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AI generated music barred from Bandcamp

• adriand 10mo ago
  This seems like a good decision, although, is there a good way to tell if music is AI-generated? I assume that some of the music that's showing up in my Spotify feed is AI-generated but I've never noticed.
  • echelon 10mo ago
    One day soon many musicians will be using AI assistance, and many won't tell you for fear of judgment. It's like that with code and art. Purely AI anything is garbage. But AI tools in the hands of people who know what they're doing are just faster scaffolding and better plywood to build with. The framing is still mostly human expert.
    • gs17 10mo ago
      > One day soon many musicians will be using AI assistance, and many won't tell you for fear of judgment. Word on the street here in Nashville is that it's already the case. The songs getting published aren't AI-made, but there's AI assistance.
      • RobotToaster 10mo ago
        Auto tune uses a form of "AI", and has been used by most pop singers for a decade.
        • sheeh 10mo ago
          Auto tune is not what makes a song a hit. What make a song a hit is the fact that the person who injected the use of auto tune has taste. This seems to fly over the heads of many. art is about taste.
          • RevEng 10mo ago
            The same argument applies to AI generated or assisted music. Anyone can write a prompt and get a song. It takes judgement and taste to pick a good song and choose to publish it.
            • amanaplanacanal 10mo ago
              "New technologies have the tendency to replace skills with judgement – it's not what you can do that counts, but what you choose to do, and this invites everyone to start crossing boundaries." - Brian Eno
  • gs17 10mo ago
    > I assume that some of the music that's showing up in my Spotify feed is AI-generated but I've never noticed. A lot of it is now, and it's frustrating to me. The worst part is that I'm not actually anti-AI-music. There's one or two "groups" ("producers"?) I've found where it's clearly AI but they've put a lot of work into making something worth listening to, but Spotify seems to have a "this sucker will listen to the cheap stuff" flag and now I'm drowning in tracks from people who paid for Suno and think that's enough.
    • moritzwarhier 10mo ago
      I'm not sure about the flag :D but I've had pretty good results with always making sure to flag every artist in AI suggestions with "don't play". You have to visit the artist profile pages to do it though, so it remains a cat and mouse game, but I think that as long as they don't prevent it by force, doing this tends to improve the AI suggestions (of non-AI music). Similar to YouTube slop. If that would stop working, I'd cancel Spotify again. Speaking of YouTube slop, I think Spotify has had its own system of preferring cheap muzak from labels they support since before GenAI music even took off, I think. Example label: Firefly entertainment (IIRC)
  • free_bip 10mo ago
    At least for the current AI music generators, it's pretty easy to tell by ear that it's AI generated. Everything is just a little off, especially the higher frequencies. Vocals often sound indistinct, like an unholy amalgamation of thousands of people are singing instead of a single person.
    • IAmGraydon 10mo ago
      I think it would be very difficult for most people to tell that songs are generated by Suno 5. There are some interesting anomalies I can see in the spectrum and mid/side channels, like Suno music often has very little information in the side channel (what happens when you subtract the left and right channels from each other). You also commonly see the eq curve of the rhythm section shift over time throughout the song - like drums will sound normal at the beginning but end up sounding kind of under water by the end, but they are quickly improving these things. But to the layperson, many of these things are completely invisible. The most obvious tell, IMO, is the cadence of the lyrics.
      • oscaracso 10mo ago
        Does this apply to all genres or just highly produced popular music? I would not be surprised if I failed to detect an AI song as background in a television commercial, but it is difficult to imagine that anyone could fail to pick out an AI impersonation were you to slip one in to a record like 'João Voz e Violão.'
        • IAmGraydon 10mo ago
          It really depends on the style, yes. You could probably slip one into any modern pop/dance/club/EDM album and no one would know as long as the vocals sounds like the performer. For styles which are very unique with that sort of imperfect human touch that makes music so enjoyable, it would likely be obvious, at least at the moment.
  • micromacrofoot 10mo ago
    It sounds like a moral stance on its face, but honestly they probably wouldn't care if someone posted a reasonable amount of AI-generated music that was high quality enough to gain a following of listeners. This is likely a stance to prevent an individual from producing thousands of AI generated tracks and attempting to flood the zone for anyone browsing and searching. There's a lot of music on Spotify for example that tries to latch on to current trends in an attempt to get pulled into search results and recommendations.
  • spcebar 10mo ago
    It's getting very hard. At this point, lyrics are the biggest giveaway. AI generated lyrics are always awful and the delivery feels very stilted.
  • RobotToaster 10mo ago
    AI seems to struggle to produce counterpoint, especially in vocals.
  • 112233 10mo ago
    Currently it sounds like it's been through an allpass/comb filter. Complex parts, while spectrally there, do not make much sense as a real sound. Probably audio analog of the "finger salad" of early image models. I do not count of being able to tell one from another in a few months.
  • d3rockk 10mo ago
    So there's really accurate ways to detect "pure AI". The AI music detectors out there are mainly looking out for production things: -a flatness to the EQ spectrum that you wouldn't get out a properly mixed and produced piece of audio -no good stem separation, so no per-source eq (relates to above point) -change BPM mid-song -unnatural warbles at the end of every phrase -vocals will have these weird croaky voice cracks, or sound scratchier and raspier There definitely are tell-tale signs of "pure AI" in audio, but it becomes a lot more nuanced when any sort of secondary mixing/mastering/compression happens (which is the case 90% is the time in the real world- anything on YouTube/Spotify get's compressed).
• mapontosevenths 10mo ago
  Every major platform needs to also do this. They've all become overrun with literal trash.
  • officeplant 10mo ago
    Most human derived goods markets need to filter low effort attempts at monetization in general. I'm tired of going to Renn. Faire / Farmer Markets / Artist Alley Markets only to find they've started letting in "Joe Blow with a poorly configured 3d printer #35." These places have become infested with people selling the exact same piles of thingverse trash in a rainbow of colors. It sucks that a lot of these types of markets are suffering from low numbers of shoppers. They open themselves up to these plastic peddlers in desperation only to drive away customers even more.
    • derefr 10mo ago
      After 3D-print slop infested craft fairs, and fake AI-slop products infested Etsy, it's got me to wondering: is this just an evolution in an existing scummy business model? Consider how easy it would have been, any time in the last decade, to get a booth at any "local hand-made goods craft fair", selling "hand-made" copper jewelry... that you happened to buy in bulk lots off Alibaba. The jewelry was "hand-made"... kind of... by someone else, making far too little money, in sweatshop conditions, following techniques and using machines that enable them to produce hundreds at once, with no QC whatsoever. Nobody would ever guess you hadn't made the stuff yourself. They would read the lack of QC as evidence for your claim that "each piece is distinct and made to match my artistic vision in the moment." You'd put one or two of each type of piece out on the table at a time, as if those are all you have; yet as soon as one sells, you'd pull another out from the box of hundreds. I can't say for sure that this ever happens, but judging by the number of people willing to be scummy in the more modern ways... it certainly feels like it could. Honestly makes me hesitant to buy anything from a craft fair. Which is a shame.
