So absolutely tasteless it should be banned.
I think it's fine if people want to generate music at home like this but also, isn't it questionable what is even copyrightable? Apple makes you pay for this?
oh man, I just am so bummed that around 2007 I ditched my 20 year collection of CDs and went digital whaaaaa!
I dabbled with AI music for a bit with Suno. Worked out well for the most part, only way I'm ever going to hear music with themes for some of niche things I like, like Shadowrun. I threw a bunch of music genres at it and some were good enough that I added them to my normal playlist but after about 30 completed songs I had a hard time coming up with new stuff. As someone who has never tried to create music myself it was fun to play with.
I played around with Suno a little too. It's actually kind of crazy what it can produce. I mean I don't think it's objectively good in any way but for many applications this (and a lot of other generative AIs) are what I'd call "sufficiently good".
When you move into an apartment or furnish a rental or whatever you might put stuff up on the wall. For many years that might just be some mass-produced prints from IKEA, for example. These might be photos or paintings but a lot of them are "abstract". For this kind of application, current generative AIs are probably sufficient to create what I'd call "wall fillers".
So if you were doing an indie game, it might not be large enough to pay for artists to come up with music or even some basic art assets but an AI can I think fill this role. You can use them as placeholders.
So I'm generally sympathetic to the plight of artists. There is certainly an issue with how these LLMs are trained and if that's "stealing". Legally and ethically we're still working this out because the issue is new.
But I also think there are some things you just don't need an artist for.
There are two arguments about AI art, one of them is trivially reducible to the “is sampling/collage art”. If you are spending time expressing something using AI produced components then you are producing art, and probably the amount of time you spend working on it (either developing your skills or creating the work) roughly will correlate to how much value others see in it. It’s no different than building a hip hop track out of drum loops.
The second question is more interesting, which is “does raw AI produced artwork have any artistic value” and I am going to punt on the “artistic” part of that equation and answer the “value” part with no, and not because people might not enjoy it, but it falls victim to the classic “my five year old could so that” critique of modern art, except in this case it is true. Anybody can go to an AI and produce some mediocre media.
Where this gets interesting again is _volume_. What AI unlocks is exactly that anybody can create songs, videos and images for _themselves_. The value of it is probably the pennies worth of time ajd expense they put into it, but it might he worth it for them to make something, be mildly amused by it and immediately dispose of it.
You wanted some shadowrun themed music, you got it and enjoyed it. You made something of value only to yourself, but that seems okay? Multiply that times billions of people probably eventually people might luck into something genuinely good and worth sharing from time to time.
> people might luck into something genuinely good and worth sharing from time to time.
A) it would be impossible to find in a sea of AI generated slop
B) even if it were to be recognized as good, it would be instantly copied by other AI’s such that it would be very shortly thereafter be also considered slop
For any work to gain traction with an audience, there needs to be scarcity. Art and artists are valued because they are unique in some way, something about it or them cannot be replicated by others. The ability to instantly produce a piece of “art” negates any artistic value, at least as far as audiences are concerned.
I think your starting definition of value is basically worthless. Value is not about what things cost to make, but what people are willing to pay for them. You reached this conclusion by the end of your comment, but I think it's important to emphasize. My friend group has created incredible value with suno, mostly making meme songs we forget about after a day, but every once in a while we create lasting memories that have real emotional impact. It doesnt matter that anyone can do that, I dont think that cheapens the output at all.
Rick Beato had an episode about AI music where he talked about how easy it is to game the iTunes charts. So few people buy music from iTunes that it's relatively cheap to buy your way onto the charts.
We've seen a steady shift in music over the past 2 decades from full length albums, to single hits, to artificially generated.
Surely there's some gained and some lost. But coming from the era of buying an entire album, spending time reading the CD booklets and art, and listening to 10 songs which tell a larger story ---- what's being lost really hits home.
This comment is like 20 years out of date haha. People shifted to single hits when the iTunes store was selling songs for 99 cents. Now (and by now I mean for over a decade) we’re in the age of streaming, and you can easily access whole albums with zero friction. It’s the best time ever for the full listen through experience. And artists are responding by releasing long albums.
