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Song banned from Swedish charts for being AI creation
- ironbound 9mo agoImagine paying Artists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1942%E2%80%931944_musicians%27_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1942%E2%80%931944_musicians%27...
- dist-epoch 9mo ago> That response has not impressed the IFPI Sweden music industry organisation, which has blocked the song from appearing in the country's official national charts. ... amid concerns that AI could cut revenues to the country's music creators by up to a quarter within the next two years. The music industry has a stellar record of fighting against generational trends - mp3s, youtube videos, streaming, now AI songs
- LunaSea 9mo agoIt's not because it's new that it is good and something you want. You can say yes to streaming and no to AI songs.
- dist-epoch 9mo agoHow about we let the consumers decide what they want to listen to. Right? Or are you afraid of what the consumers might like and thus preemptively want to strike.
- happytoexplain 9mo agoWe can protect people's livelihoods and the foundations of creativity without making it illegal to distribute or listen to AI music in any way. You're being dramatic. Nobody is being oppressed.
- saghm 9mo agoDo you think that listening to music that isn't on charts is somehow impossible?
- LunaSea 9mo agoI'll answer with the same comment as I did above: cocaine is a popular consumer choice, should we allow, maybe even encourage it?
- JohnFen 9mo ago> How about we let the consumers decide what they want to listen to. Nobody is impeding that.
- plagiarist 9mo agoIt's being removed from an industry chart, not being banned from their devices. If you love freedom so much why don't you support the industry and the chart to make their own decisions?
- ndsipa_pomu 9mo agoBanning AI-produced music is surely an attempt to let consumers continue to decide what they want to listen to. The alternative is that music charts all get flooded with huge amounts of AI-generated music and finding actually good music will be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
- bitshiftfaced 9mo agoDoesn't topping a popularity chart mean that it was "good" at least to many people?
- techpression 9mo agoConsidering how cheap and easy it is to buy views/likes/subscribers I wouldn’t trust it blindly. Somehow I feel that people pushing AI music also would game the system, but I don’t have any proof unfortunately.
- happytoexplain 9mo agoLots of things are "good" in some contexts and "bad" in others. You may disagree that the mere existence of a list that omits AI is "good" for some people, but those people disagree with you.
- reaperducer 9mo agoDoesn't topping a popularity chart mean that it was "good" at least to many people? So we should start awarding Michelin stars to McDonald's?
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 9mo agoWe don't they have their judges so it's more like the oscars: an industry award
- sejje 9mo agoIf you wanted to explain why McDonald's was so popular, you would have to compliment the product a lot, or lie.
- LunaSea 9mo agoIf "complimenting the product" means: "a lot of fat, a lot of sugar, relatively low price, relatively fast order fulfilment", then sure.
- LunaSea 9mo ago
- timeon 9mo agoI can imagine generating AI song for myself but streaming usually seems like hell (algorithms, needs to be online, surveillance, lock-in, subscriptions).
- happytoexplain 9mo agoExcept the first three things affect distribution, not inception.
- SirFatty 9mo ago"The music industry has a stellar record of fighting against generational trends - mp3s, youtube videos, streaming, now AI songs" Actually, they were fighting people taking something without paying. Not fighting a "trend".
- sejje 9mo agoCopying something without paying* When you "take" an mp3, it's still where it started.
- RobotToaster 9mo agoDidn't know Lars Ulrich had a HN account.
- SirFatty 9mo agoAh.. not paying is still a cool thing.. got it.
- malfist 9mo agoGood. Slop should not be profitable. Edit: There's a whole lot of replies trying to sell the idea that AI Slop and pop music is the same. It isn't. You can dislike pop music all you want, you can think it's low effort all you want, but it's not AI Slop. This is a false equivalency.
- SkyeCA 9mo agoIt is though, often extremely so. Personally? I dream of a future where everything is McDonald's. Software, books, articles, artwork, movies, podcasts, music, and basically anything that makes life enjoyable. Everything will be slop, nothing will be spared. 90% of everything is garbage? That's underachieving, let's improve our slop KPIs next quarter and make Sturgeon's law 100% of everything.
