I’ve been involved in one music project or another (bands, albums, solo projects, etc) for the past 25 years.

During the pandemic, a friend and I decided to make a record together. We labored over it for almost two years and finally “released it” on bandcamp to very little fanfare.

A few friends and family had nice things to say, and one random stranger reached out with positive feedback.

I get a monthly stream report from bandcamp, and it almost always says zero.

I am so pleased with this project and have such great memories of making the album that I had two lathe cut vinyl copies made (one for me, and one for my friend).

I put a big part of myself into the project and was able to convey ideas and feelings that I couldn’t express effectively via other methods.

I listen to the recording about once a year. It’s a part of me now, and I couldn’t be happier with my journey in making it.

To me, this is the purpose of the creative journey. Knowing yourself better, and enjoying all of the steps involved in arriving at what is always a surprising destination.

If someone else feels something as a result of your work, that’s a nice bonus, but not something I focus on at all.

I've been making music as a hobbyist for 18 years.

It's fun.

That's it's own reason. Even before AI you statistically will never ever ever make money.

Not only that, but legions of scam artists want to rip you off in some manner. 'Cool music , for 400$ I can get your listeners '

You're not wasting your time, my friend. But you've got to be very certain and honest as to why you want to learn that.

If your goal is being heard and appreciated, well, you better reconsider.

If you're doing it for your own pleasure and pure love of art, absolutely do go on, without any expectations. It may or may not take off, but the samurai must not care.

Art is a form of communication. You turn to the arts when the other methods to communicate something either do not feel as if they fit, or feel that they will not encompass the idea you wish to convey. Art is a dialogue with other people, not a commodity. The point is to help yourself understand what you want to say, not to say something that is valuable in way that can be exchanged for goods.

So do not become discouraged by the machine generated sounds. They are only sounds, not a message.

I’ve asked an artist if they should be worried about the newest generative AI capabilities. This is his (translated) response:

> Artists? Pencil laborers, more like.. I am in favor of using AI in visuals. It will eliminate a lot of mere decorators, and won’t even slightly affect the artists. I hope AI as a technology has the same effect on the world of ART as the invention of photography had: it got rid of a lot of empty landscape copiers. Impressionism was born shortly after that. See, I believe many cursed photography, but Monet never saw it as a problem.

A lot of people thought the same thing with everything going from analog -> digital. Or heck, even learning an instrument when MIDI was first introduced.

Even before generative AI, there is a long-going debate in audio circles around simulated guitar amplifiers. The truth is, the simulations of them have gotten so insanely good that now one could simply purchase an all-in-one pedalboard and have basically all of guitar history at your toes.

My rule-of-thumb is this: "does this tool I'm using in particular take away from the authenticity of my performance or songwriting?" Example: I am very keen on performing vocals and guitar at the same time, and I don't have an expensive studio setup, and my office has background noise. I use these tools, and yes even some open source AI ones, 1) remove background noise of the individual tracks and 2) do a final master against a recording I want to target (using something like Matchering or similar [0]). It still sounds like me, my voice isn't perfect, my beat isn't consistent, but it sounds like I rented some studio space. So for me it was a cost-saving measure.

[0] https://github.com/sergree/matchering

Maybe you could see if there's someone who finds the "not fun" part fun and you could collaborate with them. That would solve two problems at the same time.

Either way, I strongly encourage you to keep using a DAW if that brings you joy. Using AI to create art is a different skill set, just like using acoustic instruments is a different skill set from using either. Each option appeals a different amount to different people, and you should just do what brings you the most joy.

I love making music, and got into it as a venue to be away from the computer. I still do post-production in Ableton, but everything else happens with gear not even connected to a computer. I've tried to make music with a DAW, but it feels so sterile and boring, compared to actually using hardware to make it.

Maybe get a second-hand Novation Circuit to start with, or some similar "groovebox" that lets you make songs on one device, and see if you actually still do enjoy making music, yet haven't found the right process for you yet.