What I do think is lost these days is listening to the save album over and over again.
I really don't think we have. When I was growing up in the 90s it was the heyday of the pop single but there were still plenty of albums being produced and I think it's the same today.
I can tell you that myself (and many others) still create concept albums as our primary format. It's not that people aren't still creating it.
The choice is still there for any listener that cares about albums as a format. I don't mean that in a negative way. I suspect that many people listen to both playlists of singles, and albums of their favourite artists, depending on mood.
No, the game has changed. Back then, the singles were typically accompanied by an album, even if it was just filler. It's better to release singles now due to the way the Spotify and iTunes algos work. Best practice is now to release your songs one at a time rather than a full album (at least if you aren't an established player).
I feel like in those days I really didn’t appreciate albums. Storage was a premium so I would focus on bands greatest hits songs vs discographies. Both in terms of my burned cd collections and early mp3. I didn’t start getting into albums until terabyte hard drives were cheaper. Then I started pirating discographies and listening to the back catalog for the first time.
One can still buy artisan albums created by independent singers/bands. But they tend to get lost in the marketing/influencer noise and thus do not get worldwide success. As a result you have to search harder for them.
It's interesting to me that all AI music sounds slightly sibilant - like someone taped a sheet of paper to the speaker or covered my head in dry leaves. I know no model is perfect but I'd have thought they'd have ironed out this problem by now, given how pervasive it is and how significantly it degrades the end product.
I've noticed this too. I have a few theories about this. Disclosure: I know a little about audio, and very little about audio generative AI.
First, perhaps the models are trained on relatively low-bitrate encodings. Just like image generations sometimes generate JPG artifacts, we could be hearing the known high-frequency loss of low data rate encodings. Another idea is that 'S' and 'T' sounds and similar are relatively broad-spectrum sounds. Not unlike white noise. That kind of sound is known to be difficult to encode for lossy frequency-domain encoding schemes. Perhaps these models work in a similar domain and are subject to similar constraints. Perhaps there's a balance here of low-pass filter vs. "warbly" sounds, and we're hearing a middle ground compromise.
I don't know how it happens, but when I hear the "AI" sound in music, this is usually one of the first tells.
Agreed. I find that particularly annoying, and I also seem to find that the spatial arrangement or stereo effect is muted for most instruments (or the model simply doesn't use that feature as well as a good human musician).
my music tastes are pretty mainstream, and this just does absolutely nothing for me. it's exactly what i'd expect AI music to sound like - completely forgettable, with nothing interesting about it.
i'd be willing to believe that this music was legitimately charting if it had at least some redeeming qualities, but i can't imagine how this could honestly get eleven spots on the iTunes chart without gaming it in some way.
I listen to a lot of music of all different genres depending on mood, and I can honestly I don't think anyone could peg this as AI just by listening to it. It's soulless and devoid of emotion, but so are a lot of real artists. That wouldn't even be so obvious if they just added some background something, anything, like Wall of Sound style. If I played this for anyone and they said "it sounds like AI", I'd confidently tell them they are full of shit.
>honestly I don't think anyone could peg this as AI just by listening to it. It's soulless and devoid of emotion
i agree. as far as ai slop goes, it's pretty good. it could be made by a human who wasn't very artistic. i'm not saying it's obviously AI generated, just that it's not very good music. but that's not because i dislike popular music - i think most of the hot 100 is usually pretty good, and contains significant artistic value even if it isn't to my taste.
if somebody was claiming this was created by a human, i'd believe them but i'd have the same objection: this isn't going to hit 11 positions on the itunes music chart without gaming the chart in some way.
"ai generated music creator manipulates the itunes chart to occupy 11 positions" is a much less interesting story than "ai generated music is so popular it occupies 11 spots on the itunes charts"
I’ve heard lots of music like this over the years. It’s catchy, the lyrics are very relatable to the audience of people who like this music. It might not be your thing, but it is certainly enjoyed by many, and there are albums written around this subject. Folk/blues are made of this subject.