      • emseetech 10mo ago
        With regard to Etsy, hand-made crafts don't scale so a VC-backed startup around them was never going to be able to resist this. Only hope would be a highly moderated and curated Craigslist-style website that was happy to pay the bills, pay some salaries and keep the lights on while maintaining integrity. Craft fairs, though, no excuse or reason. There should not be profit maximizing at local craft fairs. They're a bellwether for the degradation of culture.
• neom 10mo ago
  I've been having fun making stuff in Suno, I'm not a musician but I've always enjoyed "producing tracks" using Abelton and find the Suno + Abelton combo to be real magic on the weekends. I think some of the stuff I made isn't too bad and I'd love feedback on it. For a few weeks I went back and forth about uploading them to my soundcloud and resolve with this: I wouldn't have insisted we only allowed art made with MS paint on deviantART, we didn't even enforce quality (tho we highlighted) - we enforced the type of kindness that leads to learning and growth. I hope we can have places for professionals and places for people to display and play with creativity and art irrespective of the tooling. :)
  • herbturbo 10mo ago
    That’s what the sites that generate the music are for. Bandcamp is for musicians.
  • shermantanktop 10mo ago
    I am a musician, in the “accomplished amateur” category. For me, music is a never-ending journey of learning and skill-building, and I’ve come to appreciate that journey as much or more than the destination (= recording or live performance). If you gave me a one-click button to improve my skills, I’m not sure I would click it— I’d rather get there myself. I’d encourage you to dig deeper into why and how the music that is being created by those tools works.
    • neom 10mo ago
      "If you gave me a one-click button to improve my skills, I’m not sure I would click it— I’d rather get there myself." - Me too! :) I use suno to gen vocals, I use my regular teenage engineering workflow + Abelton to mix and master, I'm WAY better in Abelton than I was even 6 months ago - people have always been able to download photoshop actions and filters etc, as you said, it's more about the creative journey.
    • JohnFen 10mo ago
      > If you gave me a one-click button to improve my skills, I’m not sure I would click it— I’d rather get there myself. And I would much prefer to hear your music over machine-generated music even if the generated music is technically better performed.
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• tunesmith 10mo ago
  I think the real distinction is whether the output came from the artist's human intention, or whether someone just said "let's just see what happens!"... it's sort of impossible to reach inside the artist's brain to find out where that line is. I suppose the only test is to start with that same intention multiple times and see how widely the output varies.
  • tarentel 10mo ago
    Wasn't your intention whatever you typed in? That doesn't make you an artist and I don't want to hear the music AI made that you happened to type some words to and hit enter.
    • greygoo222 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      • jplusequalt 10mo ago
        >the rest of us will be here enjoying great music Speak for yourself.
      • Gigachad 10mo ago
        We have different definitions for great.
  • 112233 10mo ago
    Not really. If I plug up and frob-a-knob (real or emulated) eurorack at random to just see what happens, the resulting hour long noise will be described as experimental, boring, profound, piece of trash etc. (e.g. check reviews on Beaubourg by Vangelis) It is not going to be put on the same spot as AI slop. While intent of course is important, the quantity and manner of taking others' work and calling it my own, I thing, plays even bigger role. If I go "hey check out this Bohemian Rhapsody song I just created using Google Search", I do not think much regard will be given to my intent.
  • wussboy 10mo ago
• crtasm 10mo ago
  Reddit link is an official announcement, and it's also on their blog https://blog.bandcamp.com/2026/01/13/keeping-bandcamp-human/ https://blog.bandcamp.com/2026/01/13/keeping-bandcamp-human/
• hmokiguess 10mo ago
  I have a maybe unpopular opinion to share. We now sort of accepted the idea of “vibe coding”, and, even shared appreciation from people who are using it to resuscitate side projects and things they wanted to do but required a lot of work. (Heck, even Linus Torvalds is doing it). Is “Vibe Music / Art” any different? For example, I am not a drummer, say I use Suno to program some drums for me so I can record my guitar on top, and finally release that track I’ve been procrastinating. I think the analogy here holds. Not all vibe coding is good, and not all vibe art is bad.
  • echelon 10mo ago
    No, but some people really hate it for some reason. I've been attacked for saying I don't hate it, and I witness this everywhere. It's a tool. Artists and professionals can use tools. They're professionals and know how much is too much.
    • xlbuttplug2 10mo ago
      Would you have a problem if AI was no longer a tool but the artist itself (i.e. no human intervention)? People seem to have an irrational fear of being entertained by AI, equating that to admitting that it is a higher form of intelligence than their own.
      • hmokiguess 10mo ago
        I would have no problem with that. I wouldn't maybe call the AI an artist though, it wouldn't have sentient knowledge to be an artist. It would be art made by a machine. In fact, we have several of those examples already, and there's lots there are really fun and appreciated out there. This new one just happens to be quite more complex and eerie to digest at first.
    • bombdailer 10mo ago
      A stonemason who creates pieces by hand gathers more respect than one who delegates their craft to a cnc machine. No person who respects their craft will use tools that devalue their relation to their craft. Only those who seek to maximize personal gain of wealth would use such tools. Such a person, who sees merit only in the ends produced, rather than in the means themselves, does not participate in the shared history of their craft, in artistry, or in their own personal development. For a real musician, AI is already too much. For there to be meaning and soul in their music, is must be derived from the intersection of their skills and imagination, whereby the unconscious can make itself manifest in the utilization of ones virtues. Delegating this process to a black box deprives the art of its unique individual perspective that can only arise out of the finitude of human experience and learning. For though the black box may have superficial knowledge of generalizations of many such perspectives, it smooths out all paths into bland sameness. Thus no real artist of merit has any use for AI, for it is always of a lower degree than the more powerful tool that is their mind.
• olivierestsage 10mo ago
  Funny to see this right now. Spotify's promotion of AI music bothered me so much that it has actually pushed me to Bandcamp and the practice of buying music again. It's really fun to build a collection knowing you're supporting the artists, download FLAC files, organize your little "collection" page ... Feels like a renaissance in my relationship with music, the most fun I've had since what.cd. Anyway, love this stance they're taking.
  • vjerancrnjak 10mo ago
    I miss what.cd, bandcamp almost a replacement
    • 2bewithu 10mo ago
      [dead]
    • devilcius 10mo ago
      There's is a quite solid alternative to what.cd: https://interviewfor.red/en/index.html https://interviewfor.red/en/index.html
      • MarcelOlsz 10mo ago
        There's also Orpheus.network which is fantastic, gazelle based as well.