I don't think you're wasting your time, as long as you're having fun, regardless of what happens in the rest of the world. Sure, AI could probably make "better" (by some definition of "better") music than me, but AI couldn't make my friends smile at me as I play them my music I've made, that's quite literally priceless.

I have two answers for you:

1. All that AI really does is a (partially) randomized exploration of the space that has been spanned by existing music. AI creativity, as far as it can be said to exist, is limited by this. You, on the other hand, are human and not bound by any of these limitations. You are free to explore wild things that no AI can do. Just as a completely random example, you could go out, record noises your environment (even if it's just with the smartphone), grab interesting parts, chop them up, process them and turn them into unique new instruments. Bang on random stuff that has a nice ring to it. Record background hums, apply filters and envelopes to them etc. And there are so many other ways to produce unique creations.

2. Most importantly, music is a form of human expression. It is able to capture the human condition in a unique way. As a human, you can express these things genuinely through your own emotions, experiences, memories etc. AI systems can only produce hollow facsimiles of this. Regardless of whether you are conscious about it, every piece of music that you create is a reflection of you: your thoughts, your emotions, your process. And that imparts the true value on your creations.

You have the answer to the "why do it" in the first part of "why you are doing it". Just because something may be created at the click of the button doesn't mean it fulfills the goals you are looking for. People knit even though there are machines that do that for you. You are doing it for you.

If you do it for money it is maybe a waste of time, because the chance to win the race were already low and now you have to compete with a tsunami of AI generated music. If you do it for your enjoyment, nothing changed and nothing will change

There are still several avenues for this, and I imagine they'll continue to exist even in a mostly-AI-enhanced world. You'll need to dedicate time to finding them.

For example, Battle of the Bits [0] is a community all about chiptune music. I'm sure you _could_ use AI to help you learn and produce some things, but the community is mostly about sharing ideas about what works at the electronic level, so even if AI became super capable, it wouldn't help you engage with the community in any meaningful way. There are several such communities across different domains and I imagine they aren't going anywhere anytime soon, regardless of how much improvement happens w.r.t. AI, since the focus is on "what you learned" and not so much "what you did".

Similarly, I have seen communities focused entirely on Silicon Graphics workstations, or pc-98 internals. Human passion-based communities aren't going anywhere, Google just makes it incredibly hard to find them outside of word-of-mouth.

[0] https://battleofthebits.com

> Part of my reason for trying this was reading how creative endeavors can be therapeutic (I'm dealing with burnout/depression/cptsd).

This is the reason why a lot of us make music. Writing orchestral pieces is my own meditation. I don't share most of them, and replacing them with AI would defeat the purpose.

Please keep learning it! The world needs more musicians, even if we never hear them.

1. None of this should matter if you do it because it’s therapeutic.

2. If it turns out it’s not therapeutic for you, try something different. Play piano. Learn chess. Learn MMA. Go for a run. Heck, vibecode something silly. Music production is not the only way, if you have it a good try and it just frustrates you, try something else.

>I'm at the stage where sometimes I make something that sounds good (to me) but I know it requires work (in the "not fun" sense) to finish it and even then, it will likely never be appreciated by anyone but myself.

That's true of 99% of very polished finished work too. Amazing bands and artists in Spotify with sub 1000 streams/month.

>None of these problems are "new", but I feel like AI is making this question of "why do it" or "what is worth doing" even more urgent. Kind of wondering how others are affected by all this, if at all.

Absolutely. One big concern is that even if you do it and you're proud of it, many will think it's AI anyway.

Plus the over-inflation of AI generated shit. It could all die in a fire.

I have done this with music, writing, and many other things. AI doesn’t make any of these things less enjoyable for me because the process of creation itself is the part that I enjoy.

