was doing well over 5k per month with no major label. Also note the terms of his deal with Columbia are unlike most major deals in that he has a 50/50 profit split after his advance payment got recouped, retains either full control or 50/50 control of masters, etc.
gamblor956 3y ago
AI will have on artists the same impact that Spotify had on the music industry that is, it will kill any revenue flow for anyone outside of the publishers and big artists/players. then resell the output for $$$ on something like Splice This is silly. The USPTO and Courts have repeatedly stated that AI-generated media is not subject to copyright protection, so there are no licensing revenue opportunities for the big publishers/artists/whatever. This means: AI-generated content is not protected by copyright, so anyone can use a piece of AI-generated art however they want without a license and unless the law changes AI has no value to the content industries. EDIT: Also, the USPTO has noted that the use of AI-generated content in a work will mean that the entire work will be presumed AI-generated except for the portions the content owner can demonstrate were generated by humans. The backend costs of maintaining AI-supplemented works will almost as expensive and burdensome as the costs associated with patents. Also, I think people on HN have a very glorified view of how much money musicians make from streaming or cd/album sales: basically zilch, unless they're popular enough to be in repeat on the radio. Most musicians made their money from performing: generally a little bit from ticket sales or venue incentives (like % of booze sales) but the real money for the performers was from the sales of band merch, which is why it gets pushed so heavily. At the end of the day the model itself is going to be basically irrelevant, while knowing whose works were actually used to train it being the truly differentiating feature. Yes, by lawyers, when they sue the owners of the AI model for copyright infringement, because this would not be a use protected by fair use doctrine. This will actually make human-generated works more valuable because now every work used to generate an AI work is now worth at least $75,000, even if its market value would be significantly less (or even commercially worthless) today. Due to the costs associated with licensing of human works, if AI-content becomes a thing, it will probably be more expensive than hiring a human to do the same thing, because the model will have to account for the cost of paying a license fee for every work that was incorporated into a specific output.
franl 3y ago
> Another opinion popular with no one: AI will have on artists the same impact that Spotify had on the music industry that is, it will kill any revenue flow for anyone outside of the publishers and big artists/players. Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but how much money do you think the 7500 creators on Spotify making $100k+ [1] would be making without Spotify or other streaming platforms? My guess is closer to zero than 100k. Also 0.09 percent of 8 million creators making 100k+ [1] sounds horrible, but my guess is that should be taken with a grain of salt. How many folks are included in that 8 million who registered, but uploaded nothing? How many uploaded once or twice? How many uploaded and did ZERO promo of themselves? How many are just plain terrible musicians? A number of years ago when I stumbled on him, Russ was pulling in a few hundred thousand per year from streaming. Looks like he’s making 100k per week as of a couple of years ago [2]. Yes, he’s probably an outlier. But he works his butt off on his craft, handles production and writing himself, and markets himself well. Headlines like “Big tech and AI destroying the indie music industry” get more clicks and attention than “Streaming platforms provide income where once there was none” so shrug. [1] https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/02/24/spotify-artist-earnings/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/02/24/spotify-artist-e... [2] https://twitter.com/russdiemon/status/1325853093074923520 https://twitter.com/russdiemon/status/1325853093074923520
- franl 3y ago
  Found the video where Russ says he was making around $100k per month before any label involvement: https://youtu.be/OebNTkTfzHU https://youtu.be/OebNTkTfzHU. I know this is the land of “that’s just survivorship bias!” And I certainly agree that luck and timing plays a massive role in billionaire level startup success, but this guy in particular is a few orders of magnitude of success below that (even if he’s still an outlier). I’m sure he still benefited from luck and timing, but he also was methodical about creating music non-stop, getting better at production, rapping, and writing, and marketing himself. My point being show me someone who has worked as hard and as smart as he has, who picked a niche of music that has large audiences (aka high Total Addressable Market), and who released as much content as him, and I will show you someone who is having non-trivial streaming success - again maybe not $1M+ annually - but something material beyond just scraping by. That doesn’t mean Big Tech is absolved of sin in how it distributes profits or exerts monopoly control or whatever, but I think we often overlook the opportunities these networks have provided for people that would otherwise live in obscurity with no audience whatsoever.
soligern 3y ago
A human looking at someone’s artwork is “training a model”. It’s bullshit and anti progressive to say someone or something that is creating derivative works is stealing.
- leeoniya 3y ago
  not stealing the work, just stealing the revenue...for very little investment. > A human looking at someone’s artwork is “training a model sure, except that model often takes months or years to train (wall clock years, not 1000-core cpu-years). and the end result is not a human that can stamp out new/competing artwork every 100ms. for any kind of creative/performance/art work, these are watershed times. us coders are not super far behind.
- Retric 3y ago
  The second half of derivative worlds is creating an imitation of the original not just looking at it, but this isn’t some grey area. Even just training the model requires someone to copy the original work from somewhere and store it into a database to use to train the model. If they don’t have permission to make that copy then it’s commercial copyright infringement independent of anything done by the model after that point. Thus the companies themselves are frequently breaking the sale even if nobody ever uses these systems.
bandrami 3y ago
One thing that will really matter is that the output of AI cannot be copyrighted. If producers really go all-in on generation we're going to rapidly see a situation where huge amounts of material will enter the public domain all at once, and we don't really have a precedent for what happens then.
adamc 3y ago
Spotify has been a disaster, but unless the artists walk away (very hard to do), I don't see our political system as caring enough to do anything about it.
Andaith 3y ago
A fun solution to this would be to remove copyright protections for anything generated by an AI. Now nobody profits!
pud 3y ago
> “Spotify killed revenue flow for anyone outside of the publishers and big artists/ players. Spotify basically killed any money coming from the physical distribution” To the contrary, physical distribution was only available to big artists/players. There was mostly no way for independent artists to get into the record stores. Streaming (via distributors like DistroKid) made it possible for millions of independent artists to make money from their music. Source: DistroKid founder here. Hi.

