I have a very pragmatic view on music: all I care about is whether it sounds good or not. That’s it. That’s literally it. And from that standpoint the advent of AI music has been a major net positive for me.
You can choose to ignore that and come tell me about the ethics of using AI or how you care about the story behind the song and so on and that’s all fine but just note that you’re no longer addressing what I’m actually saying here.
I’m also not claiming it’s great - only that it’s good. I’ve yet to discover an AI song that I go back to like I do with many human-made songs but if I want to put on a playlist playing in the background then one consisting of entirely AI-made music reliably provides me well above average track after another whereas with organic music I need to sift through a ton of absolute crap to stumble upon the occasional good track that still rarely exceeds what AI is able to output. I can go on YouTube and put on a 2 hour playlist of Jazz House or similar and I don’t get the urge to skip a single track.
Currently I feel like where AI still trips is lyrics - they still are only plausible sounding nonsense once you actually start paying attention to it but especially for instrumental music it has far exceeded the level of a good average human artist.
Few examples of what I’m refering to: with vocals and without.
Fuck off. AI music is objectively shit, and anyone listening to it is a dick.
— Sincerely, a music producer that has almost no work opportunities because of AI.
https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/ai-free-foss-alternatives/src/branch/main/why_not_llms.md
Man this is the worst fucking take I’ve heard all week
Have my upvote
It’s IP theft.
Someone save the record companies before it’s too late
“Police, help, someone stole all the intangible thoughts that were inside my head and ran with 'em all, now I’m thoughtless and my mind is floating away!”
When I see someone having a thought being taken from inside their head like a soul leaving its physical body, I’ll believe in “intellectual property” and its “stealability”. I’m yet to see such a horrendous phenomenon, though. I mean, it must be pretty scary, I guess? Does it ache when someone grabs my thoughts and pulls 'em from inside my noodles? I won’t think too much, lest someone appears out of nowhere to snatch my thoughts on it!
I can’t believe nobody’s called you out on not knowing what “objectively” means yet.
I just think people understand modern colloquial use, even if OP below erroneously declares it was intentional. In the same way we can parse “I could literally eat a horse right now” as, in fact not literal, we can likewise parse the colloquial use of “objective” in this case.
No. It’s not the same as “literal/figurative”. At least not yet. And it’s important that we don’t allow that to happen to these words as well.
Language directly informs our thoughts. Like literally, we think in our respective language, and controlling/molding that is an extremely powerful tool of control and oppression. Perhaps the most powerful. Read 1984 if you want someone to explain it much better than I ever could.
We cannot allow words like “objective” and “subjective” to colloquially mean the same thing. It will just continue making it more and more difficult for people to grasp what’s real and what is not.
I just don’t think that’s how it works, man.
The ministries of truth, peace, etc. didn’t control people’s thoughts by confusing the dictionary, they controlled them with social pressure. The point of twisting language the way they did was to goad people into following along: the idea being that the more people pretend to believe something like 2+2=5, the more they will actually believe it—or, the less their belief or not even matters. Because it’s safer to agree. Nobody wants to be abnormal. And it is “normal” to believe the war is for peace.
What’s another example of this…
I don’t like the way that AI people insist that AI is a tool. Not that I disagree with them; there’s no twist of language. AI is, technically, an object which a person can manipulate toward some end.
I don’t like it because that’s not what they mean. When they say “tool,” they mean “not a disaster.” “No side-effects.” “To be used responsibly,” and that “the irresponsible get what they deserve.” Their insistance on the word “tool” is to close their ears and maintain the arrogant posturing that AI is our slave and we are its master. It is to imply shame or stupidity or incompetence for not agreeing with them.
But I can’t get any of that from the word “tool” alone. A tool is, like, a wrench. What does a wrench mean to me?
When was the last time it read the book? The entire point of Newspeak was to shape how people thought, and it worked like gangbusters.
To meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania, the Party created Newspeak, a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to prevent people from being able to think critically. The Newspeak language thus limits the person’s ability to articulate and communicate abstract concepts, such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will,[1][2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
You can’t grasp the concept of personal identity, let alone internalize it and actually have one, if the concept for it doesn’t exist in the language.
Orwell could not be more clear about this stuff. To the point where my teenage (before witnessing it first hand in the US) self found those parts to be boring and far fetched. Boy was I wrong.
From the book:
the lexicologist character Syme discusses his editorial work on the latest edition of the Newspeak Dictionary:
By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of The Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like Freedom is Slavery when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.[1]
I haven’t read the book in a while, no. But I’m not above disagreeing with Orwell.
You can’t grasp the concept of personal identity, let alone internalize is and actually have one, if the concept for it doesn’t exist in the language.
I just do not believe it works this way.
Think about the implications of this: how does our language have this concept of identity now when it didn’t used to?
What I see Orwell gesturing at in these paragraphs you’ve shown me is an intentionally poor education. A poor vocabulary would be a component of that, an important vector, but it’s not of the same kind as the colloquial usage of ‘literally’.