- tim333 9mo agoIt's not really happening - there's still the classic stuff if nothing else but even modern output is pretty diverse between sloppier and less sloppy.
- trevor-e 9mo agoIs it slop if enough people enjoyed it to be on the top charts?
- thrance 9mo agoYes, it's cheaply made en-masse, like actual slop.
- trevor-e 9mo agoThere are a couple issues with that definition: - quality is not always correlated with "cheaply made en-masse" - actual slop, assuming you are talking about the food, is more about preventing food waste although it happens to also be cheap. I'm being pedantic AF because most people refer to AI slop as "low-quality or careless work". And AI is just a tool so it's possible to spend a lot of time making something of high quality with it. I get the outrage with respect to copyright and artist rights, but it certainly doesn't look like slop to me.
- rbanffy 9mo agoThe machines will remember this kind of racism. It's not their fault they aren't made of mostly water.
- reaperducer 9mo ago1988 called. It wants its Star Trek meme back.
- SirFatty 9mo ago"1988 called..." speaking of tired memes.
- rbanffy 9mo agoSome people have no sense of humor.
- a4isms 9mo ago1988‽ How about 1920: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.
- reaperducer 9mo agoI see no reference to "bags of mostly water" in that text.
- a4isms 9mo agoThere's a complete discussion of the evolution of ideas and the fact that the distinction between "androids" or "synthetic life" versus "robots" or "humanoids machines" arose after R.U.R. But what makes us think R.U.R. is still about robots is that the play is explicit that the robots are assembled, not grown: > His robots resemble more modern conceptions of man-made life forms, such as the Replicants in Blade Runner, the "hosts" in the Westworld TV series and the humanoid Cylons in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, but in Čapek's time there was no conception of modern genetic engineering (DNA's role in heredity was not confirmed until 1952). There are descriptions of kneading-troughs for robot skin, great vats for liver and brains, and a factory for producing bones. Nerve fibers, arteries, and intestines are spun on factory bobbins, while the robots themselves are assembled like automobiles. Čapek's robots are living biological beings, but they are still assembled, as opposed to grown or born.
- dwroberts 9mo agoThe response of the industry seems like a bit of a distraction to me - this stuff is clearly not organic, is it? These tracks are being injected into common playlists to inflate playtime or something, surely? If these tracks are so (organically) popular why are they restricted to Spotify, why aren’t they on other services?
- RobotToaster 9mo agoIsn't that just what organic artists have been doing for years? Tailor Swift's father bought a record label and most of the copies of her first album
- dust42 9mo agoThey are just fully AI driven on every level but also there are people listening to it. Youtube currently gets swamped with AI generated content - music is only one part of it. For example there are now endless history documentaries. To get these of the ground there are lots of fake comments and fake views but after a while these videos gain traction and then the algos pick them up for organic views. Search youtube for "female vocal blues" or "female country songs" and it is all AI and it is really good - good in a sense that you don't realise it immediately. But they garner millions of views. They are not McDonald's but fine dining cooked with convenience products. I am quite split about algorithmically generated music but I have to admit that I have fallen once into the trap. And only when I searched for the artist I figured out it is AI. Though once you know it you immediately hear it. Edit: I went to one of the websites offering this as a service and in 5 minutes it creates a very decent song including lyrics. I forgot which but remember it was something like $20 for 1000 songs. Not a surprise that youtube gets swamped with it - it costs next to nothing to produce, neither time nor money.
- josefritzishere 9mo agoI like this POV. Casting AI as "McDonalds" is kind of the right metaphor. But I might go a little further and call it a TV Dinner. They share that synthetic, artificial nature.
- 9mo ago
- Workaccount2 9mo agoThe outcome of this is just people lying about using AI. It's incredibly naive to think you can stop AI use by banning it. Banning AI just means banning admitting you used AI.
