10 ms·

Spotify: Droppin' Some Fake Beats

101 points by zdw 2y ago

montag 2y ago
Curtis Roads, in the latest edition of Computer Music Tutorial: > A new industry has emerged around AI services for creating generic popular music [...] This is the latest incarnation of a trend that started in the 1920s called Muzak, to provide licensed background music in elevators, business and dental offices, hotels, shopping malls, supermarkets, and restaurants.
- blowski 2y ago
  Muzak aimed to be more than just background noise - it supposedly improved worker productivity, and manipulated your mood.
amarant 2y ago
Maybe this can finally make record labels get their shit together and provide reasonable licensing for music. Ever wonder why restaurants and other commercial venues keep playing bland bossa-nova cover versions of good songs? Licensing.
- andrelaszlo 2y ago
  I recently learned that Spotify has a service for this as well https://www.soundtrackyourbrand.com/ https://www.soundtrackyourbrand.com/
danduma 2y ago
Spotify (like other streaming services) pays about 70% of its revenue to the rights holders of the music it plays. AI music means near-zero cost of goods sold so the full 70% can turn into profit. The incentive is so strong that it's a certainty waiting to happen.
- beachy 2y ago
  I hope I am not wrong, but there is so much music out there already that success today is not about the quality of the music but instead about the audience's connection with the artist. If there is no artist I don't see how any strong following could be built. (Obviously AI will carve easily into elevator music etc.) Who will ever look up a song and favourite it on Spotify if there are no humans behind it?
  - throwanem 2y ago
    K/DA and Hatsune Miku would like a word, perhaps.
    - itishappy 2y ago
      I view them (and Gorillaz) as counter-examples. I feel like more people are familiar with Miku than her music.
      - throwanem 2y ago
        I rather think that makes them examples on point, specifically on the point that: > success today is not about the quality of the music but instead about the audience's connection with the artist ...although I would rather say "sense of connection", since in all three of these cases there is in the narrow sense no "artist" involved at all. More broadly, this seems a fairly uncontroversial point, given how crowded by supply our current media markets are made. Certainly it seems like it would be uncontroversial on that supply side, at least if what I hear from artists and writers and musicians in my circles is any guide.
  - danielbln 2y ago
    People will just follow curators, who pull the right AI music into the right playlists.
  - sn0wleppard 2y ago
    The "relaxing piano for studying" type playlists get a huge amount of streams, and they're among the easiest to fill with AI slop
christkv 2y ago
Hopefully the enshitification of the net kills the social net splintering the web into a pre facebook era.
- throwanem 2y ago
  This is an impossible dream. Facebook has existed and the arrow of time goes only one way; there is no longer any possibility of a "pre-Facebook era," because that era has come and gone. What we would see instead would be a post-Facebook era, wherein we would still have to reckon with the social damage it and its ilk have inflicted on a fairly significant fraction of the species. It isn't a new sort of error, if that's any consolation, being in the limit no younger than the story of the Garden of Eden. But while studying the past can prove valuable in approaching the future, hoping to return to it never does.
Aeolun 2y ago
I think artists should get some option of marking the music as AI generated. Right now that option does not exist on Spotify even if you want to.
- thih9 2y ago
  I wonder if long term people will actually care about that. And of course I want robots to get off my lawn, but I don’t know whether younger or upcoming generations will share that sentiment. In the past there was similar reserve about music produced with autotune, samples, not recorded in a single take, etc.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    It’s more about not training AI on the output of other AI’s.
FrankyFire 2y ago
>A while back, I made a rather fatalistic prediction: that barring a radical intervention, in a decade or two, most of exchanges on the internet will be faked. It’s not pessimism; it’s that our aggregate capacity for human-to-human interactions is inherently capped. In contrast, the ability to generate human-like text, images, and audio is now almost infinitely scalable — and from customer support, to marketing, to cybercrime, there are powerful incentives to crank it up to eleven. I'm waiting for the first ChatBot to talk to customer support ChatBots for me.