      • felixg3 10mo ago
        Is it easy to get in as a former what cd power user rank? I found my old rippy stickers from what.cd and missed that community so much. Ptp is great and alive though.
        • SirMaster 10mo ago
          Just take the interview on IRC, the questions are a piece of cake for anyone even a little familiar with audio formats and torrent trackers.
• CrzyLngPwd 10mo ago
  We banned AI slop in 2022, and whilst it has been challenging, I believe that only allowing authentic human-created content is the future.
• antibull 10mo ago
  [dead]
• throwaway2046 10mo ago
  I've encountered a few artists who partially used AI in their music making process and the results have been incredible, I would hate to see them banned when grouped with people making completely AI-generated slop... Perhaps a middle ground could be reached? Allow AI generated audio as long as it undergoes significant processing by humans, for example.
  • cardanome 10mo ago
    They are free to use AI and they are free to post their music on other sides that allow AI. I think you need hard rules to make it not completely subjective.
    • throwaway2046 10mo ago
      From the original post: We reserve the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI generated. Sounds completely subjective if you ask me.
      • AJ007 10mo ago
        "Your band was formed after 2023, we will ignore you even if you aren't AI" By the end of 2026 the AI/no-AI thing is debate is going to be dead because there will be no way to know the difference. This is almost true right now, it just is going to take the general public a while to catch up. One distinction which could be made: I would like to see bands that are humans because I want to physically attend and enjoy concerts. If the "artist" has never played a concert I don't want to listen to them. Which expands a whole new grey area..
  • sheeh 10mo ago
    Nah
• montebicyclelo 10mo ago
  For an example of an AI generated song that's gone viral in the last few days, getting millions of views on Spotify / Youtube, see this post from earlier today: "Tell HN: Viral Hit Made by AI, 10M listens on Spotify last few days" [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46600681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46600681
  • afro88 10mo ago
    This is quite sad, in that the fact that it's AI generated is hidden in the disclaimer and nearly all of the comments think it's a real human.
• AnotherGoodName 10mo ago
  I suspect it's honestly a huge threat. Ok maybe you have the opinion that it's all crap right now. That's fine. But pretend it gets good. Pretend that instead of bothering with bands at some point in the future you just generate music to your tastes on the fly all the time. Where does that leave Bandcamp? Do they market themselves as "fresh organic music" and live in that niche? What good does all the rights music companies own do if music generates on the fly? I suspect a huge amount of lobbying incoming asap to stop this. Perhaps a law against AI generated music that's not owned by the RIAA? You might not like AI generated music but you should be very very cautious of those fighting it.
  • miltonlost 10mo ago
    > Pretend that instead of bothering with bands at some point in the future you just generate music to your tastes on the fly all the time. As someone who enjoys live music, I would still need a live band to play this on-the-fly generated music. I guess then you'll trot out AI holograms! but that sounds still as unappealing as your base case.
  • anigbrowl 10mo ago
    you just generate music to your tastes on the fly all the time This might work for people who like music as wallpaper to help them study or drown out external distractions, but none of it is going to evoke much feeling or stir memories. It's like calling chewing gum food.
• vindex10 10mo ago
  They sent AI generated music away to Bannedcamp.
• ceroxylon 10mo ago
  It will be interesting to see how/where the line is drawn on "in substantial part", considering that Logic Pro lets you click a button and adjust some sliders to add an (awful, imo) drum/instrument played by AI to your track.
  • oofbey 10mo ago
    This is IMHO an impossible line to draw. If an established artist uses a GenAI music tool it would be accepted. If somebody unpublished does the same it wouldn’t. Assuming they can even tell the difference, which they can’t.
  • terminalbraid 10mo ago
    But that's absolutely not generative AI (which bandcamp explicitly stated the policy is for) and it's not even classifiable as traditional AI. The session tracks are just some base patterns selected by sliders attached to options adjust stuff like "play these notes in an inverted chord".
    • raphman 10mo ago
      Hmm, a few years ago, such a feature would have been called "AI" in marketing materials, no? Aren't all current GenAI tools in some way "just some base patterns selected by sliders attached to options adjust stuff" - only the 'base patterns' are some weights in a neural network.
• thorum 10mo ago
  Can’t imagine this policy lasts more than a year or two given the rate that AI tools for music are improving. Once the tech can reliably create high quality dry stems of instruments, backing tracks etc. and automate professional-sounding production work (which most musicians do not currently have access to) everyone is going to be using it even if they won’t admit it publicly.
  • bopbopbop7 10mo ago
    Just a couple more months and a couple more trillion dollars to Altman!
  • nottorp 10mo ago
    Some people are cursed with being able to recognize reuse or samey backing tracks...
  • falloutx 10mo ago
    Why would quality matter, You make a image from Google AI and its instantly marked as Synth ID. It can be easily detected and thrown out if you want to keep the site AI free. We would need AI free places now that AI is so easy and cheap to produce.
    • daedrdev 10mo ago
      People can just run it themselves and some tracks would not be detected
• newman8r 10mo ago
  If I have an exact idea of what I want something to sound like, and I'm able to use an automated system to create that, is that creative expression? Obviously AI isn't entirely capable of that, but eventually with BCI devices it might be. I've spent many hours learning to play guitar and ukulele but I'm really not very good, and probably never will be - but I can hear the music in my head I want to create. I'm not interested in monetary gain at all, just being able to hear it for real and maybe share it with some people.
  • csours 10mo ago
    I feel like there's a difference between AI used as a tool and AI used to make slop. Also, most AI music has weird noise in it that drives me insane. I have to imagine* that we will figure out what that difference is, but it will be difficult and costly. * I have to imagine that or else I will lose all hope in the future.
    • d3rockk 10mo ago
      Fear not- there is research in this area~ https://caniphish.com/blog/how-to-spot-ai-audio https://caniphish.com/blog/how-to-spot-ai-audio https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/help-information/site-moderation/how-to-detect-ai-audio https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/help-information/site-modera... even coded detectors exist https://www.submithub.com/ai-song-checker?id=09f25ee7913a4154 https://www.submithub.com/ai-song-checker?id=09f25ee7913a415...
      • recursive 10mo ago
        If a detector can exist, it can be used adversarially without a human in the loop to defeat itself.
    • zaptrem 10mo ago
      I’m a founder of one of these AI music companies and that noise you’re describing (it differs between co’s for us it’s loud vocals, for Suno it’s vocal aliasing/sandiness and mushy instrumentals, etc) is exactly why I think these songs should not be going on Spotify/etc. We’ll have this (and the corny lyrics issue) mostly fixed in a month or so, then it mostly becomes a recommendations problem. For example, TikTok is filled with slop, but it’s not a problem - their algorithm helps the most creative/engaging stuff rise to the top. If Spotify is giving you Suno slop in your discover weekly (or really crappy 100% organic free range AI-free slop) blame Spotify, not the AI or the creators. There are really high effort and original creations that involve AI that deserve to be heard, though. I suggest going back and listening to some of the first experimental electronic music. The tools have improved a lot since then and people have used them to do really cool things, even spawning countless genres.