I have a very low bar for what I consider to be a successful creation: it just needs to be enjoyable for myself in the future. Anyone else who happens to enjoy the content I make is a bonus. I have several songs on SoundCloud that I have produced in the past and I still enjoy listening to them.

I just recently setup a very simple home recording studio after picking up drums again at 40. I had the same thoughts, but I'm going it for me and it is extremely therapeutic. Plus, given the genre (extreme metal), I've gotten into much better shape. (Also picked up an 8 string guitar. I never grew out of my edgelordiness. No real point to mentioning this but just wanted to tell someone :)

AI music may eventually satisfy the masses and you can't stop that speeding train, but the process of creating something yourself will always have value if it's something you're interested in creating.

I have ~40 demoes from a music career that never took off. Now I am feeding little Suno with this demoes, turning them into afrobeat with oboe, deep house with harmonica, etc, and reliving the creative joy.

You can make a decent demo in a DAW and run it through AI for a nice production. The art of writing songs is still equally hard IMO. And a good song is still good, no matter what costume it wears.

I'm having fun building elaborate software that meets my needs precisely and nobody else's. I mean, maybe it would meet other's needs but that production would take away from the fun and learning I have building it, and would also reduce its utility for me personally.

don't sell your work short. it has value because it comes from you, and struggling to finish is unbelievably common in the creation process - not to mention frustration and a lack of joy.

if you're creating because you feel a drive to create, you are making art and that has intrinsic value to yourself and others. if however you are performing the act of musical creation as a means to an end, what you are doing may be better considered work and not art. the work of others can also be appreciated but it is different.

keep at it though. you are asking good questions and unlike many you are also personally engaging with them.

Just pick up your instrument and make some noise. DAWs are time sinks.

Music is about the “feel” first and foremost. Playing music on a physical instrument or singing is a feel thing.

DAWs are tools for polishing what was created with feeling into something “produced”. If that’s what you want to end up with, that’s ok. Just be clear with yourself on which you’re trying to do.

I have little interest in doing a DJ set in public but I'll spend hours crate digging for new music and mixing circular black slabs of vinyl for nothing more than the love of the craft.

It's not a waste of time. Every time some new thing comes out and becomes popular, everyone everywhere says everything must be that thing because it's the future. In America, everyone wanted pure white sliced bread. People wanted frozen TV dinners. People wanted chain fast food restaurants. People wanted no effort reality TV. People wanted endless superhero movies.

Now people want actual food and they want stuff made with human hands and they want to know what's in it. People want TV shows with a proper story. People are beyond done with cookie cutter superhero movies.

The slop wave is going to pass. AI can make stuff that sounds super polished and perfect, but people will want the rough and crude touch of something hand made. They'll want to see videos of musicians showing behind the scenes of how they made something. They'll want to go and see a musician perform. Interest in 100% AI generated music will fade into the background and it'll be relegated to soulless Muzak used for ambiance in soulless chain restaurants too cheap to pay for actual music and too afraid to play any songs that might offend or annoy someone.

I'd wager most people who make music are making it for the sheer joy of expression. Like .001% of people who make music get any kind of meaningful monetary return on it, and I think anyone who goes into it looking for monetary return is doing it for the wrong reasons. In my view, AI changes nothing where it matters it music.

Same applies to any creative hobby. Do it for yourself. I guess you can still share to your social circle. Others can still appreciate it.

I am hopeful that in the near future once AI has saturated as much of everything that it can that it will actually become even more worth it to do things. At least for me the only reason to experience art in any form is that there was human intent behind it. Thus making human generated content more valuable compared to the flood of empty AI content.

Just remember that AI has lowered the skill ceiling to produce a lot of things. But it hasn't lowered the bar for taste :)

Learn an instrument (guitar,keys,drums...) if you haven't already and go jam with friends and do concerts instead. That's the best part of making music.

The age of music production is almost over, the age of the music industry already is.

I wouldn't want to be in the DAW/VST business today though, because a lot of potential customers are thinking exactly as you do...