ImAnAmateur 2y ago
So long as I know it uses AI generated vocals or instruments it's A-OK with me. It's an emerging genre. Whether it's junk is going to depend a lot on how the director corrals the output. I've listened to plenty of junk already. Amateur work can be fun to try and I'm curious how this will compare to Vocaloid or autotuned stuff.
- Jerrrrry 2y ago
  >So long as I know it uses AI generated vocals or instruments it's A-OK with me. Can you not tell the difference? If you can, do. If you can't, why?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
ptsneves 2y ago
The post and comments come out a bit unfair if you read the answer from the music author. The music author seems to be doing the music as part of a thesis and does not dump the generated music straight from the model. Instead it uses it for ideas and cooperation, and in the end there is post production and real work. I know people doing a similar thing to learn how to write books with AI as a productive tool. In my opinion this is the real promise of AI: elevating the productivity and enabling more people. Like the internet has done, it will give voice and tools to many who could not, and a lot of those “voices” may seem of low quality, but alas such is the price. As in every technological progression, paradigm changes happens. Some good some bad. Give yourself some agency and avoid the bad content and enjoy the good ones. Also if you look at the YouTube videos there are comments of people genuinely liking it.
- xandrius 2y ago
  Finally some refreshing view: I am constantly bombarded by people who either completely abhor or love it. I think it's a tool, it's going to take away jobs which were already shaky and on the line, while empower people who can understand its potential and limitations.
  - dartos 2y ago
    Yeah, but that kind of thinking isn’t good for attracting media attention or VC dollars.
    - grugagag 2y ago
      The headache for me is triaging through lots of quantity of grbage to find something of quality. The question to me is, do we really need all this new junk in the first place?
franze 2y ago
I created some AI Audios based on ChatGPT/ Suno / Midjourney / Joined via ChatGpt This one even asks the question, in german: "Is this art or can I throw it away?" (DE: Ist das Kunst oder kann das weg?") Can AI music trigger real emotions or are they just artificial emotions? https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79y1Dbst3l/?igsh=bDgzeGMxZTJ5ZXNu https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79y1Dbst3l/?igsh=bDgzeGMxZTJ... (And this one I call "If Poe had had a cat." https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79yC-rsywz/?igsh=MThzbDZvamVrbmIzZQ== https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79yC-rsywz/?igsh=MThzbDZvamV... Title by me, everything else Chatgpt, Suno, Midjourney and ChatGPT again.) So the big question is, can AI generate art? Can AI generate "real" music? Or is all AI music artificial music? Can artificial music create real emotions? I love this topic. So much possibilities to challenge our understanding / appreciation of art and music.
- have_faith 2y ago
  It seems obvious, at least to me, that AI i.e: code written to output something trained on human input, can make "art". It doesn't seem like a particularly deep or meaningful question. The question for me is whether you choose to attribute any value to it. I can hear a song that AI made and note that it sounds good (although this is rare currently). I have no interest in investing time into it though. I'm interested predominantly in the human experience and what humans express through art. Art created through the push of a button (or prompt) is still art, in the same way that pieces created by Warhol's assistants is still art. It's just indirect. That indirection, which for AI is on the extreme end of indirect, make it a bit of a novelty.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 2y ago
    > I can hear a song that AI made and note that it sounds good (although this is rare currently). I have no interest in investing time into it though. This argument makes sense to me for e.g. a novel, and is the reason why I wouldn't read an AI-written novel, all else being equal with human-written novels. But much of the music people consume is background music and requires no time investment at all. For example, I play music while I exercise... give me a playlist that sounds good enough and it's upbeat enough, and it will be fine for the task.
vasco 2y ago