What you’re suggesting (charitably, I think) is that the corrosion of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ leads to a person’s inability to distinguish lies, not to be able to rediscover the concept—and rediscover it quite easily, I might add—which I find ridiculous. You don’t need the word ‘lies’ to identify that something that was said is not something that was, even if you have trouble expressing it.
Or more to the point, people who believe that freedom is slavery do not believe so because they think those words mean the same thing. Either, they have never been taught what freedom is and don’t care to invent it, or they have been convinced that freedom is only the power to choose sin intentionally, which is a sentimental lesson, not a linguistic one.
The only thing that bothers me is the idea that words carry this moralistic baggage themselves, or the vague suggestion that a person unaware of the Orwellian state could still be led by the phrase “freedom is slavery” into the same lobotimized world view that its people have.
I mean you can think what you want, or even write a dissertation about it and have it published. But what I’m saying is established fact among people who dedicate their lives to this.
https://journal.ijarms.org/index.php/ijarms/article/view/757
https://www.academia.edu/721095/Orwell_and_the_Power_of_Language
And here’s Orwell himself defending his use of language as a means of control in the novel:
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
This last one is actually really interesting, I recommend reading the entire thing.
Oh, it’s that essay. I love that essay.
However, Orwell does not actually make the case for this in it:
You can’t grasp the concept of personal identity, let alone internalize it and actually have one, if the concept for it doesn’t exist in the language.
He certainly makes the case for a lack of intellectual hygiene, like having bad posture, leading to a lack of critical thinking, or clarity, but that’s not something I disagree with.
Think of it like this, okay: We haven’t invented wave-particle duality yet and I think, like a stupid person, that light is only a wave. How do you explain to me that a person, tragically, does not know what “literally” means, and so also cannot differentiate embellishments? Like, how does that process happen in the mind?
When a mom tells her daughter she was so hungry she ate “literally 50 cheeseburgers,” what is stopping this person from knowing about exaggerations? Do they forget? Do they never learn it? What is the actual mechanism?
In 1984, the answer I’m looking for would be the police.
1984 did feature people afraid to use their imagination for anything, but that was not solely the product of language. Some of it was the electric chair.
I just don’t like the confusion of Orwell’s ideas here—and he might disagree with me, smack me with a ruler and scold me for my lack of ‘gerunds’—this confusion of Orwell’s ideas with the very normal tides of our linguistic ocean. “Literally” has not actually gone anywhere.
I’m quite careful with my choice of words and that was a deliberate one.
Humans are just as good at detecting AI music as we’re at detecting toupees: the bad ones stand out and the rest go undetected. Most of AI-made music is indistinguishable from organic ones purely based on the sound of it and the claim that a track is shit is often only applied retroactively after people learn it was made with AI. It’s an emotional reaction and thus not an objective one.
My problem with it is that there is no objectively good music. The whole premise was bad from the start.
I can recognize something as good even if I don’t personally like it. I’m not claiming that everyone will like all of the AI music in existence - I’m claiming that it has everything going for it that we expect from good music. Pretending that it’s all bad just because it’s made with AI as many people do is disingenuous.
There’s no fucking music in that to start with.
Wow. Horrible take. Unpopular for a reason. Upvoted.
Ethics aside, can you not hear the noise and artifacts in the vocals? The repeptitive overuse of the same reverb? The heavy handed compression?
AI music keeps showing up in my “stations” and I have to instantly skip. It’s just awful and they cannot fix it because they trained the models with highly compressed music from Spotify and it “learned” that compression nouse artifacts are a natural part of music, so now it reproduces and exaggerates them every time.
can you not hear the noise and artifacts in the vocals?
A parenthetical/quite off-topic aside, because it has not exactly to do with AI music: some songs deliberately have noise and artifacts in order for the listener to achieve specific mental and spiritual states.
For example, in “Zed Aliz Zed” from “David MLLR”, or (it’s a quite old song, way before ChatGPT were a thing) “The Stream” from Tanuki Project (also known as the soundtrack from that “I Pet Goat II” video), or “Lilith Enn Meditation Chant” from Satania, among many other ritualistic or ritualistic-sounding songs I’m used to listen to when I’m trying to seek daemonic channeling, they all have arrhythmic noises and artifacts on top of repetitive humming or vocals.
It’s been a long while since I stopped seeking new music, because I got an offline archive of thousands of MP3 files (some I’ve been carrying with me since the Windows XP times), but I always choose to listen to the same ritualistic ones because I’m not very adept of listening to music for entertainment, also because I stopped doing YouTube altogether (I’ve been boycotting YouTube for two years and counting).
can you not hear the noise and artifacts in the vocals?
No. Just like I can’t tell the difference between 1080p and 4K. It also has no effect on my enjoyment of the movie.
I do detect the empty vocals but I prefer instrumental anyway. Also, this is the worst it’ll ever be and it’s already this good.