Step 1: ditch the DAW and learn a real instrument

Step 2: find a local jam group or community band/orchestra

Step 3: have fun playing music with friends

AI makes or will make everyone question doing „any” creative work. The real question you should ask yourself is „Do I care?”

If you do it for yourself - do it.

If you learn that to make money - forget about it.

You are clearly just at the beginning of your musical journey. I am happy for you. Yes, music for me too makes no sense without other people. This means, I suggest, that you must go out and find other people to collaborate with. The more you do it the more you realize just how many people out there are in the same boat as you. And once you find that right person or group, it’s like nothing else. And let’s be clear, this will take you far far outside your normal social circle. The type of people who like the same music as you may be completely different in every other way. It is important to actively seek out the right people and along that journey, define exactly what that person is, as well as who you are. This is the thing I care most about and yes I hope that more tools, AI or not come out to reduce that work that you have to do to make something polished, so everyone can focus on being creative.

> I've always struggled to enjoy anything that doesn't involve other people in some way

Well... play in band/orchestra ? You get to meet people, interact with them, build with them, etc.

I've been making music solo using various machines and computers all my life and I love it, but it's probably not for everyone. Yes, you're alone. Yes, (almost) nobody cares, so if you can't enjoy the process there is no point really.

() from time to time someone will show some interest but let's face it: there's just too much good music released everyday, competing with other distractions for the attention of the people.

For people like me, AI doesn't change much, it's another tool. We've been abusing technology in music for decades.

It's worth doing. Those "no AI" mixes on youtube are doing great, though the vast majority of people is clueless and will happily digest any slop.

Create for yourself, and for those that seek the human effort and passion. There's an increasing number of us.

I'm the biggest doomer on this site, yet I'm certain human art will become even more valuable, and appreciated, than it has ever been before in history. Just don't expect to make billions out of it, or to reach out to the masses that are quite content with industrial-scale mediocrity.

"it will likely never be appreciated by anyone but myself."

AI is forcing art to return to having no meaning or purpose beyond itself and thats a good thing. It's how things used to be

Is it therapeutic if it relies on the approval of someone else?

> I'm trying to learn music production with a DAW, sometimes I wonder if I'm wasting my time. Part of my reason for trying this was reading how creative endeavors can be therapeutic (I'm dealing with burnout/depression/cptsd).

If you enjoy the process and its outcomes, then it's not a waste of time. If you are forcing yourself to do it or have another motivation for it that is not rooted in genuine interest, then yes, you are wasting your time.

> I feel like AI is making this question of "why do it" or "what is worth doing" even more urgent

This is a spiritual question, so you will have as many answers as there are askers. I found my answer and am happy to share it with you. Why do it? Because I want to. What is worth doing? What I want to do or what gets me to the things I want. Wanting is a very important process, that is often damaged by conditioning. We are told that some things we want are bad and that some things we don't want are good. Or that ego is evil. So many ways this process can go wrong. I think fixing this in oneself is part of becoming an actual adult. Once you know what you want and what you don't want, you no longer are dependent on others telling you what to do or forcing you to do things you shouldn't be doing. Ego is not evil, it's there for a reason. Some people have an overgrown one while others have an underdeveloped one. What is needed is balance. I don't think the pattern recognition machine has anything to do with it. I suspect, that a lot of people who use music as a band aid for personal problems, i.e. people who build their identity around being special due to music making, are the ones who are afraid of AI, but if you just enjoy making music, then what does it matter if music itself is patterned and if a machine can exploit that? It doesn't take anything away from the joy of making music, if you experience it in the first place.

The not-fun work isn’t on the song, it’s on you. Improving the song is a byproduct. This only really becomes apparent over time but you’ll realise you were working on yourself all along.

It depends what you want to get out of it, and what you think art itself really is.

If it's nothing but an end product, that needs to fit a specific aesthetic, with a specific sound, then I probably agree. AI is making that "pointless" in a way.