easyThrowaway 3y ago

Also, if you're wondering "Well, I could get better terms for my art" - Like I said, when Spotify arrived and you were signed on a label you HAD to sign the part that said "Yes, you can put my music online on Spotify and I will get paid peanuts" or else, unless you were Madonna or Taylor Swift. Or, sure, you can also terminate your record deal. Hope you have 500 grands around just for that. Frankly I don't see it ending much better for visual artists.

munk-a 3y ago
There was another path here - collective bargaining. When small individuals are bullied by large corporations it's because those corporations want something from the small individuals... they certainly don't care about one or two small artists walking away from the platform - but if artists can organize and bargain as a group they can ensure a fair outcome. I think the modern world has become too complacent in terms of labor organization - the time of plenty left a lot of people content to take whatever was given to them because there was such a glut of excess that it was freely shared. That sharing is coming to an end and we're returning to a time when we need to demand fair and equitable treatment.
- EatingWithForks 3y ago
  Freelancers in the united states are not allowed to bargain collectively for better prices, as that's considered market manipulation/price fixing. ["Independent Contractors" are literally banned from forming a union in the USA.]
  - Buildstarted 3y ago
    Serious question: Are actors, writers, etc not considered "Independent Contractors" in the US?

wwweston 3y ago

> Spotify basically killed any money coming from the physical distribution - Worse than piracy, which was inevitable too at the time, but at least you didn't have to pay your lawyers to renegotiate with your label on top of NOT getting any money. It’s even worse than you say — it was murder on digital retail too, right at the time when it was on track to compete with or exceed old physical sales. Spotify adopted the economics of piracy and stamped them with the false veneer of legitimacy.