Still better than some rich guys choosing young people to have them take out a huge loan, feed them a bunch of lyrics some dudes wrote across the sea, match it with one of the 200 ready to go beats their "label" has in the drawer and make a single with a music video to pump tiktok ads on. There's very little romantic songwriting and true exploration going on in mainstream music. AI productions if anything to me are more honest if done with an open model by a person in their home. At least it's just a person fiddling with it until it sounds as something they like and not a megacorp. Until spotify makes these themselves.
- 127 2y ago
  The fault in this logic is that exact same people will be leading the way of mass manufacturing more soulless garbage and dumping it to the consumer as mainstream music. AI doesn't actually fix the problem, it just makes it easier to do.
  - vasco 2y ago
    If you read my comment you see my last sentence is there to acknowledge this!
- namanyayg 2y ago
  What do you mean "take out a huge loan"?
  - rjbwork 2y ago
    I assume they mean an advance. Advances given to artists upon signing with a label are paid back out of proceeds from sales/royalties.
    - arrowsmith 2y ago
      So in other words, not like a loan?
      - 2y ago
nsteel 2y ago
Are machine generated podcasts also a thing? My gut feeling is that it would've harder to make passable AI podcasts but I can't give a rational reason why. Spotify would be all over that.
- Kiro 2y ago
  Of course. Podcasts were the first to be "disrupted" and flooded. I wouldn't be surprised if most podcast releases are AI generated at this point.
  - alexilliamson 2y ago
    Do you have examples?
newswasboring 2y ago
I don't understand how a real generated song is classified as fake? This just doesn't sit right with me. It's as if artistic expression is not valid if not done throught traditional means. This is the latest fad, to look down upon people who are exploring newer tools. If we don't accept experimental things like this, it will be relegated to only the spammy type of people.
- bux93 2y ago
  Oh but wait, it gets worse. I hear some of these new "artists" these days are using "synthesizers" and artificial "acrylic" paints in stead of banging rocks together and smearing blood on the walls of caves. Artistic expression is dead!
  - Jerrrrry 2y ago
    Take a picture, it will last longer. Congratulations! You just destroyed painters' jobs. What's next? Take a man's horse! why dont ya?
Hrun0 2y ago
> Despite some HN quips, AI text detectors are pretty dependable I have never tried AI text detectors, but my impression was that they were considered unreliable?
- Kiro 2y ago
  They are. The author is wrong.
- p_l 2y ago
  If you ever dealt with horrors of "plagiarism detection" tools... It only gets worse.
dash2 2y ago
Controversial take ahead. If, as an artist, you don't want AI to eat your lunch, there's a simple solution: produce art that is better than AI. It doesn't seem surprising that the AI band here is in the metal subgenre. Some metal is great, but there are also an awful lot of mediocre, repetitive tunes and ridiculous lyrics. It's not surprising that it's easy to imitate! It's not very good! "Old Gods of Atlantis"? AI or not, that's not a promising song title. Show me some actual good art that AI has produced, then I'll worry for you.
- justinclift 2y ago
  > Show me some actual good art that AI has produced, then I'll worry for you. Does audio count? If so, how about the 2nd link here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40644102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40644102
  - dash2 2y ago
    No, I think that is pretty bad. I mean, it's awesome that a computer can do it, and the concept of tweaking the Poe story is fine - but I suspect that is a choice made by the prompt engineer. As for the lyrics, throwing in the ember after remember/December/ember is a tolerably cute rhyme, but "my heart was aching, young and breaking" etc. is just standard, and the tune is absolutely generic. There's nothing new or interesting here except the fact that it was done by AI!
    - justinclift 2y ago
      Ahhh well, I liked it. My standards may not be at all high though. ;)
    - justinclift 2y ago
      What do you reckon of the first song ("dialectic (accept it) - Yolkhead Radio") here? https://suno.com/radio/song/e48c0ee8-24c8-459b-8d91-469dbd6fc3a5 https://suno.com/radio/song/e48c0ee8-24c8-459b-8d91-469dbd6f...
blindstitch 2y ago
The "before:" operator trick is very useful but it won't last. They have quietly phased out some of these operators and they are not supported on many google properties. The before operator is also buggy, I regularly get searches where they fuzz the date by years.

