3 ms·

How are people going to become professional musicians if it stops being a career?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
progbits 3y ago
Plenty of people make music for fun while having other careers. A lot of the masterpiece painters did it for passion and lived in poverty (I'm not saying that is good, but clearly a career is not necessary for great results).
- chpatrick 3y ago
  Sure but most renowned artists had the time to become really skilled because they could dedicate all their time to it. If no one wants to pay humans for art any more, how will that happen?
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    People pay a lot of thing much higher because they are less perfectly made by humans. All the time.
  - Tadpole9181 3y ago
    Then become politically active and make sure we have a strong safety net with healthy labor rights that allow everyone to have ample free time. You don't ban music production software.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  You can never reach a high proficiency of playing a musical instrument if you have another career. It takes an insane amount of practice.
Ferret7446 3y ago
Becoming a professional musician isn't a "right" of any kind. You don't have a "right" to be paid to do anything you want. You're certainly allowed to do it (barring outright criminal activity), but don't expect to be entitled to monetary compensation.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  Plenty of musicians make money doing live performances. Since Spotify, record sales are just not a great revenue stream any more. I don't see AI impacting this much. But of course there are going to be some musicians that specialize in background music or other forms of, relatively, low value music work that are going to be affected by this.
jerojero 3y ago
Why would I go see a jazz band made of 20something year olds when I can just go into youtube and hear all the masters in the comfort of my bedroom? Oh, maybe because watching live music is a different experience. Maybe because being the best is not as important as simply doing something most people can't do. Funny thing is, when you go to shows of people who are not yet professional musicians but might be studying, might be in a band with their friends and so on... most of the people who attend these shows are their friends and also other musicians. Most musicians are not professional musicians.
Davidzheng 3y ago
Strange question. Tautology they can't. But AI will be better than humans everywhere so why is this one different
Davidzheng 3y ago
But the question is if this is your passion why is being a hobbyist not enough. If there are no limitations of what you can be/do as a hobbyist
UncleMeat 3y ago
Being a professional musician is already a fraught career with low rates of success. This is even more true if you exclude people that are working with modern digital systems. Not a lot of jobs available for orchestral musicians, for example. But there still are people making art with older techniques. There is a greater variety of art being made today than ever before in history. The development of new techniques has made art richer rather than poorer. Yes, the most commercially focused art chooses techniques based on price (far cheaper for a single person to stack synths than to pay a full orchestra) but that's okay. Hip hop and electronic music have been creating totally new things for decades without ever touching a physical instrument. Music didn't die, it flourished.
- chpatrick 3y ago
  This is different though, because the end game of AI music isn't better music technology for musicians, but replacing musicians. I'm worried we're going to go into a dark age where society forgets how to make truly creative new art due to lack of incentives, and the AIs won't make anything new due to lack of anything creative to train on. We'll just regurgitate the pre-AI stuff forever.
  - akaij 3y ago
    If we're fast-forwarding the tape, why not directly go to the ultimate conclusion that the end game is AI replacing humans, period? This is not a slippery slope; new art will be created regardless of incentives and skilled people who learn to augment their craft with AI will probably create better works of art.
  - UncleMeat 3y ago
    Why is it different? I don't see how any of the incentives go away here.
    - chpatrick 3y ago
      Because previously if you honed your skills as a musician there was a chance that you could do it for a living, so there was another incentive to get better. Electronic tools just facilitated human creativity, but the random listener couldn't sit down with a synth or a DAW and just press a button to get music out. But if all the money drops out of the music industry because the consumers can auto-generate unlimited music, how will that work?
victorbjorklund 3y ago
You could make the same argument against recordings (and people did). It would take away jobs from the musicians. Yet, 136 years later and people are still creating music and playing instruments.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Plenty of people make music for fun while having other careers. A lot of the masterpiece painters did it for passion and lived in poverty (I'm not saying that is good, but clearly a career is not necessary for great results).

chpatrick 3y ago
Sure but most renowned artists had the time to become really skilled because they could dedicate all their time to it. If no one wants to pay humans for art any more, how will that happen?
- prmoustache 3y ago
  People pay a lot of thing much higher because they are less perfectly made by humans. All the time.
- Tadpole9181 3y ago
  Then become politically active and make sure we have a strong safety net with healthy labor rights that allow everyone to have ample free time. You don't ban music production software.
carlosjobim 3y ago
You can never reach a high proficiency of playing a musical instrument if you have another career. It takes an insane amount of practice.

Ferret7446 3y ago

Becoming a professional musician isn't a "right" of any kind. You don't have a "right" to be paid to do anything you want. You're certainly allowed to do it (barring outright criminal activity), but don't expect to be entitled to monetary compensation.

jillesvangurp 3y ago
Plenty of musicians make money doing live performances. Since Spotify, record sales are just not a great revenue stream any more. I don't see AI impacting this much. But of course there are going to be some musicians that specialize in background music or other forms of, relatively, low value music work that are going to be affected by this.

jerojero 3y ago

Why would I go see a jazz band made of 20something year olds when I can just go into youtube and hear all the masters in the comfort of my bedroom? Oh, maybe because watching live music is a different experience. Maybe because being the best is not as important as simply doing something most people can't do. Funny thing is, when you go to shows of people who are not yet professional musicians but might be studying, might be in a band with their friends and so on... most of the people who attend these shows are their friends and also other musicians. Most musicians are not professional musicians.

Davidzheng 3y ago

Strange question. Tautology they can't. But AI will be better than humans everywhere so why is this one different

Davidzheng 3y ago

But the question is if this is your passion why is being a hobbyist not enough. If there are no limitations of what you can be/do as a hobbyist

UncleMeat 3y ago

Being a professional musician is already a fraught career with low rates of success. This is even more true if you exclude people that are working with modern digital systems. Not a lot of jobs available for orchestral musicians, for example. But there still are people making art with older techniques. There is a greater variety of art being made today than ever before in history. The development of new techniques has made art richer rather than poorer. Yes, the most commercially focused art chooses techniques based on price (far cheaper for a single person to stack synths than to pay a full orchestra) but that's okay. Hip hop and electronic music have been creating totally new things for decades without ever touching a physical instrument. Music didn't die, it flourished.

chpatrick 3y ago
This is different though, because the end game of AI music isn't better music technology for musicians, but replacing musicians. I'm worried we're going to go into a dark age where society forgets how to make truly creative new art due to lack of incentives, and the AIs won't make anything new due to lack of anything creative to train on. We'll just regurgitate the pre-AI stuff forever.
- akaij 3y ago
  If we're fast-forwarding the tape, why not directly go to the ultimate conclusion that the end game is AI replacing humans, period? This is not a slippery slope; new art will be created regardless of incentives and skilled people who learn to augment their craft with AI will probably create better works of art.
- UncleMeat 3y ago
  Why is it different? I don't see how any of the incentives go away here.
  - chpatrick 3y ago
    Because previously if you honed your skills as a musician there was a chance that you could do it for a living, so there was another incentive to get better. Electronic tools just facilitated human creativity, but the random listener couldn't sit down with a synth or a DAW and just press a button to get music out. But if all the money drops out of the music industry because the consumers can auto-generate unlimited music, how will that work?

victorbjorklund 3y ago

You could make the same argument against recordings (and people did). It would take away jobs from the musicians. Yet, 136 years later and people are still creating music and playing instruments.