amadeuspagel 3y ago
Fundamentally, neither spotify nor piracy matter. People enjoy making music. Today, there are more people able to make and publish music then ever, but the day still only has 24 hours, you can't listen to more music then before. Unlimited supply, limited demand.
- ddq 3y ago
  Fundamentally, the artists getting paid doesn’t matter because they enjoy making music? As a musician, your comment is completely ignorant, self-centered, and totally irrelevant to the discussion of people getting economically screwed.
  - developer93 3y ago
    What's your opinion of bandcamp?
  - raincole 3y ago
    No? You completely misread what he said. As more people are able to produce music (due to cheaper tools like DAWs, more accessible music theory education, etc etc), if the demand of music doesn't grow proportionally, the average income of musicians/songwriters would decline. The above will happen regardless of Spotify's existence. Thus, Spotify doesn't matter (much).
    - skinner927 3y ago

wslh 3y ago

The Spotify example is similar to the Google impact: the last mile is the search engine UI that controls your access to content. Spotify is another UI as they are streaming services, etc. Seems like a natural iteration in the ordering of complex systems. Beyond legal regulations it would be great to start to think about new solutions, if they ever exist.

vouaobrasil 3y ago

I agree completely, and I have been constantly speaking about how AI will be a wealth concentrator, replacing a mass of jobs more diverse than previously seen. Unlike previous machines which can take 1-2 jobs, when humans get REALLY efficient at training AI, it will replacing hundreds en masse. AI will also have an additional effect: it will be isolating in the sense that the need for other humans will decrease. These two points alone, strengthened by many others, have led me to conclude that the world is MUCH better off with AI and that tech companies are ruining the world with their abominations.

badpun 3y ago
> Unlike previous machines which can take 1-2 jobs There are many machines replacing hundreds or even thousands of people- farm equipment, trains, tunnel boring machines etc.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  I meant KINDS of jobs.
- lancesells 3y ago
  Not a real equivalent. Those machines are made by many, many people along the way. Industries exist from those machines. With software you could say chip makers, developers, and energy companies will get stronger but I don't think there's a comparison. The keyholders will be a much smaller group with a greater power if we stay onboard the AI train.
  - orangecat 3y ago
    Not a real equivalent. Those machines are made by many, many people along the way. Industries exist from those machines. Sure, and even taking that into account we produce far more food with far less human labor than we did 100 years ago, and that's a good thing.
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  And they do lead to unemployment. What are the people thinking? There is unemployment, and technology causes it more than it relieves it, especially software technology.

t0bia_s 3y ago

Imagine Spotify, rather than paying to musicans, just invest and publish AI generated music. Sounds like more profitable business to me. I'm not saying that I agree with this approach.

dsign 3y ago
I honestly wonder if people would consume the music they know is AI generated. And by "honestly", I mean "I don't really know but I want to." I've been watching videos of Guy Michelmore in youtube. Not because I will ever write any orchestral music, but because I like his energy and envy his shed. Would I bother if Guy Michelmore were an AI?
- ilyt 3y ago
  Entirely depends on how good it would become. It could also have some interesting avenues, like feeding some variables to the AI from say a video game (number and type of monsters on screen, mood etc.) to generate music reacting to what is happening on screen
- paul_funyun 3y ago
  I would. Out of the bands I listen to maybe 5 of them I could name a single member. I'm a big reader but I couldn't tell you one thing about most of the authors other than their names.
- t0bia_s 3y ago
  It depends on how you define art. You can play music or shoot film or paint a picture. AI could do it as well. But the essence of what makes good art comes from soul, from experience by living, from relationships between us... that is created for stories that inspire. That is not what AI would ever generate.
yellow_postit 3y ago
And absent some major technology changes Spotify in your example has no way to do credit assignment back to the training set for any attempts at royalties should they be so inclined.

Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago

The music industry has always had a long tail. Its very much a go big or go home industry. Do you have any data around revenue change for small artists before and after spotify?