101 points by zdw 2y ago

Curtis Roads, in the latest edition of Computer Music Tutorial: > A new industry has emerged around AI services for creating generic popular music [...] This is the latest incarnation of a trend that started in the 1920s called Muzak, to provide licensed background music in elevators, business and dental offices, hotels, shopping malls, supermarkets, and restaurants.

blowski 2y ago
Muzak aimed to be more than just background noise - it supposedly improved worker productivity, and manipulated your mood.

amarant 2y ago

Maybe this can finally make record labels get their shit together and provide reasonable licensing for music. Ever wonder why restaurants and other commercial venues keep playing bland bossa-nova cover versions of good songs? Licensing.

andrelaszlo 2y ago
I recently learned that Spotify has a service for this as well https://www.soundtrackyourbrand.com/ https://www.soundtrackyourbrand.com/

danduma 2y ago

Spotify (like other streaming services) pays about 70% of its revenue to the rights holders of the music it plays. AI music means near-zero cost of goods sold so the full 70% can turn into profit. The incentive is so strong that it's a certainty waiting to happen.

beachy 2y ago
I hope I am not wrong, but there is so much music out there already that success today is not about the quality of the music but instead about the audience's connection with the artist. If there is no artist I don't see how any strong following could be built. (Obviously AI will carve easily into elevator music etc.) Who will ever look up a song and favourite it on Spotify if there are no humans behind it?
- throwanem 2y ago
  K/DA and Hatsune Miku would like a word, perhaps.
  - itishappy 2y ago
    I view them (and Gorillaz) as counter-examples. I feel like more people are familiar with Miku than her music.
    - throwanem 2y ago
      I rather think that makes them examples on point, specifically on the point that: > success today is not about the quality of the music but instead about the audience's connection with the artist ...although I would rather say "sense of connection", since in all three of these cases there is in the narrow sense no "artist" involved at all. More broadly, this seems a fairly uncontroversial point, given how crowded by supply our current media markets are made. Certainly it seems like it would be uncontroversial on that supply side, at least if what I hear from artists and writers and musicians in my circles is any guide.
- danielbln 2y ago
  People will just follow curators, who pull the right AI music into the right playlists.
- sn0wleppard 2y ago
  The "relaxing piano for studying" type playlists get a huge amount of streams, and they're among the easiest to fill with AI slop

christkv 2y ago

Hopefully the enshitification of the net kills the social net splintering the web into a pre facebook era.

throwanem 2y ago
This is an impossible dream. Facebook has existed and the arrow of time goes only one way; there is no longer any possibility of a "pre-Facebook era," because that era has come and gone. What we would see instead would be a post-Facebook era, wherein we would still have to reckon with the social damage it and its ilk have inflicted on a fairly significant fraction of the species. It isn't a new sort of error, if that's any consolation, being in the limit no younger than the story of the Garden of Eden. But while studying the past can prove valuable in approaching the future, hoping to return to it never does.

Aeolun 2y ago

I think artists should get some option of marking the music as AI generated. Right now that option does not exist on Spotify even if you want to.

thih9 2y ago
I wonder if long term people will actually care about that. And of course I want robots to get off my lawn, but I don’t know whether younger or upcoming generations will share that sentiment. In the past there was similar reserve about music produced with autotune, samples, not recorded in a single take, etc.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  It’s more about not training AI on the output of other AI’s.

FrankyFire 2y ago

>A while back, I made a rather fatalistic prediction: that barring a radical intervention, in a decade or two, most of exchanges on the internet will be faked. It’s not pessimism; it’s that our aggregate capacity for human-to-human interactions is inherently capped. In contrast, the ability to generate human-like text, images, and audio is now almost infinitely scalable — and from customer support, to marketing, to cybercrime, there are powerful incentives to crank it up to eleven. I'm waiting for the first ChatBot to talk to customer support ChatBots for me.