• habibur 10mo ago
  I am on the opposite side. For the last few months I don't listen to music unless it's AI generate. I can feel the difference.
  • bombdailer 10mo ago
    Do you feel the veins transforming into wires?
• LTL_FTC 10mo ago
  Not a musician (dabble with the guitar from time to time but I do absolutely love music) and don’t make music but one of my best friends growing up has been playing instruments forever. He writes songs and song lyrics. He has started a YouTube channel and shares some of the music he makes, and it sounds really great. I am amazed sometimes how great. But he puts in lots of effort to craft these songs and lyrics. They are not “one-shot” prompts. If we look at this through the lens of making software with ai, which also allows for creativity, blanket bans may keep lots of quality stuff from being made. How will the tracks be distinguished? Any ai and you’re out?
  • NitpickLawyer 10mo ago
    This is just a fad. The platforms will soon learn that the vocal minority is not necessarily their best customer. And then they'll slowly / quietly revert their bans or stop enforcing them. If people listen to music, they like the music, and it can come from wherever. Gatekeeping never works.
    • Palomides 10mo ago
      why do you think a majority of bandcamp users want AI music?
    • LTL_FTC 10mo ago
      These are my thoughts exactly. If people enjoy the music, they will listen to it. If they don't, they wont.
      • cess11 10mo ago
        They can get their "AI" music in many other places, there's no reason for Bandcamp specifically to provide it. As of yet Bandcamp hasn't tried to become an 'everything is here' kind of distributor, but rather more tailored to small, niche, quality &c. artists, and not consumers. Kind of the opposite to Spotify.
    • sensanaty 10mo ago
      How would this be a vocal minority on a website like Bandcamp, whose whole mission statement is to let people support their favorite artists directly? I'm sure there genuinely are lots of people out there who would enjoy AI-generated music, but I very much doubt there's a huge crowd of them on Bandcamp, if for no reason other than ideological.
• BrokrnAlgorithm 10mo ago
  I'm a musician, but am also pretty amused by this anti ai wave. There was recently a post referencing aphex twin and old school idm and electronic music stuff and i can't help bein reminded how every new tech kit got always demonized until some group of artists came along and made it there own. Even if its just creative prompting, or perhaps custom trained models, someday someone will come along and make a genuine artistic viable piece of work using ai. I'd pay for some app which allows be to dump all my ableton files into, train some transformer on it, just to synthesize new stuff out of my unfinished body of work. It will happen and all lines will get blurred again, as usual.
  • greygoo222 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    • arjie 10mo ago
      The various lo-fi channels are also likely carrying heavily AI-generated music and it's actually kind of fine. The 'pieces' seem like undifferentiated background music of a certain mood, which is often what I'm looking for while I'm doing something else. Previously, search was such a big problem. For instance, I'm not big on hip-hop and so on but I like songs like Worst Comes To Worst by Dilated Peoples. I've searched in all sorts of ways for other songs like that and come up with a handful of examples. Likewise, I want the vibe of Thick As A Brick by Jethro Tull during various parts. It's hard to find this kind of stuff. But Suno.ai can generate that boom-bap vibe pretty easily and it's not the kind of thing where I'm going to put the same song on all the time like I do with the Dilated Peoples one, but it's good enough to listen to while I'm working.
  • jplusequalt 10mo ago
    >someday someone will come along and make a genuine artistic viable piece of work using ai And in the mean time, AI will continue to clutter creative spaces and drown out actual hardworking artists, and people like you will co-opt what it means to be an artist by using tools that were trained on their work without consent.
• JodieBenitez 10mo ago
  Well... they'll have to clean their content because unfortunately there is already lots of AI generated music at Bandcamp
• dyauspitr 10mo ago
  How would they know? A lot of the new stuff is pretty indistinguishable from regular music with the AI adding imperfections like a recorded album would have.
• KaiMagnus 10mo ago
  Completely understandable. I had this opinion for a long time, but only recently was I personally affected, but that made me even more convinced. I was listening to my new releases playlist on Apple Music and listened to a track that sounded nice, but also a little generic. I don’t know exactly what prompted me to check, but it had all the signs of something fishy going on like generic cover image, the artist page showed a crazy output of singles last year (all the same generic images), unspecific metadata and - to my surprise - I found other Reddit posts about this artist being AI. Now, a lot of music is generic and goes through so many hands you can hardly call it a personal piece of art. But even then, there’s always some kind of connection. I guess that’s why I felt betrayed. I thought AI generated art was wrong before, but I didn’t expect to feel this mix of anger and disappointment.
  • JohnFen 10mo ago
    Yeah, I agree. For me, music (like all fine art) is about human connection. It's the artist telling me something human and personal. It's not entirely about the aesthetics of the music. The provenance of the art is very important. If I feel that connection with a song and it turns out that the song wasn't made by a person (it hasn't happened yet as far as I know), I have been deceived and would be furious. A song made by a person using AI as tool (rather than to generate the music) is different. What matters is that the song is actually an expression of humanity, not the tools used to make it. However, the presence of AI-generated music means that I am not really willing to buy music anymore unless it's either a few years old or I'm buying it at the merch table the artist has at a live performance.
  • jatora 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    • roywiggins 10mo ago
      They literally thought it was odd and generic, checked, and found it was AI and got pissed off. How is that "emotional cope"? They correctly guessed something was weird about it based on how it sounded!
• bethekidyouwant 10mo ago
  Irrelevant platform says irrelevant thing. Also let people like or dislike things. Maybe we could pick if we want AI content or not. (it’s a no from me personally ) but I feel like the ban hammer is the tool of petty tyrants and lacks creativity and nuance
  • strangecasts 10mo ago
    They handle a lot of sales [1], I do not think they can be called irrelevant under any reasonable definition of the word: > In the past year alone, [customers] spent $208 million on 14.6 million digital albums, 11.2 million tracks, 1.55 million vinyl records, 800,000 CDs, 250,000 cassettes, and 50,000 t-shirts. [1] https://bandcamp.com/about https://bandcamp.com/about
  • sodapopcan 10mo ago
    It's their platform, they can do whatever they want. Not everything has to be everything for everybody. And if you think they're irrelevant why would bother wasting your time commenting?
  • frm88 10mo ago
    They operate internationally which means adhering to a plethora of copyright laws. So, if someone published an AI generated remake of a copyrighted song, they'd be liable. With the vast amount of AI generated music incoming, I think part of this announcement is self-defence.