easyThrowaway 3y ago
Sorry, no hard data. Mostly the perception of the industry at the time. Lots of tales of people quitting, moving, or going on "indefinite hiatus". TBH "Fly or Die" was way more common on the US side of the industry. And even in the USA by the late '90s to the end of the 2010 it was somewhat doable if you were skilled enough to make a living solo (we're talking 60-80K/year max) as a "jobber" opening for bigger acts on local venues. Like, the entire NYC indie scene got a start from this premise. If you get a chance, give a look to "Meet Me in the Bathroom"[1], which is a documentary specifically of this timeframe. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n71c1Szjv08&themeRefresh=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n71c1Szjv08&themeRefresh=1

biogene 3y ago

Whenever there are implications to people's lively hood, its always a serious matter - but I hope people are able to transition to other roles. I think Gen AI will commoditize the mundane and "typical", and heavily push people into creating something extraordinarily unique. I think there is the same pressure even without AI, when as a creator you have to standout amongst the sea of people vying for people's attention. I believe GenAI can be useful in a way too. For e.g. If I'm an artist looking for inspiration, I can have a GenAI tool create some "random" works that I can get inspired from.

deskamess 3y ago

> "the AI did this picture, so we don't have to pay you." If the court rulings hold and AI works cannot be copyrighted then us end users do not have to pay for it either... but that seems like a race to the bottom. Like the end of a craft. Why would anyone create art if it has no/minimal downstream value? Artists need to band together in some sort of union or not agree to do art with that AI clause or perhaps only do art with a no-AI use clause. And have an allowed AI-clause that is prohibitively expensive (like in the multi hundred millions per piece). That way 'accidents that happen' have a prescribed recovery amount plus other requirements like pulling the generated artwork. "Hey, we understand it may have been accidental, but here is the bill."

staunton 3y ago
It's not the end of a craft, it just means that the prestige of "made by human" will increase even more and be pushed by by companies as a means of making money through copyright. That means that the few artists at the top will be rich while the niche between "art" and "craft" disappears. Professions involving visual art become like the music business.

radley 3y ago

Everyone overlooks the fact that it will still take someone (i.e. a graphic artist) to produce great AI imagery. First, AI generated art is random and disposable. Yes, you'll get a great image that you can use once, but then what? You can't build a campaign on it. Second, AI generated art can't be copyrighted, so knockoff competitors are free to use your AI-generated marketing images. At the very least, you can seed the AI with a paid graphic artist's work (seed-based AI images can be copyrighted). But that artist will do it better than your unpaid intern.

prox 3y ago
Also people cannot judge great art or imagery. Unless you have had the training. But the average person? Nope. You can tell what you LIKE but that’s not the same.
- charlieyu1 3y ago
  I don’t have much training but it is not that difficult to spot AI arts which is pretty repetitive. The first couple are awesome but it gets old really fast.
The_Blade 3y ago
sewing machine
karaterobot 3y ago
Mmm, I don't know about this. At the very least AI lowers the bar for how talented a graphic artist needs to be to produce professional work, which means it'll be easier to undercut them, which means it'll get much harder to make a living as a graphic designer. It amounts to the same thing as killing off the profession, as seen from the perspective of someone in the profession as opposed to someone without skin in the game. It's like saying push-button elevators didn't hurt the profession of elevator operator, because somebody's still got to push those buttons.
- orbital-decay 3y ago

SnowdustDev 3y ago

> Spotify basically killed any money coming from the physical distribution - Worse than piracy Any sources for this? I'm of the impression physical distribution is on the rise compared to the earlier days of digital music. This has nothing to do with Spotify, and all about the digitization of music itself. Anecdotally many people I know now purchase merchandise and media as a way to support an artist they like, rather than listen to the music they make in a physical format.

karaterobot 3y ago

No offense, I don't think this is an unpopular opinion. The comparison to Spotify is apt though.

d1sxeyes 3y ago

Recorded music was going this way whether it was Spotify or someone else that drove the final nail into the coffin. I remember when I was a child, on a Sunday afternoon, my dad would put on an album and listen to it. Just listen. Very, very few people do that now. Now we have a lot of demand for “incidental music”. Something you listen to while you do something else. Driving, reading, surfing the net, coding, cleaning… There was a fundamental shift in how people consumed music that started around the time music became portable. Spotify won the race, but if it hadn’t been Spotify, it would have been someone else.