Almost everyone I know who's been an artist for years though, has come to a similar realization: What you set out to create, and what it turns into through the process of creating it are different things. The meaning, truly is found along the way.

You can always be better, there's always more to learn. Nothing is ever truly perfect, or "complete"

If you write harmony, there's always a different way it could be written, that might fit better, or be more interesting. If you do sound design, whether that's with getting different guitar tones, synth programming, unique recording techniques, there's always more to learn, or a different way to approach it.

If the only point is an end result, then AI can deliver a simulacra of that.

For everyone I know that loves music, or working with DAWs, the end result is an ever shifting target as you learn more, and understand music in a different way.

Ultimately, there are no shortcuts to making something new, because the practice of trying to make things is what results in what your art becomes. Tools and technology can shape what that thing ends up being, but they (traditionally) don't replace the process of creating it, and the feedback loop between who you are and the decisions you make along the way.

Stripping all of that out, and jumping to a "finished" product, is, well very product focused, but to me completely devoid of art or musicianship.

Some people seem to compare this to sampling, but anyone who's ever actually worked with sampling in a creative way will realize how hollow that comparison is. Almost all good sampling still requires a good deal of active feedback, between the person working with it and the way THEY hear what's going on.

Remove the person from that loop, replace the decisions with a general vague notion, and you end up with something that sounds "like" music, but that feedback loop is broken.

I see the same thing with all the AI UI design that's coming out. It's all generally quite competent, and exactly the same. Great for a business tool, where maybe the velocity and an acceptable MVP is the only point, but terrible for actual design and novel thought.

TL;dr: Why do it? Because you want to, and you think that with enough time engaging with something you'll change, just as it does, and the result isn't something you could have ever predicted when you started. It changes you, and that's the point. Just like learning an instrument, or learning to code. It's not purely about the produced result, and that very result fundamentally is changed by you actively engaging with whatever the medium is.

Do not try to solve an unsolvable problem, you'll end up hurting real users quite a bit more than you might imagine. Imagine new enthusiastic users trying your platform getting hit with an AI label because of inevitable false positives.

'Detecting AI' is not a problem that has real solutions, the only avenue is something supply side like synthid. But that harms users too, by introducing further barriers for indie users.

This is an aside, but thank you for doing this work! As a musician who plays real instruments and submits real songs to Submithub, it's nice to know that hard work is going into validation and prevention of scammers passing off AI as their own talent. Keep fighting the good fight.

do you have any idea on what percentage of musicians use AI to create the song and then also create the sheet music so they can play it themselves? That seems like a decent workflow, use AI to get the song right, and then record yourself playing it with you're own creative tweaks. That's kind of how I do AI assisted coding.

I'm curious how your platform might avoid false positives with intentionally repetitive music, in particular techno (either produced via a DAW or hardware).

Can you detect terrible music instead? In many ways that’s a more interesting problem and gets to the heart of why people dislike mediocre slop.

Exactly, and that's the problem. The reasoning for creating the music is the problem, not that an artist wanted to use AI to generate something or experiment.

It's not even muzak at this point, at least that honest about what it is and why it exists. It's the music version of the automated AI videos on YouTube, which takes a Reddit posts, have an AI do a voice over and then run Subway Surfer in the background (Though I haven't seen one of them in months).

The way revenue works on these platforms is fundamentally broken. Revenue should be considered per user to artists they listened to per month. This is actually how YouTube Premium works.

Right now the way that revenue split works is you pool together all the cash from humans and hand it to whoever has the most bots.

Yep, that (majority!) amount of load on the infrastructure exists to try to win the rat race for whatever percentage of revenue comes from songs that are streamed regardless of their origin.

This is apparently how Deezer is doing it.

I dunno; there has always been shit videos on YouTube, obviously, but there used to be a sort of natural filter of videos that had nice transitions and decent narration and dialog that was more or less grammatically correct that made it so that I would mostly watch videos I enjoyed.