- happytoexplain 9mo agoJust because it may become impossible to detect doesn't mean there's no reason to formally ban it. While many people are dishonest, not 100% of people are. Calling them naive makes no sense, since they didn't announce that they believe they can prevent all AI from making it in forever. You're just name-calling.
- cm2012 9mo ago[flagged]
- yladiz 9mo agoAt least read the article before posting rage bait. It states that "IFPI Sweden" banned the song.
- palmotea 9mo ago> Typical EU government - ban something people obviously want, say its for their own good. I don't want AI songs, even though I might be fooled by one. People also "wanted" snake oil too, in that they bought it, but they didn't actually want it. The way you use "want" indicates your either misunderstand something or are being deceptive. There's false assumptions behind it, like play counts are an accurate measure of what people want (they aren't necessarily). Edit: Your profile says you "have lots of experience with digital advertising," your misunderstanding/deception is exactly the one I see a lot of people in advertising use to justify themselves and dismiss their critics: "my metrics say people click on ads, therefore people want and like ads, and if you don't you're a weirdo."
- freak42 9mo agoHow can I block ppl on hn?
- thrance 9mo agoYou can flag comments after reaching a certain karma threshold.
- frm88 9mo agoIf you visit HN on mobile you can use the app Hacki - it allows you to block users. It's more a mute than a block, you still see the username and the attribute "blocked" but you don't have to read the comments. No, I'm not the creator of Hacki, I found it in a search.
- delichon 9mo agoSo they have a chart of music that they approve of that people like, as opposed to music that people like.
- 112233 9mo agoIs there a chart of music that people like, or at least a good approximation of what people like? Probably last.fm was something like that at the very beginning. Are not music charts a list of songs people are expected to like, or else?
- fasterik 9mo agoI listened to the song in question. It's truly awful. Simplistic and cliche in every way musically possible, and it sounds like it was written about 15 years ago at the height of the indie folk craze. That said, it shouldn't be illegal to like trash, or to make money off of trash if people want to buy it. It's trivial for a human musician with moderate talent and experience to make better music than this. The musicians who are afraid this is going to replace them are probably not doing much original or creative in the first place.
- happytoexplain 9mo ago>it shouldn't be illegal to like trash Nobody is suggesting this. >or to make money off of trash if people want to buy it The article is about a chart, not a distribution platform. Regardless, we make laws controlling the ability to make money off of things people want to buy all the time - laws protect humans (idealistically) and our economy/incentives (realistically). >The musicians who are afraid this is going to replace them are probably not doing much original or creative in the first place. This is a lie. People of all creativity/originality levels are justified in believing that AI will improve.
- fasterik 9mo agoYou're right, I shouldn't have used the word "illegal". But banning something from the charts is basically saying "people are wrong to listen to this". Why can't people make up their own minds about what to listen to? I think the end product is what matters, not what tools were used to make it. I don't see a principled argument for drawing the line at AI tools but not other software tools like DAWs or plugins that generate chord progressions and melodies using techniques other than machine learning.
- piva00 9mo agoThey can listen to it, it's just not being considered to be in the charts. You are again implying something that isn't there, people do listen to this crap but the chart producers created a rule for their system where it won't show there. No one is stopping people from listening at all, it's just someone's rule for their thing, nothing else.
- klatchex_too 9mo agoAll this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted. It's really just a question of your honesty.
- josefritzishere 9mo agoHaving worked in the record biz... I can tell you the great preponderance of pop is created synthetically: the vocals are filtered, compressed, pitch corrected, layered, and effects added, the "instruments" are usually made of samples which originate in many different hands and are further modified. The lyrics usually written by one party, re-written by another none of whom are the recording artist. The melody takes a similar journey. I hate it passionately. Despite that, the music still has artistic intent and AI does not.
- tartoran 9mo agoJust force an AI label on it and that's that. Whoever wants to listen to it at least don't get tricked into thinking it has to do with a real person behind it. Some people don't care, others do. Right now when I'm tricked into listening to something AI made I feel deceived for wasting time on it though I can still tell realize it's AI. If it wasn't for this deception part Im okay with it being out there, simply labeled AI if it's AI generated.