_glass 3y ago
A positive effect for performers is that people still want to go to concerts, but less and less people know how to play an instrument. The market is really much better now than even 10 years ago.
throwaway290 3y ago
No no. Incidental music and "music you listen to while doing something" are not the same. Listening to incidental music all the time devalues music. And we do it not because we wanted it but because Spotify, Apple music etc promote it. Until then "just play random stuff that this ML thinks is similar" was not a thing. But subscriptions make them more money than if they just let you buy albums and stream what you bought. I wish more artists didn't sign up for this but unfortunately big labels did. But you can listen to non incidental music that you have specifically chosen while doing something. Even your dad could be doing something while listening to music (thinking).
- btilly 3y ago
  An example of "music you listen to while doing something" that is not incidental music are many sea shanties. The music had a purpose.
btilly 3y ago
I'm curious. When do you think music became portable? The transistor radio was invented in the 1950s. And quickly became used as background music as life progressed. Also incidental music is not a new thing. Tavern musicians as background music have been around for centuries. It is hard to prove, but likely for thousands of years.

notefaker 3y ago

This is factually incorrect. If you own your master recordings, you stand to make $3,500 to $5,500 per million streams on Spotify. Apple Music and Tidal pay even better. This is why Taylor Swift is re-recording her entire Big Machine Records catalogue. While Spotify did shift consumers away from buying singles and albums as individual items, they also opened a new revenue source for independent artists.

easyThrowaway 3y ago
Can you point me to a current-day independent artist which hasn't been signed to a label that is pulling this amount of money just on streaming? If you're already big enough that, i.e., XL Recordings can ask you to make a record without getting rights on the master, I wouldn't count it as a good example of "indie artist".
- franl 3y ago
  Russ EDIT: Not making Taylor Swift money, but not many are
  - easyThrowaway 3y ago
    are you sure he’s doing 5k/month just by streaming? No syncs nor shows? Also if Wikipedia is right he’s signed with Columbia Records. AFAIK the only artists making that kind money just by streaming while having no strings attached EVER (No label distro, no label A&R, no big tent agencies) are Macklemore and Chance The Rapper. Just two guys over millions of artists on Spotify.
    - franl 3y ago
      I can’t find the article from before he signed with Columbia (might’ve been a YouTube interview with him, can’t remember for sure), but yes, I’m fairly certain he was doing well over 5k per month with no major label. Also note the terms of his deal with Columbia are unlike most major deals in that he has a 50/50 profit split after his advance payment got recouped, retains either full control or 50/50 control of masters, etc.

gamblor956 3y ago

AI will have on artists the same impact that Spotify had on the music industry that is, it will kill any revenue flow for anyone outside of the publishers and big artists/players. then resell the output for $$$ on something like Splice This is silly. The USPTO and Courts have repeatedly stated that AI-generated media is not subject to copyright protection, so there are no licensing revenue opportunities for the big publishers/artists/whatever. This means: AI-generated content is not protected by copyright, so anyone can use a piece of AI-generated art however they want without a license and unless the law changes AI has no value to the content industries. EDIT: Also, the USPTO has noted that the use of AI-generated content in a work will mean that the entire work will be presumed AI-generated except for the portions the content owner can demonstrate were generated by humans. The backend costs of maintaining AI-supplemented works will almost as expensive and burdensome as the costs associated with patents. Also, I think people on HN have a very glorified view of how much money musicians make from streaming or cd/album sales: basically zilch, unless they're popular enough to be in repeat on the radio. Most musicians made their money from performing: generally a little bit from ticket sales or venue incentives (like % of booze sales) but the real money for the performers was from the sales of band merch, which is why it gets pushed so heavily. At the end of the day the model itself is going to be basically irrelevant, while knowing whose works were actually used to train it being the truly differentiating feature. Yes, by lawyers, when they sue the owners of the AI model for copyright infringement, because this would not be a use protected by fair use doctrine. This will actually make human-generated works more valuable because now every work used to generate an AI work is now worth at least $75,000, even if its market value would be significantly less (or even commercially worthless) today. Due to the costs associated with licensing of human works, if AI-content becomes a thing, it will probably be more expensive than hiring a human to do the same thing, because the model will have to account for the cost of paying a license fee for every work that was incorporated into a specific output.