Is it over all flat and boring? Somewhat. You can only hear the same thing so many times before it gets tiring.
> completely forgettable, with nothing interesting about it
You just described 90% of young country for decades now. I keep waiting for its fans to get tired of being pandered to with formulaic lyrics, but they seem to be an endless well.
The AI comment push on that video is certainly an interesting look into the future. Record labels have their work cut out for them in this brace new world.
I searched Spotify and Apple music top 100 songs and Eddie Dalton is not on either. I think the majority of users do not buy singles on iTunes anymore so this may be an easy chart to manipulate. The source mentions the name of the creator in the second line leading me to believe this is some clever advertising for Dallas Little's AI.
Maybe I'm just old (definitely I'm just old) but the live music experience has been completely destroyed for me, between bat-shit-crazy high ticket prices and the absolute collapse of concert-goer decorum. Who would have thought that a bunch of high, adolescent punks in the 80s or 90s would be more appropriately behaved than the 35-yr-old mom pushing past only to stand directly in front to film the entire show over her head on her iPhone, with a few breaks to live-tweet her awesome experience on social media?
I admit that the bands I play in aren't at a level where we play "shows" with high ticket prices. More often we play in bars that host live jazz. I hope you don't give up on live music, but find a way to enjoy it on terms that you prefer.
I'll perform these songs by AI in concerts if the price is right. And that's how AI starts to leak out into the physical world. AI also hires human workers to do tasks in the real world using Task Rabbit and similar apps.
AI music is generally not going to be copyrightable unless they can show genuine human creativity was involved. So if a song is 100% AI, you could just go around performing it or straight up selling copies yourself and there's nothing* they could do about it. Though I do wonder if a human writes the lyrics, but AI generates all the music parts, if it becomes sufficiently human for copyright. Because the lyrics at that point would be actual creativity.
* I am not a lawyer, and this won't stop them from possibly trying to sue you or even winning depending on the situation. Or trying to prove there is human ingenuity involved. Do at your own peril.
It's similar pattern that we've seen previously, but exaggerated by modern trends and modern technology: the most popular cultural items will often be meaningless and base, and if you want something substantial you need other ways to find meaningful content.
Agreed. It's far worse now, specifically due to changes in technology. I didn't mean to say that "we've seen this all before," but instead meant something more like "given how human nature works, this technology will take us to a worse place."
This speaks more about how easy it is to buy botted vanity metrics on Spotify than anything.
The most obvious way you can tell this is inorganic is how all of the "Discovered On" are artist-specific playlists: "Eddie Dalton music", "Best of Eddie Dalton", "Eddie Dalton Hits", etc. A real artist may have some artist-specific playlists but generally their Discovered On will be more general genre playlists, like "Pop Hits" or "Hype" or "Gym Music" or whatever.
The top 40 has rarely been about "art", though. The music there is highly formulaic and derivative, whose creators know well how to produce music that appeals to the masses.
The effect of this "AI" trend is that now humans with no musical background or experience can flood the medium, making it much more difficult for anyone to make a living from it, whether they're an artist or not.
I don't like most AI music I've heard, but you shouldn't be voted down for expressing a preference.
I do sometimes turn on ambient noise, some of it is randomized and musical (like '88 keys' at mynoise.net). Not AI, just algorithmic, but just because there's no human composer doesn't mean it MUST be condemned.
If you think that AI generated beige music is nerdcore, you don't know what you're talking about. The best is far more sophisticated and deeply - sarcastically - self-referential that I think it would be a real challenge for AI to come up with something both compelling and meaningful.
I think you touched on the point: people who don't actually care about music think musical pablum is 'good', because it slides in their ear and out without challenging them with actual 'listening'. This guy even assigns a genre to his slop while clearly knowing (and, really, caring) nothing about what he claims to like listening to.
iTunes? i wonder what kind of sales we're talking about here. people buying music is few and far between, and i wonder what percentage of that customer base buys their music on iTunes when there are great alternatives offering lossless files
I have no doubt that those numbers have been inflated by AI powered marketing tools, dead internet theory style.
