4 ms·

> People that couldn't sing will make music. I was with you, until But, yeah. Life will go on.

by DANmode 10mo ago

echelon 10mo ago
There are plenty of electronic artists who can't sing. Right now they have to hire someone else to do the singing for them, but I'd wager a lot of them would like to own their music end-to-end. I would. I'm a filmmaker. I've done it photons-on-glass production for fifteen years. Meisner trained, have performed every role from cast to crew. I'm elated that these tools are going to enable me to do more with a smaller budget. To have more autonomy and creative control.
- javier123454321 10mo ago
  Yes, the flipside of this is that we're eroding the last bit of ability for people to make a living through their art. We are capturing the market for people to live off of making illustrations, to making background music, jingles, promotional videos, photographs, graphic design, and funnelling those earnings to NVIDIA. The question I keep asking is whether we care to value as a society for people to make a living through their art. I think there is a reason to care. It's not so much of an issue with art for art's sake aided by AI. It's an issue with artistic work becoming unviable work.
  - volkercraig 10mo ago
    This feels like one of those tropes that keeps showing up whenever new tech comes out. At the advent of recorded music, im sure buskers and performers were complaing that live music is dead forever. Stage actors were probably complaining that film killed plays. Heck, I bet someome even complained that video itself killed the radio star. Yet here we are, hundreds of years later, live music is still desirable, plays still happen, and faceless voices are still around, theyre just called v-tubers and podcasters.
    - javier123454321 10mo ago
      umm, I don't know if you've seen the current state of trying to make a living with music but It's widely accepted as dire. Touring is a loss leader, putting out music for free doesn't pay, stream counts payouts are abysmally low. No one buys songs. All that is before the fact that streaming services are stuffing playlists with AI generated music to further reduce the payouts to artists. > Yet here we are, hundreds of years later, live music is still desirable, plays still happen, and faceless voices are still around... Yes all those things still happen, but it's increasingly untenable to make a living through it.
      - patrickdavey 9mo ago
        But this is different? Wholesale copying of copyrighted works and packaging it up and allowing it to be generated. It's not remotely reasonable
      - cthalupa 9mo ago
        Artists were saying this even before streaming, though, much less AI. I listen pretty exclusively to metal, and a huge chunk of that is bands that are very small. I go to shows where they headliners stick around at the bar and chat with people. Not saying this to be a hipster - I listen to plenty of "mainstream" stuff too - but to show that it's hard to get smaller than this when it comes to people wanting to make a living making music. None of them made any money off of Spotify or whatever before AI. They probably don't notice a difference, because they never paid attention to the "revenue" there either. But they do pay attention to Bandcamp. Because Bandcamp has given them more ability to make money off the actual sale of music than they've had in their history - they don't need to rely on a record deal with a big label. They don't need to hope that the small label can somehow get their name out there. For some genres, some bands, it's more viable than ever before to make a living. For others, yeah, it's getting harder and harder.
      - volkercraig 9mo ago
        Is it though? Think about being a musician 200 years ago. In 1826 you needed to essentially be nobility or nobility-adjacent just to be able to touch an instrument let alone make a living from it. 100 years later, 1926 the barrier to entry was still sky high, nobody could make and distribute recordings without extensive investment. Nowadays it's not uncommon for a 17 year old to download some free composer software, sign up for a few accounts and distribute their music to an audience of millions. It's not easy to do, sure, but there is still opportunity that never existed. If you were to take at random a 20 year old from the general population in 1826, 1923, 1943, 1953, 1973, 83, etc, would you REALLY say that any of them have a BETTER opportunity than today?
  - lynx97 9mo ago
    The amount of artists that managed to actually earn enough to pay the rent and bills was already very very small before AI emerged. I totally agree with you, its heartbreaking to watch how it got even worse, but, the music industry already shuffled the big money to the big players way before AI.
- DANmode 10mo ago
  What happens to lyricless electronica if suddenly every electronic artist has quality vocal-backing? Oh no. Maybe we did frig this up.
  - echelon 10mo ago
    More choices for artists is not a bad thing.
    - DANmode 9mo ago
      Indeed. But it does change who can be an artist in each niche, and that’s been interesting to briefly pause and consider here with the community.
  - fc417fc802 9mo ago
    On the other hand, maybe we'll get models capable of removing the lyrics from things without damaging the rest of the audio. Or better yet, replacing the lyrics with a new instrument. So it might yet work out in our favor.
    - DANmode 9mo ago
      This was one of the first things they were doing with neural nets, and there are even a couple SaaS options for it now.
- redwall_hp 9mo ago
  We've had Yamaha Vocaloid for over two decades now, and Synthesizer V is probably coming up on a decade too now. They're like any other synth: MIDI (plus phonemes) in, sound out. It's a tool of musical expression, like any other instrument. Hatsune Miku (Fujita Saki) is arguably the most prolific singer in the world, if you consider every Vocaloid user and the millions of songs that have come out of it. So I don't think there's any uncharted territory...we still have singers, and sampled VST instruments didn't stop instrumentalists from existing; if anything, most of these newcomer generative AI tools are far less flexible or creatively useful than the vast array of synthesis tools musicians already use.
  - fc417fc802 9mo ago
    Miku is neat but not a replacement for a human by any stretch of the imagination. In practice most amateur usage of that lands somewhere in a cringey uncanny valley. No one was going to replace voice actors for TV and movie dubs with Miku whereas the cutting edge TTS tools seem to be nearing that point. Presumably human vocal performances will follow that in short order.