• marsven_422 10mo ago
  [dead]
• z7 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  • jatora 10mo ago
    and that is why policies like this will turn platforms into dinosaurs. no need to care. large behemoths always thrash a lot as they die. as do the people who see this as a positive thing. ai music will be the future and create curated music for every user, specific to their tastes at that moment, for pennies. suno already matches 99% of music in quality and creativity. the last 1% and beyond will come soon enough.
    • hooverd 10mo ago
      having a shared reality is good actually
      • jatora 10mo ago
        Sorry I dont understand what you're referring to, can you elaborate?
  • roywiggins 10mo ago
    I think you may be operating under an extremely unusual definition of "racism."
• don-code 10mo ago
  A few months ago I spoke with the frontman of a local Boston band from the 1980s, who recently re-released a single with the help of AI. The source material was a compact cassette tape from a demo, found in a drawer. He used AI to isolate what would've been individual tracks from the recording, then cleaned them up individually, without AI's help. Does that constitute "wholly or in substantial part"? Would the track have existed were it not for having that easy route into re-mastering? I understand what Bandcamp's trying to do here, and I generally am in support of removing what we'd recognize as "fully AI-generated music", but there are legitimate creative uses of AI that might come to wholly or substantially encompass the output. It's difficult to draw any lines line on a creative work, by just by nature of the work being creative. (For those interested - check out O Positive's "With You" on the WERS Live at 75 album!)
  • amanaplanacanal 10mo ago
    That feels legit to me. We have been using software to isolate individual instruments from a recording for a while.
    • nottorp 10mo ago
      The question doesn't feel legit to me though. The OP somehow found the one justifiable example among a sea of AI slop. Justifiable because there were some filters. That may not even have been "AI". They may have been some deterministic algorithms that the software maker has to label "AI" because they otherwise think it won't sell...
      • ml_giant 10mo ago
        Seems to me like he just wanted to advertise that song.
      • sigmar 10mo ago
        I've done audio engineering as a hobby. Even a decade ago, verbiage like "ai noise reduction" was very common. Of course that was RNNs, not transformers. But I think they have a valid point. I googled and found this 2017 post about iZotope integrating machine learning: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/what-the-machine-learning-in-rx-6-advanced-means-for-the-future-of-audio-repair-technology https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/what-the-machine-learning-i...
• rapsacnz 10mo ago
  wohooo!
• JohnFen 10mo ago
  Bandcamp is my main source of music online, and this makes me love it even more.
• throw_m239339 10mo ago
  Good. Although It's gonna be tough to enforce. > Our guidelines for generative AI in music and audio are as follows: > Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp. > Any use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles is strictly prohibited in accordance with our existing policies prohibiting impersonation and intellectual property infringement. Which is balanced. It means that you can still use Illugen to generate a drum sample for instance, but you can't just generate a whole track on SUNO and just upload it on Bandcamp.
• sharkjacobs 10mo ago
  I'm not ideologically opposed to making music with AI, but the dream would be new songs which which showcase the new sounds and musical forms that AI enables, like Believe for autotune, or Rumble for electric guitar, or Autobahn for synths. I want a friend to message me like "Hey, there's some interesting stuff happening in the AI music scene, check out these tracks". But everything I've seen is pastiche, either novelty songs (hit song as different genre, or famous monologue from popular movie as pop song) or generic background music meant for algorithmic streaming playlists.
  • terminalbraid 10mo ago
    > new sounds and musical forms Has it done this? Or does it just make things that sound like what it's trained on?
    • sharkjacobs 10mo ago
      That's why it's the dream. I mean, even if it's just a pastiche machine, I do believe that people could use it to make new and interesting music, just like they did with sampling. But yeah, music is so accessible and there is so much new music all the time that if all, or most, of what AI is being used for is to make even more of the same stuff we're already awash in then banning it is necessary curation.
  • riedel 10mo ago
    I don't know if this really counts as art but there are existing AI music that are at least though provoking funny like https://kommandointernet.bandcamp.com/ https://kommandointernet.bandcamp.com/ It is German but there is really funny remixes combining Mallorca Party music (a German music genre of its own) with anti fascist themes. They manage to make fun of both without being IMHO totally alienating both subcultures, which could count as art. IMHO such things would not really be possible without AI. Would be really disappointed if this disappeared from BC.
  • cigar_cigar 10mo ago
    I'm a moderately frequent user of Suno and have encountered some unusual AI-generated effects that I've not come across before in more traditionally synthesized music. One is when it attempts to generate vocals without a lyrics prompt. It's gibberish but just on the edge of comprehensibility. Sometimes it'll be entirely spoken word with no accompaniment. Very uncanny. Another is transitioning between vocals and instrument in the same melody line. Like a humanesque voice holding a steady note at the end of a verse which seamlessly transitions into a saxophone sound and proceeds into a solo. Or vice versa, an instrumental morphing into a voice. Finally is when the generation goes wrong and it starts spitting out absolute nonsensical sounds with no rhythm or melody, in a uniquely fragmented way I can't really describe. It feels like seeing the musical matrix, the inner thoughts of the AI. Now I've written all that out and had a think about it, I'm tempted to sample these oddities and try to make something more structured out of them.
• fallinditch 10mo ago
  At first I was just curious, and unimpressed with the horridly bland shite coming out of these AI music generators. But then I made a prompt that sparked some kind of magic, so now I want to finish off that track just to see if I can end up with something that I consider good. I don't hold it much hope for this track because everything else I've heard on suno and udio are rubbish, but the 1 minute preview I have is enticing me to spend 8 bucks just so I can experiment a bit more. I feel somewhat conflicted by my fascination because I have a great love for music and I wholeheartedly support efforts to restrict AI music crap. But as the tools mature, the creative possibilities to make new sounds with finer control and granularity will make the process more ... creative - with greater human input. I'm sure we'll end up with new styles and maybe even new genres that originate from prompts, and hits too. Is this a good thing to look forward to? I can see my future listening habits become strictly human only, but dang, the start of my new track sounds so dope! I applaud Bandcamp's stance here and I will always look for ways to meaningfully support real musicians.
  • wincy 10mo ago
    I’m not going to listen to people poo poohing what I’ve been doing with Suno, my seven year old and I rocked out to a song that took me less time to make than it took to listen to about my character’s D&D adventure last night. I’m just having fun. The big secret right now is Suno will output good stuff but then it’s tortuous to get the lyrics to line up if you want to change anything, or add a word, it screws up the entire flow of the song all the way through. I spent 5 minutes making a 6 minute long power metal style song about a Druid fighting a dragon, then two hours unsuccessfully trying to get one with slightly more coherent lyrics and it output like 8 songs that sound terrible in a way I can’t quite put my finger on. The one song I tortured into existence took me 5 hours of work after getting a rough draft. That said, being able to instantly make a song to tell my kids they need to clean the living room before we open presents and them singing the chorus happily for weeks after is just this great unique memory we have. Bespoke songs just for us is one of the coolest things ever and no amount of grumbling from anyone can dissuade me from it.