Yes it should be easy to find people in one’s immediate social circle who are listening to these tracks if they are that popular. I’ll wait…
Time for a cross, like the New York Times bestsellers.
Today there are zero mentions of Eddie in the top 100: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/top-100-usa/pl.606afcbb7...
I'd really love to see an actual source on this claim.
Definitely still at #3 in the UK when I open “iTunes Store” (not Apple Music) and go to the Album Chart… at least it was the case two minutes ago.
So absolutely tasteless it should be banned. I think it's fine if people want to generate music at home like this but also, isn't it questionable what is even copyrightable? Apple makes you pay for this?
oh man, I just am so bummed that around 2007 I ditched my 20 year collection of CDs and went digital whaaaaa!
I dabbled with AI music for a bit with Suno. Worked out well for the most part, only way I'm ever going to hear music with themes for some of niche things I like, like Shadowrun. I threw a bunch of music genres at it and some were good enough that I added them to my normal playlist but after about 30 completed songs I had a hard time coming up with new stuff. As someone who has never tried to create music myself it was fun to play with.
I played around with Suno a little too. It's actually kind of crazy what it can produce. I mean I don't think it's objectively good in any way but for many applications this (and a lot of other generative AIs) are what I'd call "sufficiently good".
When you move into an apartment or furnish a rental or whatever you might put stuff up on the wall. For many years that might just be some mass-produced prints from IKEA, for example. These might be photos or paintings but a lot of them are "abstract". For this kind of application, current generative AIs are probably sufficient to create what I'd call "wall fillers".
So if you were doing an indie game, it might not be large enough to pay for artists to come up with music or even some basic art assets but an AI can I think fill this role. You can use them as placeholders.
So I'm generally sympathetic to the plight of artists. There is certainly an issue with how these LLMs are trained and if that's "stealing". Legally and ethically we're still working this out because the issue is new.
But I also think there are some things you just don't need an artist for.
There are two arguments about AI art, one of them is trivially reducible to the “is sampling/collage art”. If you are spending time expressing something using AI produced components then you are producing art, and probably the amount of time you spend working on it (either developing your skills or creating the work) roughly will correlate to how much value others see in it. It’s no different than building a hip hop track out of drum loops.
The second question is more interesting, which is “does raw AI produced artwork have any artistic value” and I am going to punt on the “artistic” part of that equation and answer the “value” part with no, and not because people might not enjoy it, but it falls victim to the classic “my five year old could so that” critique of modern art, except in this case it is true. Anybody can go to an AI and produce some mediocre media.
Where this gets interesting again is _volume_. What AI unlocks is exactly that anybody can create songs, videos and images for _themselves_. The value of it is probably the pennies worth of time ajd expense they put into it, but it might he worth it for them to make something, be mildly amused by it and immediately dispose of it.
You wanted some shadowrun themed music, you got it and enjoyed it. You made something of value only to yourself, but that seems okay? Multiply that times billions of people probably eventually people might luck into something genuinely good and worth sharing from time to time.
> people might luck into something genuinely good and worth sharing from time to time.
A) it would be impossible to find in a sea of AI generated slop
B) even if it were to be recognized as good, it would be instantly copied by other AI’s such that it would be very shortly thereafter be also considered slop
For any work to gain traction with an audience, there needs to be scarcity. Art and artists are valued because they are unique in some way, something about it or them cannot be replicated by others. The ability to instantly produce a piece of “art” negates any artistic value, at least as far as audiences are concerned.
> is sampling/collage art
Yes.
You will owe royalties.
The latter part is the actual problem.
I think your starting definition of value is basically worthless. Value is not about what things cost to make, but what people are willing to pay for them. You reached this conclusion by the end of your comment, but I think it's important to emphasize. My friend group has created incredible value with suno, mostly making meme songs we forget about after a day, but every once in a while we create lasting memories that have real emotional impact. It doesnt matter that anyone can do that, I dont think that cheapens the output at all.