Now that AI has cargo-culted these traits I'm getting a lot of recommendations of videos that will initially seem "ok", and then I realize after about a minute that the narration will have some weirdness, and the script will have a lot of the typical ChatGPT "tells", and of course the video comes off as pretty low effort after that.

My YouTube recommendations have become increasingly useless, which honestly might be a good thing because it's made it so that I have less desire to use YouTube.

I discovered a new band some weeks ago (Hexxenmind) through Spotify. Really liked them, then checked concert dates only to find out it’s AI generated.

Honestly couldn’t tell in the moment but now that I know it’s generated it somehow feels “cheaper” and I dislike listening to them.

> AI simplifies the creation, doesn't mean it's good and will be listened to. And if it will, then what's the problem?

From this attitude you might as well get your entertainment from spam or ads.

a lot of gen ai is essentially a pollution machine creating digital single use plastics. Whoever can identity and sift it for value will be the after ai heroes.

AI creation kills cultural sharing.

People who create AI music are largely not sharing it with others for any reason other than to create a revenue stream. They are also not consuming new AI music to be able to develop influences and synthesize new ideas. The system builds brick walls where there was once osmosis.

How can art evolve under these conditions?

That is theoretically how one would think it would play out but that’s not what happens in reality. Instead it becomes like blog spam where it becomes impossible to actually find what you’re looking for because you’re wading through so much crap you don’t want.

Also, a lot of us value the fact that music is made by a person. Digital tools have been around for a long time and people have bickered about that, but ultimately they still require a person with some knowledge to sit down and actually produce the music, to do the thing. Writing prompts until you get something interesting can be fine, but what people are doing is carpet bombing us with whatever nonsense comes out because they have a financial incentive to do so.

I have plenty of experiments back when I did more digital music where I would mess with frequency modulators and such until I just found something interesting. I don’t see the harm in activities like that. But that’s not really what’s happening here. It’s deliberately lazy, corner cutting work to spam music platforms for profit. Yes there is a gray area between these two scenarios but that gray area isn’t the problem.

It's mostly the extremely high levels of fraud associated with such submissions than the content in itself. In Deezer's case:

> The consumption of AI-generated music on the platform is still very low, at 1-3% of total streams, and 85% of these streams are detected as fraudulent and demonetized by the company.

If they were more commonly consumed by real revenue generating users then these companies likely wouldn't care as much. As it stands, it saves them a lot of money at very little real user downside to try to catch the fraud at both ends (the fake listeners + the fake uploads) rather than just one end.

With songs like "A Million Amelias"... millions, apparently.

No matter how many AI tracks I blocked / downvoted on Spotify, they kept recommending them to me. It made me cancel my account. The thing is, from the consumer point of view, you can barely tell if it's playing in the background. Even if 90% of the streams are fraudulent, the remaining 10% is still real people who are none the wiser, but who would probably rather patronize human artists if given the choice.

People who have been listening to music their entire lives isn’t the target audience. It’s mostly getting the young generations used to it, and accept it as a norm. Something about most people’s music taste formalize around high school/university times.

It’s close to how young people have never experienced pre-Fortnite/Roblox times, so they are fine with shelling out money for microtransactions.

I think DJs with even a light catalog of their own original music will become some of the most important artists instead. Nobody has any interest in going back to the old system.

On a similar note I recently deleted a whole bunch of automated tests because if the AI is going to write most of the code then I should test it to make sure it's good! This won't work for all projects, but for my indie games it's a good idea.

this seems like a pattern seen across industries when it comes to AI

even more consolidation and lock in

As an user I wouldn't mind as long as it's attributed and I can skip it.

Pisses me off on YouTube - it's really hard to find something genuine in the sea of the AI written, AI subbed, AI generated and AI published - it's a scourge not because it's there, but because the channels are lying about it AND because 99.99999% of what I encountered it's not worth the waste heat processing a "publish 100 catchy videos about current affairs".