    • SchemaLoad 10mo ago
• puzu 10mo ago
  I am not against AI art but this would better to be contained in specific platforms, you could browse Suno for AI music and Bandcamp for human music. You would'nt display some generative art piece next to a Rembrandt. Also, Bandcamp could enshittified by a flood of AI music and change the fees or terms, so please no.
• fzeroracer 10mo ago
  I feel like the thing like you can easily divide things along the lines of 'art' vs 'consumption'. A lot of people including myself enjoy music because it's so intimately human, the flaws and all. It's someone putting a bit of themselves into every piece they create, and people look for things that resonate with them. AI music however is purely about consumption. It's not something made to be remembered or cherished. And the more you integrate it into your music, the less and less of yourself you put into it and the less reason for anyone to bother. I could just ask whatever AI to generate generic rock music inspired by the beatles and remove you from the equation entirely and have the same experience. Everything gets amalgamated into the exact same thing with all of the imperfections sheared away.
  • parpfish 10mo ago
    I think we need to start distinguishing between art-music and utilitarian-music. Art-music is made by humans as a way of expressing yourself and making human connections. Utilitarian-music can be made by humans or machines and is there to serve a purpose. Background music for the elevator or while you’re on hold. An ambient soundscape that you play in an airport terminal. It’s not meant to move people, it’s just there to fill silence.
    • meindnoch 10mo ago
      We already have a term for this: muzak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzak
    • bombdailer 10mo ago
      Artists of worth can do both, like Brian Eno with Music for Airports https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNwYtllyt3Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNwYtllyt3Q
• nunez 10mo ago
  Man, I friggin' love Bandcamp. I hope Apple Music follows suit. (I don't expect Spotify to.)
• meindnoch 10mo ago
  Good decision. Bandcamp makes money from people who consciously avoided the streaming shitfest in favor of directly supporting the artists. Hardly surprising that their have a strong aversion to AI slop.
• 999900000999 10mo ago
  I support this. However, what if I use AI to generate a simple sine wave. Then I map it to a keyboard and play it with different notes. Who's going to define what's ok.
• datsci_est_2015 10mo ago
  /find in page “discovery”, 0 results A little shocked. The biggest issue with music streaming right now is, imo, discovery. Algorithmic discovery is cute, but there’s a perverse incentive for companies who provide discovery services (ie Spotify) to funnel users to artists that cost less (ie AI generated in-house). There’s also the fact that flooding the market with AI music slop _also_ makes discovery even harder. Tried-and-true methods for discovery over the past decades are network effects (artists featuring and collaborating), and niche label A&R. However, Spotify has no interest, or incentive, to allow users to explore these avenues for discovery. So, kudos to Bandcamp. But with better discovery this wouldn’t be necessary. Finally, anecdotally, as someone in the top percentile of listeners for several niche genres on Spotify, I’ve yet to hear AI generated music that isn’t crap. Whenever it gets recommended to me by Spotify I reach for my phone, see that I don’t recognize the artist, and then see that they’re self-published on Spotify with a few hundred listeners. I guess if you don’t have any taste you might not notice, but it’s painfully obvious for anyone who is familiar enough to recognize themes, callbacks, and instrumentation within a genre.
• justarandomname 10mo ago
  Hell yes, I love this and bandcamp so much more for this stance! So many creator platforms are becoming slop factories.
• RIMR 10mo ago
  AI-generated music is novel, but like images and videos, I think of it almost exclusively as a novelty. I haven't heard any AI-generated music that I like in a real way. Just stuff that sounds like something I like. The real value AI has for music is discovery. I've been using Gemini and ChatGPT to build playlists based on music I already like, and discovering lots of fun new tracks. I can be really specific about what kind of music I like and don't like. I can show it a playlist I already made, and ask it to make one like it, but with completely different artists. It's insanely useful! But these kinds of tools would just expand how many different artists Spotify has to pay from my streaming, and that doesn't do the same thing as shoving cheap mass-produced slop down our throats, so it isn't surprising what they offer us.
• NickC25 10mo ago
  I've been micro-sampling AI "covers" or "re-imaginations in a new genre" of certain pieces of music. For making house/4x4 type music, it's actually pretty fun. Once you chop something and repitch it enough, no algorithm can pick up on what song it is you are sampling if the AI track is way off from the original piece. No way would I actually try to monetize it, though.
• jedberg 10mo ago
  I worry that as technologists we are over indexing on accusing things of being AI. I worry about policies like this where they will remove suspected AI content without investigation. Case in point, the other day I made a comment on reddit. I spent about 10 minutes writing it. I used proper grammar, bullet points, clean formatting, and em dashes, as I've been doing for many years. I immediately got downvoted and sent multiple PMs about "not posting AI slop". I didn't use AI at all to write that comment. It just looked like AI because it was well formed and researched. So am I supposed to add errors just to make it look "human"? But also, how do I even prove I wrote it without AI? I'm not entirely sure how to solve this problem.
  • Anamon 10mo ago
    Fellow user of en dashes here. I also try to use proper grammar to the best of my abilities, and I feel your frustration. So far I've resisted giving in. Something about "those AI bros can grab my ellipses from my cold, dead typing fingers." But I have already caught myself deliberately leaving in a typo when checking over an e-mail before sending it, thinking it makes it less likely to set off AIdars, which is very strange for a perfectionist like me. I don't have the solution ready either, but if I had to guess, it would be a return to more heavily moderated, closed communities where people have a reasonable expectation to be interacting with real people. It's not foolproof but maybe more manageable. We had trolls and stupid bots on Usenet and IRC as well, after all, and it kind of worked.
• 1zael 10mo ago
  This is dumb. The solution for all music platforms should be to add a label for AI-generated tracks or artists so users clearly can disambiguate. It's frivolous to prevent someone from enjoying a piece of art whether AI or human. Furthermore, the line is blurred between what constitutes human vs AI development of music. Most producers today use pre-packaged samples, sequencers, and tracks to generate derivatives. Sure, they might manually have to mess around with Ableton to do so, but the line is already blurred.
  • Anamon 10mo ago
    I suspect the problem is scale. AI slop can be churned out at an unprecedented rate, and Bandcamp is not a big company, but they'd have to host and serve all of that stuff nonetheless.
    • 1zael 10mo ago
      Agreed that is a valid problem, though it's solvable and IMO worth solving.
• nipperkinfeet 10mo ago
  Good news! It just degrades the quality of service. Now its hard to separate AI music in Spotify.