The iTunes chart primarily focuses on sales velocity, not streams, and so I wonder how useful that is in 2026 and how easy it is to game.
Rick Beato had an episode about AI music where he talked about how easy it is to game the iTunes charts. So few people buy music from iTunes that it's relatively cheap to buy your way onto the charts.
I saw a video of guy who became an Amazon bestseller in a book category pretty easily by buying his own book.
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We've seen a steady shift in music over the past 2 decades from full length albums, to single hits, to artificially generated.
Surely there's some gained and some lost. But coming from the era of buying an entire album, spending time reading the CD booklets and art, and listening to 10 songs which tell a larger story ---- what's being lost really hits home.
This comment is like 20 years out of date haha. People shifted to single hits when the iTunes store was selling songs for 99 cents. Now (and by now I mean for over a decade) we’re in the age of streaming, and you can easily access whole albums with zero friction. It’s the best time ever for the full listen through experience. And artists are responding by releasing long albums.
What I do think is lost these days is listening to the save album over and over again.
I really don't think we have. When I was growing up in the 90s it was the heyday of the pop single but there were still plenty of albums being produced and I think it's the same today.
I can tell you that myself (and many others) still create concept albums as our primary format. It's not that people aren't still creating it.
The choice is still there for any listener that cares about albums as a format. I don't mean that in a negative way. I suspect that many people listen to both playlists of singles, and albums of their favourite artists, depending on mood.
> there were still plenty of albums being produced and I think it's the same today.
agreed with this, I would almost go so far as to say there are more full length albums being created than ever before.
No, the game has changed. Back then, the singles were typically accompanied by an album, even if it was just filler. It's better to release singles now due to the way the Spotify and iTunes algos work. Best practice is now to release your songs one at a time rather than a full album (at least if you aren't an established player).
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I think it's an AI-generated response.
You're only describing pop music. Thankfully this is a tiny fraction of all music.
Artists have actually been moving back to the full album with goodies, even in mainstream pop with Beyoncé, Rosalia, RAYE, Charli XCX to name a few.
Does it really matter since pop albums were/are (almost?) always "collections of singles + fillers"?
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charts will become totally meaningless.
Event data will be what matters most. That's how artists actually make their revenue these days anyways.
I feel like in those days I really didn’t appreciate albums. Storage was a premium so I would focus on bands greatest hits songs vs discographies. Both in terms of my burned cd collections and early mp3. I didn’t start getting into albums until terabyte hard drives were cheaper. Then I started pirating discographies and listening to the back catalog for the first time.
One can still buy artisan albums created by independent singers/bands. But they tend to get lost in the marketing/influencer noise and thus do not get worldwide success. As a result you have to search harder for them.
the main article is about marketing/influencer noise completely replacing the artists, enacted by companies close to the search process
It's interesting to me that all AI music sounds slightly sibilant - like someone taped a sheet of paper to the speaker or covered my head in dry leaves. I know no model is perfect but I'd have thought they'd have ironed out this problem by now, given how pervasive it is and how significantly it degrades the end product.
I've noticed this too. I have a few theories about this. Disclosure: I know a little about audio, and very little about audio generative AI.
First, perhaps the models are trained on relatively low-bitrate encodings. Just like image generations sometimes generate JPG artifacts, we could be hearing the known high-frequency loss of low data rate encodings. Another idea is that 'S' and 'T' sounds and similar are relatively broad-spectrum sounds. Not unlike white noise. That kind of sound is known to be difficult to encode for lossy frequency-domain encoding schemes. Perhaps these models work in a similar domain and are subject to similar constraints. Perhaps there's a balance here of low-pass filter vs. "warbly" sounds, and we're hearing a middle ground compromise.
I don't know how it happens, but when I hear the "AI" sound in music, this is usually one of the first tells.
Agreed. I find that particularly annoying, and I also seem to find that the spatial arrangement or stereo effect is muted for most instruments (or the model simply doesn't use that feature as well as a good human musician).