Fair enough, although to me a better comparison is DVD (480p) vs Blu-Ray (1080p). Not a big deal if you watch on a phone, but pretty bad if you try it on your living room 4k TV.
In the car or on the radio, you probably won’t hear the difference. Heavy compression and reverb are pretty much standard in modern music production. For a lot of people, music is just background noise, so it won’t matter to the large majority.
Oh I get it, hence my phone vs TV example.
Lol 4k tv. That right there is your problem. 90% of people dont even have the equipment necessary to detect what youre talking about. Nor do they care
Gross
I don’t think you like music. Or even understand music.
That’s ok, you don’t have to, but you do not know what you’re talking about.
Out of curiosity, can you tell me a human artist or band that you really like?
Maribou State, Emancipator, Bonobo, Parov Stelar, Wintergatan, Seven Beats, Nigel Stanford …
There aren’t that many artists that I know more than one good song from. My playlists are filled with individual tracks from artists whose name I can’t even remember. The ones I listed are the exceptions that came to mind.
all I care about is whether it sounds good or not
“I don’t care about anyone but me or anything except for what I want”
You sound selfish and insufferable.
Your made-up cartoon image of me does.
I want it to sound good
I like AI music
Buddy, no
What are you even saying? You arguing against my subjective experience as if you could possibly know better?
I think you couldn’t find good music if someone stuck it up your nose and gave it a good twist
I have no idea what you are you hoping to achieve by coming here trying to insult me other than to advertise to everyone what a mean jerk you are.
I’m sorry that you’re in pain but I’m not the cause for it nor does hurting others make you feel any better.
Lmfao sure. Have fun with your AI. Hope it fries your brains.
That for sure is an unpopular opinion and I also strongly disagree.
So, take my upvote ;-)
Apart from that, In my experience there is such an incredibly large pool of great music I haven’t even heard yet, that the avalanche of AI generated music does not even improve the useful quantity for an individual in a significant way, not even talking about the quality.
there is such an incredibly large pool of great music I haven’t even heard yet
This is also true but it’s a separate point. If someone was able to come up with a tool that could find all that music for me to listen to then I’d be all for it but currently the only way to discover that is what I stated above: sift through a mountain of junk to find the few gems hidden in between. Sometimes I just want to listen to good music instead of just remaining perpetually on the hunt for it.
sift through a mountain of junk to find the few gems hidden in between.
That is true. I found a solid to find people on last.fm that were very adjacent to my eclectic taste and see what they hear what I don’t. Having scrobbled every song I heard in the last decade, the algorithm is pretty efficient.
Bandcamp works fine too for that. “XYZ bought new music”, then I go check what they bought and often buy it too.
But I never listen to music “in the background”. I either listen or I don’t. So maybe I grew more picky with every passing decade 😁
There’s websites like Music Map where you can put in a band you like and it’ll show bands that are similar in sound. It uses positioning and links to show similarities.
It’s not perfect but I’ve found a lot of bands that I didn’t know existed that sound great that I’d never heard of.
Just another tool in the box for you.
The thing is that there are very few bands that I like. I like individual tracks from multiple bands but rarely I stumble upon one that has more than one good song. If I randomly pick 1000 songs from my playlists there’s probably well over 900 individual artists there.
YouTube does a half decent job at recommending me music I like - much better than Spotify at least, but even then it constantly reguires me to get up and go change a track which is exactly the thing I don’t want to do when I put up music playing in the background while doing something else.
I cherish the hunt. Sometimes something I’ll pick up and listen to for three minutes to test, I’ll find it to be unlistenable nonsense, and then I come back to it again and again.
Anyway, that’s how I have both of Angine de Poitrine’s albums on vinyl now.
This is an interesting take, tbh. I tried to ask myself how you got here, and in doing so I had to ask “what are you getting out of AI music?” And I think I surprised myself a bit with the answer.
Ultimately I think the rise of generative AI is going to make the line between art and kitsch clearer.
Back to my question, I personally get so much out of art - so many songs have brought me to tears, or changed my perspective on a topic, or related to me when I felt alone… But I’ve also bobbed my head along to plenty of soulless low-effort club tracks and what not. I’m finding it hard to argue to myself that the four-on-the-floor generic beat shitted out in 5 minutes in Acid Loops or Cakewalk is any less soulless than a similarly prompted AI track.
But ultimately I would consider both to be kitsch. I’ve said similar before and it’s ruffled some feathers, so let me try again to clarify: Kitsch is not bad. Kitsch is good and kitsch has a place. But kitsch is not art.
I think generative AI is a toy. It’s a like one of those automated child’s pianos. You can absolutely have a silly good time goofing around on an automated child’s piano for an hour, and if anyone told you that you were wrong for enjoying your time they’d be an idiot.
But you didn’t really make art.
So enjoy your AI kitsch, and do it guilt free. If you’re just looking for shit to bob your head to, it’s really hard for me to argue that AI music can’t accomplish that goal.
I’m fine with that. Just don’t start calling it art.