• usernamed7 10mo ago
  I wish youtube would also take action. So much of my recommendations for music is just AI slop now. I'd be OK if they flagged videos as AI and let me block them. At first I was open to the idea of AI synthwave as a thing but now it's just gotten out of hand and every day i am flagging new channels to not be recommended.
• UncleOxidant 10mo ago
  It's not always obvious anymore what music is AI generated. And it will likely get harder to determine. I wonder if this kind of policy is going to lead to artists who are not using AI to be accused of doing so?
• whatsupdog 10mo ago
  Understandable. But the question I don't see anyone asking, and I really want answered, is how will they identity? I'm not a good singer at all. Recently I wrote a song, uploaded the music to Suno and it created nice music and composition. I downloaded the individual layers of music, sent the vocal to another app that changed it to my voice. Put everything together and it sounds like me singing.
  • pixl97 10mo ago
    Some of the AI applications may sign the data in a purposefully detectable way. Other than that no idea. With this said, this may be more of a reason to get rid of the AI trash slop that scammers use to attempt to make money, gum up the platform with, and not actually ban people that make decently good AI based songs.
• akst 10mo ago
  I think bandcamp might be one of the first places I saw AI generated music. But this was before ChatGPT or Crayon
• bongodongobob 10mo ago
  [dead]
• joshcsimmons 10mo ago
  lol strange line in the sand to draw. Izotope Ozone uses AI to mix and master - for some reason that’s okay but you can’t actually generate the sounds with AI? Or what if I generate the notes with AI then use my own synth presets is that allowed? https://www.izotope.com/en/products/ozone https://www.izotope.com/en/products/ozone
  • scoofy 10mo ago
    I'd be like a bookstore banning "AI books." Like, yea, you can probably use AI in making your book and they'll sell it, but they're mainly targeting users who just happen to be publishing a book every single week, or day, or hour. At a certain resolution it's not actually the artist doing the work.
  • julianh95 10mo ago
    I think you might be confusing Izotope the company with the band named Izotope.
    • Kye 10mo ago
      I don't see any confusion. Ozone is a mixing and mastering tool with buttons to find the best settings using ML, from the company Izotope. People who use it use something that the company calls AI. Where does the band come in to this?
      • julianh95 10mo ago
        I believe their comment was edited after mine to include “Ozone” after Izotope. I commented because there is an artist on bandcamp with the name Izotope which I assumed was why they mentioned Izotope in the first place.
• hsuduebc2 10mo ago
  This will filter out only the worst ai slop. Better music generators are fairly undistinguishable.
• rendaw 10mo ago
  I'm really not sure about this. I love art, I'm an avid collector of all sorts of things, and I hate "AI art". I've skipped over multiple suno albums, when something feels vaguely AI-ish I'll dig to see if it's denied/acknowledged anywhere. But I think Bandcamp has some value for being a place where anyone can publish their music. The statement is basically "We're banning AI because we don't like it." I feel like this is creating a rift or a battle where one was totally unnecessary. People who publish slop are probably also people who like music and buy music themselves. Whenever there's a guideline like this there will be false positives in enforcement. There's already tons of non-AI slop on bandcamp (plunderphonics, plagiarized stuff, 30 minutes of 10 people playing random notes on their instruments cacaphonic contemporary classical, ambient that's one chord for 60 minutes, etc). And the only people who this affects are the 10 people using Bandcamp's terrible music discovery services (I'm one).
  • Anamon 10mo ago
    This may also be a financial decision. Bandcamp is not a huge player compared to Spotify, Google, or Apple. Deezer said more than a third of new music uploads are GenAI now. If AI slop starts outnumbering real musicians' uploads 10 to 1, 100 to 1, or 1000 to one, which doesn't seem so far out there given the complete lack of talent, effort, or experience required to generate it, how would a site like Bandcamp pay for storing and processing all that data? They may have no choice but more rigorous curation. Also, it's kind of antithetical to the purpose of Bandcamp. As you say, a place where anyone can publish music - but that's true for Spotify et al. these days, too. Bandcamp was always about a more direct connection to the artists, so it makes sense that they want their site to be about actual flesh-and-blood artists who have put sweat into their work.
• ianks 10mo ago
  Personally, I just don’t find myself interested at all in AI generated music. Don’t think I’m alone here, either. I suspect there will soon be a streaming platform whose sole value is to maintain a catalog of verified human music. Pretty easy problem to solve.
• venturecruelty 10mo ago
  Good. Ban the slop everywhere.
• lovehashbrowns 10mo ago
  I love this decision from Bandcamp. If you have seen sites like DeviantArt collapse because of AI generated trash you’ll know what it’s like for these services to completely collapse under the flood of inauthentic AI slop. They become unusable. I ended up deleting my DA last year and it looks like I’ll continue to be a Bandcamp user for many more years. I’ve found a bunch of my favorite bands from Bandcamp! No Point in Living, Iapetus, Unreqvited! Just to name a few.
• franze 10mo ago
  I love generating AI generated music. I dont care listening to AI generated music by others.
• foresto 10mo ago
  I recently learned about Bandcamp Fridays: "on which we waive our revenue share and pass the funds directly to artists & labels" https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/bandcamp-fridays https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/bandcamp-fridays I'm still sad about the company's sale to Epic and then Songtradr, but glad to see that the service hasn't turned to garbage yet.
  • Semaphor 10mo ago
    Convenient helper site: https://isitbandcampfriday.com/ https://isitbandcampfriday.com/ I usually buy stuff on release day, but when I find older albums (or the rare ones I preorder), I wishlist them to get on BC Friday
• webprofusion 10mo ago
  So where's the line? - if I use computer generated drums is that banned? Lots of tunes use computers for drums - if I use computer generated vocals is that different? Lots of vocals are heavily processed an have been for decades. Some have been computer generated.
  • webprofusion 10mo ago
    My 2c : automatically disliking something because a computer did part of it is at best lazy, at worst wrong, but it should be up to individuals what they do and don't like. I get that they just want to have a ban-hammer to punish bots with, that's understandable.
• somenameforme 10mo ago
  I wonder if YouTube is next; not just AI music, but videos. My recommendations are getting completely hijacked by AI generated garbage filled with comments complaining about the exact same thing. Ironically their algorithm is probably currently promoting that as 'engagement.' I see no way that this isn't greatly diminishing the overall 'value' of YouTube. At the minimum they're going to need to start downranking AI generated stuff hard.
  • Auracle 10mo ago
    I look at TikTok for a few minutes perhaps every six months or so. I did that a few weeks ago and it seemed like half of the stuff it was showing me were AI ring doorbell/dashcam/etc. type stuff. I have nothing against AI - my computer is doing text-to-image training most nights. However, the kind of videos it was showing me are only entertaining if they’re real. I don’t care to see a fake dog scare away a fake bear from a kid, and I doubt others do either. However, most people probably can’t tell and think it’s real. That’s only going to get worse. I don’t know where that leaves us. Music? I’m not sure where I land.