This is no more art than a container of corn syrup is a proper meal.
So it’s perfect for the times. :(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHQevuohJH8
my music tastes are pretty mainstream, and this just does absolutely nothing for me. it's exactly what i'd expect AI music to sound like - completely forgettable, with nothing interesting about it.
i'd be willing to believe that this music was legitimately charting if it had at least some redeeming qualities, but i can't imagine how this could honestly get eleven spots on the iTunes chart without gaming it in some way.
I listen to a lot of music of all different genres depending on mood, and I can honestly I don't think anyone could peg this as AI just by listening to it. It's soulless and devoid of emotion, but so are a lot of real artists. That wouldn't even be so obvious if they just added some background something, anything, like Wall of Sound style. If I played this for anyone and they said "it sounds like AI", I'd confidently tell them they are full of shit.
> If I played this for anyone and they said "it sounds like AI"
It sounds like AI.
> I'd confidently tell them they are full of shit.
Why are you getting offended on behalf of a computer? Or is there a deeper reasoning for this logic?
>honestly I don't think anyone could peg this as AI just by listening to it. It's soulless and devoid of emotion
i agree. as far as ai slop goes, it's pretty good. it could be made by a human who wasn't very artistic. i'm not saying it's obviously AI generated, just that it's not very good music. but that's not because i dislike popular music - i think most of the hot 100 is usually pretty good, and contains significant artistic value even if it isn't to my taste.
if somebody was claiming this was created by a human, i'd believe them but i'd have the same objection: this isn't going to hit 11 positions on the itunes music chart without gaming the chart in some way.
"ai generated music creator manipulates the itunes chart to occupy 11 positions" is a much less interesting story than "ai generated music is so popular it occupies 11 spots on the itunes charts"
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Pre-video ad served by YT was quite literally a scam.
Which says all you need to know about where all this is headed, I guess.
This channel is not even the official channel.
I’ve heard lots of music like this over the years. It’s catchy, the lyrics are very relatable to the audience of people who like this music. It might not be your thing, but it is certainly enjoyed by many, and there are albums written around this subject. Folk/blues are made of this subject.
Is it over all flat and boring? Somewhat. You can only hear the same thing so many times before it gets tiring.
I'd say the same thing about two thirds of the iTunes top 100. Different people love different songs I guess.
The lyrics of the one you linked are fairly strong compared to other songs on the top 100 list.
> completely forgettable, with nothing interesting about it
You just described 90% of young country for decades now. I keep waiting for its fans to get tired of being pandered to with formulaic lyrics, but they seem to be an endless well.
It feels... commercial. I feel like I have to read a EULA and hit I Agree before I can listen to that.
the comments are very suspicious and very scary
If the comments are from humans, that's tragic and frightening.
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The AI comment push on that video is certainly an interesting look into the future. Record labels have their work cut out for them in this brace new world.
I've been making all my own music lately with suno 5.5. It's pretty sweet, it allows me to explore concepts in a different way. This sucks though. Here's hyperpop version of https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6097646 -> https://suno.com/song/516c7e52-a03e-490d-ba26-8d9a332eeea7
[dead]
Who still buys from iTunes? This is likely bot-driven.
I searched Spotify and Apple music top 100 songs and Eddie Dalton is not on either. I think the majority of users do not buy singles on iTunes anymore so this may be an easy chart to manipulate. The source mentions the name of the creator in the second line leading me to believe this is some clever advertising for Dallas Little's AI.
Bullshit. This does not represent what real people are listening to, there are ways to game the system.
The idea is explained by Rick Beato here: https://youtu.be/rGremoYVMPc
I am wondering when Dr. Phoxotic makes it to the top 10...
Thankfully I still buy proper music, what a sad state for human culture.