ImAnAmateur 2y ago

So long as I know it uses AI generated vocals or instruments it's A-OK with me. It's an emerging genre. Whether it's junk is going to depend a lot on how the director corrals the output. I've listened to plenty of junk already. Amateur work can be fun to try and I'm curious how this will compare to Vocaloid or autotuned stuff.

Jerrrrry 2y ago
>So long as I know it uses AI generated vocals or instruments it's A-OK with me. Can you not tell the difference? If you can, do. If you can't, why?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

ptsneves 2y ago

The post and comments come out a bit unfair if you read the answer from the music author. The music author seems to be doing the music as part of a thesis and does not dump the generated music straight from the model. Instead it uses it for ideas and cooperation, and in the end there is post production and real work. I know people doing a similar thing to learn how to write books with AI as a productive tool. In my opinion this is the real promise of AI: elevating the productivity and enabling more people. Like the internet has done, it will give voice and tools to many who could not, and a lot of those “voices” may seem of low quality, but alas such is the price. As in every technological progression, paradigm changes happens. Some good some bad. Give yourself some agency and avoid the bad content and enjoy the good ones. Also if you look at the YouTube videos there are comments of people genuinely liking it.

xandrius 2y ago
Finally some refreshing view: I am constantly bombarded by people who either completely abhor or love it. I think it's a tool, it's going to take away jobs which were already shaky and on the line, while empower people who can understand its potential and limitations.
- dartos 2y ago
  Yeah, but that kind of thinking isn’t good for attracting media attention or VC dollars.
  - grugagag 2y ago
    The headache for me is triaging through lots of quantity of grbage to find something of quality. The question to me is, do we really need all this new junk in the first place?

franze 2y ago

I created some AI Audios based on ChatGPT/ Suno / Midjourney / Joined via ChatGpt This one even asks the question, in german: "Is this art or can I throw it away?" (DE: Ist das Kunst oder kann das weg?") Can AI music trigger real emotions or are they just artificial emotions? https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79y1Dbst3l/?igsh=bDgzeGMxZTJ5ZXNu https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79y1Dbst3l/?igsh=bDgzeGMxZTJ... (And this one I call "If Poe had had a cat." https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79yC-rsywz/?igsh=MThzbDZvamVrbmIzZQ== https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79yC-rsywz/?igsh=MThzbDZvamV... Title by me, everything else Chatgpt, Suno, Midjourney and ChatGPT again.) So the big question is, can AI generate art? Can AI generate "real" music? Or is all AI music artificial music? Can artificial music create real emotions? I love this topic. So much possibilities to challenge our understanding / appreciation of art and music.

have_faith 2y ago
It seems obvious, at least to me, that AI i.e: code written to output something trained on human input, can make "art". It doesn't seem like a particularly deep or meaningful question. The question for me is whether you choose to attribute any value to it. I can hear a song that AI made and note that it sounds good (although this is rare currently). I have no interest in investing time into it though. I'm interested predominantly in the human experience and what humans express through art. Art created through the push of a button (or prompt) is still art, in the same way that pieces created by Warhol's assistants is still art. It's just indirect. That indirection, which for AI is on the extreme end of indirect, make it a bit of a novelty.
- Al-Khwarizmi 2y ago
  > I can hear a song that AI made and note that it sounds good (although this is rare currently). I have no interest in investing time into it though. This argument makes sense to me for e.g. a novel, and is the reason why I wouldn't read an AI-written novel, all else being equal with human-written novels. But much of the music people consume is background music and requires no time investment at all. For example, I play music while I exercise... give me a playlist that sounds good enough and it's upbeat enough, and it will be fine for the task.

vasco 2y ago

Still better than some rich guys choosing young people to have them take out a huge loan, feed them a bunch of lyrics some dudes wrote across the sea, match it with one of the 200 ready to go beats their "label" has in the drawer and make a single with a music video to pump tiktok ads on. There's very little romantic songwriting and true exploration going on in mainstream music. AI productions if anything to me are more honest if done with an open model by a person in their home. At least it's just a person fiddling with it until it sounds as something they like and not a megacorp. Until spotify makes these themselves.