  • das_keyboard 10mo ago
    My prediction is that YouTube will do the opposite. Completely embrace AI content (mostly short-form) and inject their own generated clips. Having short form content that captures users without having to pay shares to content creators seems to a believable goal for the service
    • somenameforme 10mo ago
      I had pretty much the exact same experience as the peer comment in this thread. They were videos I was interested in, or at least got clickbaited into, but the fact that they were AI generated destroyed their value. At scale I think the most likely outcome of this is not that people embrace AI for this sort of stuff, but rather that it also destroys the value of genuine content by making people doubtful of the authenticity of anything that seems improbable.
• mxmilkiib 10mo ago
  uh-oh https://skullvomit.bandcamp.com/track/ai-generated-music-poopie-mix https://skullvomit.bandcamp.com/track/ai-generated-music-poo...
• maomaomiumiu 10mo ago
  I think the real issue isn’t AI music itself, but transparency and incentives. If people know what they’re listening to and how it was made, they can decide for themselves. Problems start when AI-generated tracks are mixed into recommendations without clear labeling or context. A good song can still be a good song — but trust in the platform matters.
  • narrowtux 10mo ago
    Everybody who cares about music will immediately turn off recommended music with AI. Of course they're not transparent about it.
  • entuno 10mo ago
    Does this same argument not apply to other areas of music though? By that line of reasoning, should sites not also have to declare whether they used synthesisers rather than real instruments, or autotune for vocals, or all kinds of other things like that so that the listeners can make informed decisions?
    • djeastm 10mo ago
      I don't think any consumer would object to that. Typically the instrument thing is already handled in the "liner notes" (or the digital equivalent). It'd be nice to see a disclaimer for auto-tune as well.
• jones89176 10mo ago
  unfortunately in German, but here's a recent talk on how to self-host your won music streaming: https://media.ccc.de/v/gpn23-153-tschss-spotify-und-co-self-hosted-musik-streaming-vol-2 https://media.ccc.de/v/gpn23-153-tschss-spotify-und-co-self-... you can scroll through the slides to get the idea
• davidgerard 10mo ago
  My first guess is this is about spam and Bandcamp only having so many petabytes of backed-up disk.
• Aldipower 10mo ago
  For comparison, as an artist, I made 90 Euros on Bandcamp in December and 0.08 Eurocent on all other streaming platforms together! :-D
  • Anamon 10mo ago
    I will always check Bandcamp before buying digital music anywhere else, under the assumption that more goes to the artists. I'm glad to hear that that's not just wishful thinking!
• possibleworlds 10mo ago
  As someone whose hobby is collecting and listening to music, who has spent huge amounts of money and time on the hobby, this is fantastic news.
• interludead 10mo ago
  This feels like a sensible line to draw
• saos 10mo ago
  I wish spotify would do this. Ive come across so much AI generated podcasts attempting to pump a stock. So fustrating.
• DiskoHexyl 10mo ago
  With this recent trend of a license-free or even AI-generated music, I doubt that they even have the incentive to give way to those smaller and less popular bands (the well-knowns are going to be just fine anyway) that were the reason I came to music streaming in the first place. Discovery of a new stuff- the niche, the unknown. Some part-time band from another side of the globe with 10k listens, but whose music is something that makes ME feel. This didn't really work all that well before streaming came about- record stores in my city were small, and their selection included either the classics, or the current top-10. Friends and radio helped a bit, but not so much with the really obscure pieces or even entire genres. So on one hand, with self-hosting Navidrome I can't be happier and have actually started discovering the music I've long stince forgotten or just the less popular pieces of the musicians that I already enjoy (because you buy and rip the entire CD, not just the most popular song of the album, and those songs are then being played at random). The only problem is how to find something new? Do I go to internet radio-stations somewhere? Or to curated playlists? Or maybe there's an open recommendation system somewhere?
• utopiah 10mo ago
  Neat, my current setup is : - stream from FIP.fr via cvlc - when I absolutely love a tune, buy on Bandcamp - if it's not available or I bought it elsewhere, e.g. old CD, then get from Soulseek - scp my ~/Music directory on my mobile phone I tried LMS for few weeks but honestly just plain VLC is enough for me. Anyway, point is, this decision makes me want to buy from Bandcamp even more.
• gmd63 10mo ago
  The fuss about AI is interesting to me in music. The most popular and commercially successful artists are already basically using "AI" by having teams of people produce their ideas for them, if they're not outright buying a hit from someone like Max Martin. If you watch Timbaland's Masterclass, he is essentially squeaking noises into a mic which his underlings toil away with and produce into beats. If you don't like the AI workflow, humans are already offering that workflow to the richest and most successful among us. The new tech is kind of leveling the playing field in that sense. When you think about how AI is applied in other fields, it's basically on the way to giving everyone CEO powers, allowing them to delegate vague directives into action. Whether there's room for 8 billion CEOs on earth remains to be seen. I personally think barriers to entry in certain industries are features, so we aren't drowned in a sea of careless whims and can more easily find products made with love, dedication, and well articulated intent.
  • oscaracso 10mo ago
    The music is produced by a large team and the headlining artist reduced to a brand in that case, but ultimately it is still a team of people. The use of AI in their place forecloses the possibility of their artistic drive overcoming and subverting the conformist demands of the music industry.
• tomxor 10mo ago
  That's great, but on the flip side > We reserve the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI generated. It's going to really suck when someone eventually gets removed based on false positives... Similar problem to auto DMCA false positives.
• stevenalowe 10mo ago
  Real musicians play real instruments, not synthesizers Real musicians play real instruments, not samples Real musicians play real instruments, not AI-generated slop All of the above is bullshit y’all Real musicians play with anything they want. Bandcamp’s first policy will become an enforcement nightmare in the short term and irrelevant the long term. I’m still waiting for someone to create something really good with AI - meaningful, impactful, emotionally gripping - not just novelties. Same problem as AI text slop - by the nature of its training, it regresses to the mean Also: how much time/effort/money one spends creating art is unrelated to quality. Spending 40 hours recording and producing a mediocre song does not make it “better” than a mediocre song generated in a few seconds by AI or any other tool
• SLWW 10mo ago
  Bandcamp knows what the people want
• gatefolded 9mo ago
  The tricky part is where you draw the line. A guitarist using auto-tune, a producer using loop libraries, a bedroom artist using preset drums - at what point does the tool become the creator? Focusing on 'wholly or largely' AI-generated feels like the right call. It's about whether a human is at the center of the creative process.