> People that couldn't sing will make music. I was with you, until But, yeah. Life will go on.

by DANmode 10mo ago

> People that couldn't sing will make music. I was with you, until But, yeah. Life will go on.

There are plenty of electronic artists who can't sing. Right now they have to hire someone else to do the singing for them, but I'd wager a lot of them would like to own their music end-to-end. I would. I'm a filmmaker. I've done it photons-on-glass production for fifteen years. Meisner trained, have performed every role from cast to crew. I'm elated that these tools are going to enable me to do more with a smaller budget. To have more autonomy and creative control.

javier123454321 10mo ago
Yes, the flipside of this is that we're eroding the last bit of ability for people to make a living through their art. We are capturing the market for people to live off of making illustrations, to making background music, jingles, promotional videos, photographs, graphic design, and funnelling those earnings to NVIDIA. The question I keep asking is whether we care to value as a society for people to make a living through their art. I think there is a reason to care. It's not so much of an issue with art for art's sake aided by AI. It's an issue with artistic work becoming unviable work.
- volkercraig 10mo ago
  This feels like one of those tropes that keeps showing up whenever new tech comes out. At the advent of recorded music, im sure buskers and performers were complaing that live music is dead forever. Stage actors were probably complaining that film killed plays. Heck, I bet someome even complained that video itself killed the radio star. Yet here we are, hundreds of years later, live music is still desirable, plays still happen, and faceless voices are still around, theyre just called v-tubers and podcasters.
  - javier123454321 10mo ago
    umm, I don't know if you've seen the current state of trying to make a living with music but It's widely accepted as dire. Touring is a loss leader, putting out music for free doesn't pay, stream counts payouts are abysmally low. No one buys songs. All that is before the fact that streaming services are stuffing playlists with AI generated music to further reduce the payouts to artists. > Yet here we are, hundreds of years later, live music is still desirable, plays still happen, and faceless voices are still around... Yes all those things still happen, but it's increasingly untenable to make a living through it.
    - patrickdavey 9mo ago
      But this is different? Wholesale copying of copyrighted works and packaging it up and allowing it to be generated. It's not remotely reasonable
    - cthalupa 9mo ago
      Artists were saying this even before streaming, though, much less AI. I listen pretty exclusively to metal, and a huge chunk of that is bands that are very small. I go to shows where they headliners stick around at the bar and chat with people. Not saying this to be a hipster - I listen to plenty of "mainstream" stuff too - but to show that it's hard to get smaller than this when it comes to people wanting to make a living making music. None of them made any money off of Spotify or whatever before AI. They probably don't notice a difference, because they never paid attention to the "revenue" there either. But they do pay attention to Bandcamp. Because Bandcamp has given them more ability to make money off the actual sale of music than they've had in their history - they don't need to rely on a record deal with a big label. They don't need to hope that the small label can somehow get their name out there. For some genres, some bands, it's more viable than ever before to make a living. For others, yeah, it's getting harder and harder.
    - volkercraig 9mo ago
      Is it though? Think about being a musician 200 years ago. In 1826 you needed to essentially be nobility or nobility-adjacent just to be able to touch an instrument let alone make a living from it. 100 years later, 1926 the barrier to entry was still sky high, nobody could make and distribute recordings without extensive investment. Nowadays it's not uncommon for a 17 year old to download some free composer software, sign up for a few accounts and distribute their music to an audience of millions. It's not easy to do, sure, but there is still opportunity that never existed. If you were to take at random a 20 year old from the general population in 1826, 1923, 1943, 1953, 1973, 83, etc, would you REALLY say that any of them have a BETTER opportunity than today?
- lynx97 9mo ago
  The amount of artists that managed to actually earn enough to pay the rent and bills was already very very small before AI emerged. I totally agree with you, its heartbreaking to watch how it got even worse, but, the music industry already shuffled the big money to the big players way before AI.
DANmode 10mo ago
What happens to lyricless electronica if suddenly every electronic artist has quality vocal-backing? Oh no. Maybe we did frig this up.
- echelon 10mo ago
  More choices for artists is not a bad thing.
  - DANmode 9mo ago
    Indeed. But it does change who can be an artist in each niche, and that’s been interesting to briefly pause and consider here with the community.
- fc417fc802 9mo ago
  On the other hand, maybe we'll get models capable of removing the lyrics from things without damaging the rest of the audio. Or better yet, replacing the lyrics with a new instrument. So it might yet work out in our favor.
  - DANmode 9mo ago
    This was one of the first things they were doing with neural nets, and there are even a couple SaaS options for it now.
redwall_hp 9mo ago
We've had Yamaha Vocaloid for over two decades now, and Synthesizer V is probably coming up on a decade too now. They're like any other synth: MIDI (plus phonemes) in, sound out. It's a tool of musical expression, like any other instrument. Hatsune Miku (Fujita Saki) is arguably the most prolific singer in the world, if you consider every Vocaloid user and the millions of songs that have come out of it. So I don't think there's any uncharted territory...we still have singers, and sampled VST instruments didn't stop instrumentalists from existing; if anything, most of these newcomer generative AI tools are far less flexible or creatively useful than the vast array of synthesis tools musicians already use.
- fc417fc802 9mo ago
  Miku is neat but not a replacement for a human by any stretch of the imagination. In practice most amateur usage of that lands somewhere in a cringey uncanny valley. No one was going to replace voice actors for TV and movie dubs with Miku whereas the cutting edge TTS tools seem to be nearing that point. Presumably human vocal performances will follow that in short order.