Good for users too; I much prefer a curated selection since I don't have time to drink from the firehose

Why? HN isn’t “curating” the wave of AI-written tech article slop. Unclear if they should, readers here love it!

Hard to believe these models won’t get better and better at producing music that humans want to listen to.

> use samples from a corpus strung together into a new [derivative] output.

That’s kind of how the music industry produces music these days. There are a few song writers that write for most artists, music producers who sample other music to string together songs for most artists etc. That’s why most music sounds the same and why AI generated music can be indistinguishable from mainstream music.

My understanding is music generation is more like stable diffusion. It generates a waveform as an image, then turns it into an audio file.

That would be neat, but I really don't see it happening. In software-land, it's my sense that, if anything, AI is working against open source. AI is creating busy work for open source maintainers with a large volume of low quality PRs, and scrapers are burdening those who maintain their own small-scale, public facing infrastructure.

Meanwhile, AI is ingesting their publicly available data to improve itself, with the implicit (if not explicit) goal of making those projects irrelevant (why read the docs, participate in a forum or chat, or submit a PR when you can ask your AI thing to just write the code you want instead?).

Furthermore, if a software developer is of the opinion that AI is "bad" in some way and they want to resist it, I think it would make the most sense to keep their code private. Open source is feeding AI.

Same is true for Qobuz. Pays artists really well, is EU located, but their applications (although they support a lot of platforms) are still a little rough around the edges.

I agree with you, but I hope they prevent people uploading thousands of AI generated albums. If people start doing that, it can become difficult for non-AI artists to gain visibility in the recommendation systems etc.

Butlerian Jihad vibes are building.

"Probably"? I'd hit that a thousand times just to be sure.

Don't understand how one can experience anything but infinite dread when confronted with the effects of these models on the arts.

Maybe I am getting old. But I don't think so...

Is it free to upload these files? Maybe a 1¢ fee would be enough to kill a majority of the spam.

What does human verification look like when you grant that it’s impossible to tell?

> …it's extremely unlikely anyone will ever encounter them naturally…

"Extremely unlikely", you say? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/13/ai-music-...

44% of uploads are probably not created by 44% of "artists". The core of people who are looking to exploit the system are going to be good at gaming the recommendation algorithm — they're specialists in it solely for the money who don't need to trouble themselves with artistic concerns.

Maybe useful for ensuring their reputation gets tarnished.

Ah yes, vibe coded games with AI slop soundtrack. The future of gaming couldn't look any brighter.

No, not really. Spotify is trialling a voluntary “AI Credits” thing where people can highlight use of AI when they release music.

https://support.spotify.com/lc/artists/article/ai-credits/

The problem is that subjective judgements by streaming platforms on where an AI line is drawn in music production is difficult.

If you human-write a song but use AI to produce a synth stem or bass stem and then mix it down and use AI mastering is that better or worse than if you use AI to help you write something but record with human musicians and a bit of AI assist?

And what if you use AI entirely to write and compose but use human performers to record?

And what if the AI is trained only on licensed content?

bandcamp: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605490

Good news: the courts (all the way up to the Supreme Court, which declined the appeal) have upheld the Copyright Office's assertion that their album is public domain and ineligible for copyright protection. Prompts are insufficient human authorship, which is a requirement for copyright to apply.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-de...

Arguably, this makes sending such an album to a distributor a contractual violation as well, since you must assert that you own the rights to license it to them and are empowering them to collect royalties on your behalf.

> My feeling is that if the AI is this good, the audience will just prompt the AI themselves and cut out the middleman.

I call this the instant imitator trap. If anything AI generates stands out from the slop, the slop generators will just imitate it, thus quickly making whatever standout quality from the "original" work also slop.

I wrote about it here: https://tombedor.dev/creativity/