franl 3y ago

> Another opinion popular with no one: AI will have on artists the same impact that Spotify had on the music industry that is, it will kill any revenue flow for anyone outside of the publishers and big artists/players. Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but how much money do you think the 7500 creators on Spotify making $100k+ [1] would be making without Spotify or other streaming platforms? My guess is closer to zero than 100k. Also 0.09 percent of 8 million creators making 100k+ [1] sounds horrible, but my guess is that should be taken with a grain of salt. How many folks are included in that 8 million who registered, but uploaded nothing? How many uploaded once or twice? How many uploaded and did ZERO promo of themselves? How many are just plain terrible musicians? A number of years ago when I stumbled on him, Russ was pulling in a few hundred thousand per year from streaming. Looks like he’s making 100k per week as of a couple of years ago [2]. Yes, he’s probably an outlier. But he works his butt off on his craft, handles production and writing himself, and markets himself well. Headlines like “Big tech and AI destroying the indie music industry” get more clicks and attention than “Streaming platforms provide income where once there was none” so shrug. [1] https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/02/24/spotify-artist-earnings/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/02/24/spotify-artist-e... [2] https://twitter.com/russdiemon/status/1325853093074923520 https://twitter.com/russdiemon/status/1325853093074923520

franl 3y ago
Found the video where Russ says he was making around $100k per month before any label involvement: https://youtu.be/OebNTkTfzHU https://youtu.be/OebNTkTfzHU. I know this is the land of “that’s just survivorship bias!” And I certainly agree that luck and timing plays a massive role in billionaire level startup success, but this guy in particular is a few orders of magnitude of success below that (even if he’s still an outlier). I’m sure he still benefited from luck and timing, but he also was methodical about creating music non-stop, getting better at production, rapping, and writing, and marketing himself. My point being show me someone who has worked as hard and as smart as he has, who picked a niche of music that has large audiences (aka high Total Addressable Market), and who released as much content as him, and I will show you someone who is having non-trivial streaming success - again maybe not $1M+ annually - but something material beyond just scraping by. That doesn’t mean Big Tech is absolved of sin in how it distributes profits or exerts monopoly control or whatever, but I think we often overlook the opportunities these networks have provided for people that would otherwise live in obscurity with no audience whatsoever.

soligern 3y ago

A human looking at someone’s artwork is “training a model”. It’s bullshit and anti progressive to say someone or something that is creating derivative works is stealing.

leeoniya 3y ago
not stealing the work, just stealing the revenue...for very little investment. > A human looking at someone’s artwork is “training a model sure, except that model often takes months or years to train (wall clock years, not 1000-core cpu-years). and the end result is not a human that can stamp out new/competing artwork every 100ms. for any kind of creative/performance/art work, these are watershed times. us coders are not super far behind.
Retric 3y ago
The second half of derivative worlds is creating an imitation of the original not just looking at it, but this isn’t some grey area. Even just training the model requires someone to copy the original work from somewhere and store it into a database to use to train the model. If they don’t have permission to make that copy then it’s commercial copyright infringement independent of anything done by the model after that point. Thus the companies themselves are frequently breaking the sale even if nobody ever uses these systems.

bandrami 3y ago

One thing that will really matter is that the output of AI cannot be copyrighted. If producers really go all-in on generation we're going to rapidly see a situation where huge amounts of material will enter the public domain all at once, and we don't really have a precedent for what happens then.

adamc 3y ago

Spotify has been a disaster, but unless the artists walk away (very hard to do), I don't see our political system as caring enough to do anything about it.

Andaith 3y ago

A fun solution to this would be to remove copyright protections for anything generated by an AI. Now nobody profits!

pud 3y ago

> “Spotify killed revenue flow for anyone outside of the publishers and big artists/ players. Spotify basically killed any money coming from the physical distribution” To the contrary, physical distribution was only available to big artists/players. There was mostly no way for independent artists to get into the record stores. Streaming (via distributors like DistroKid) made it possible for millions of independent artists to make money from their music. Source: DistroKid founder here. Hi.