127 2y ago
The fault in this logic is that exact same people will be leading the way of mass manufacturing more soulless garbage and dumping it to the consumer as mainstream music. AI doesn't actually fix the problem, it just makes it easier to do.
- vasco 2y ago
  If you read my comment you see my last sentence is there to acknowledge this!
namanyayg 2y ago
What do you mean "take out a huge loan"?
- rjbwork 2y ago
  I assume they mean an advance. Advances given to artists upon signing with a label are paid back out of proceeds from sales/royalties.
  - arrowsmith 2y ago
    So in other words, not like a loan?
    - 2y ago

nsteel 2y ago

Are machine generated podcasts also a thing? My gut feeling is that it would've harder to make passable AI podcasts but I can't give a rational reason why. Spotify would be all over that.

Kiro 2y ago
Of course. Podcasts were the first to be "disrupted" and flooded. I wouldn't be surprised if most podcast releases are AI generated at this point.
- alexilliamson 2y ago
  Do you have examples?

newswasboring 2y ago

I don't understand how a real generated song is classified as fake? This just doesn't sit right with me. It's as if artistic expression is not valid if not done throught traditional means. This is the latest fad, to look down upon people who are exploring newer tools. If we don't accept experimental things like this, it will be relegated to only the spammy type of people.

bux93 2y ago
Oh but wait, it gets worse. I hear some of these new "artists" these days are using "synthesizers" and artificial "acrylic" paints in stead of banging rocks together and smearing blood on the walls of caves. Artistic expression is dead!
- Jerrrrry 2y ago
  Take a picture, it will last longer. Congratulations! You just destroyed painters' jobs. What's next? Take a man's horse! why dont ya?

Hrun0 2y ago

> Despite some HN quips, AI text detectors are pretty dependable I have never tried AI text detectors, but my impression was that they were considered unreliable?

Kiro 2y ago
They are. The author is wrong.
p_l 2y ago
If you ever dealt with horrors of "plagiarism detection" tools... It only gets worse.

dash2 2y ago

Controversial take ahead. If, as an artist, you don't want AI to eat your lunch, there's a simple solution: produce art that is better than AI. It doesn't seem surprising that the AI band here is in the metal subgenre. Some metal is great, but there are also an awful lot of mediocre, repetitive tunes and ridiculous lyrics. It's not surprising that it's easy to imitate! It's not very good! "Old Gods of Atlantis"? AI or not, that's not a promising song title. Show me some actual good art that AI has produced, then I'll worry for you.

justinclift 2y ago
> Show me some actual good art that AI has produced, then I'll worry for you. Does audio count? If so, how about the 2nd link here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40644102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40644102
- dash2 2y ago
  No, I think that is pretty bad. I mean, it's awesome that a computer can do it, and the concept of tweaking the Poe story is fine - but I suspect that is a choice made by the prompt engineer. As for the lyrics, throwing in the ember after remember/December/ember is a tolerably cute rhyme, but "my heart was aching, young and breaking" etc. is just standard, and the tune is absolutely generic. There's nothing new or interesting here except the fact that it was done by AI!
  - justinclift 2y ago
    Ahhh well, I liked it. My standards may not be at all high though. ;)
  - justinclift 2y ago
    What do you reckon of the first song ("dialectic (accept it) - Yolkhead Radio") here? https://suno.com/radio/song/e48c0ee8-24c8-459b-8d91-469dbd6fc3a5 https://suno.com/radio/song/e48c0ee8-24c8-459b-8d91-469dbd6f...

blindstitch 2y ago

The "before:" operator trick is very useful but it won't last. They have quietly phased out some of these operators and they are not supported on many google properties. The before operator is also buggy, I regularly get searches where they fuzz the date by years.