Comment by spopejoy
2 days ago
Your point echoes the "death of the author" concept in literature, where the work is independent of the creator, full stop. It's a useful concept up to a point, but if you really have no idea what it means to have a deep connection to music that is wrapped up in some idea of the creator as a human being, you should trust others when they say they do and it's important to them. For those of us with that value, AI slop is offensive, and to be clear, it has precedents in history with Muzak, early schlager music etc -- what they all share is a desire to use the power of music for non-artistic ends, which sucks from any number of viewpoints. If music has non-artistic utility, that doesn't justify a concerted effort to take away artist-made music from those who may not be paying attention.
I appreciate the honesty. I'm not saying people don't have this relationship with art, I think everyone can have some degrees of it, including me.
But my experience as an artist talking to non-artists about art, I don't think the sentiment that art without a struggling artist, purpose, story to tell, human arc, etc, is not real art is a true sentiment. First of all, because it's not true, because people apply their own meaning and form their own unique relationship with an artist. (The saying don't meet your heroes come to mind.)
Note that I'm not talking about AI at all here. I'm 100% for banning purely generated AI on soundcloud, bandcamp, spotify, etc. What I really want is to filter out art created by people who has put profit as first priority and thrown away any shred of artistic integrity.
But this is an impossible feat, because who am I to judge that someone else's favorite artist is devoid of artistic integrity?