Live shows are the biggest part of music anyway
Maybe I'm just old (definitely I'm just old) but the live music experience has been completely destroyed for me, between bat-shit-crazy high ticket prices and the absolute collapse of concert-goer decorum. Who would have thought that a bunch of high, adolescent punks in the 80s or 90s would be more appropriately behaved than the 35-yr-old mom pushing past only to stand directly in front to film the entire show over her head on her iPhone, with a few breaks to live-tweet her awesome experience on social media?
I admit that the bands I play in aren't at a level where we play "shows" with high ticket prices. More often we play in bars that host live jazz. I hope you don't give up on live music, but find a way to enjoy it on terms that you prefer.
I'll perform these songs by AI in concerts if the price is right. And that's how AI starts to leak out into the physical world. AI also hires human workers to do tasks in the real world using Task Rabbit and similar apps.
AI music is generally not going to be copyrightable unless they can show genuine human creativity was involved. So if a song is 100% AI, you could just go around performing it or straight up selling copies yourself and there's nothing* they could do about it. Though I do wonder if a human writes the lyrics, but AI generates all the music parts, if it becomes sufficiently human for copyright. Because the lyrics at that point would be actual creativity.
* I am not a lawyer, and this won't stop them from possibly trying to sue you or even winning depending on the situation. Or trying to prove there is human ingenuity involved. Do at your own peril.
It's as if what William Gibson wrote about in Idoru has already become a reality. Soon we will see celebrity AI gossip.
“Soon” we will see celebrity AI gossip?
Someone clearly missed the first season of Fruit Love Island[0].
[0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/viral/ai-fruit-love-isla...
baby gronk got rizzed up by livvy?
It's similar pattern that we've seen previously, but exaggerated by modern trends and modern technology: the most popular cultural items will often be meaningless and base, and if you want something substantial you need other ways to find meaningful content.
right, but at least human hands used to touch the process. even in 2000s copy-paste boy band era it was at least human
Agreed. It's far worse now, specifically due to changes in technology. I didn't mean to say that "we've seen this all before," but instead meant something more like "given how human nature works, this technology will take us to a worse place."
I just checked Spotify, it has 368k followers and at least one song has over 1M streams.
This speaks more about how easy it is to buy botted vanity metrics on Spotify than anything.
The most obvious way you can tell this is inorganic is how all of the "Discovered On" are artist-specific playlists: "Eddie Dalton music", "Best of Eddie Dalton", "Eddie Dalton Hits", etc. A real artist may have some artist-specific playlists but generally their Discovered On will be more general genre playlists, like "Pop Hits" or "Hype" or "Gym Music" or whatever.
Wasn't there already some scandal with swedish criminals using this to launder money?
The top 40 has always been riddled with garbage, in my opinion, but at least real, human musicians were making a living from their art.
The top 40 has rarely been about "art", though. The music there is highly formulaic and derivative, whose creators know well how to produce music that appeals to the masses.
The effect of this "AI" trend is that now humans with no musical background or experience can flood the medium, making it much more difficult for anyone to make a living from it, whether they're an artist or not.
I mostly listen to AI-generated music. 8 out of 10 of my top listens in the last 180 days are AI-generated.
I gradually went from various genres -> mostly nerdcore -> mostly AI nerdcore.
https://www.last.fm/user/testycool/library/tracks?from=2025-...
EDIT: Updated link to the most listened songs in the past 180 days. The songs are not generated by me.
I don't like most AI music I've heard, but you shouldn't be voted down for expressing a preference.
I do sometimes turn on ambient noise, some of it is randomized and musical (like '88 keys' at mynoise.net). Not AI, just algorithmic, but just because there's no human composer doesn't mean it MUST be condemned.
Why?
It sounds great to me. AI-generated music is pretty popular with Warhammer 40k lore as well.
Also I tend to listen to songs for a few days, during which time I feel they're the best thing ever, which also helps with momentum during work.
After a few days I have to find other songs. Since AI music started getting more traction it's been way easier to find great songs.
I understand the criticisms of AI music, but that doesn't take away from the fact that for me and a growing number of people it sounds good.
The grift requires full commitment
If you think that AI generated beige music is nerdcore, you don't know what you're talking about. The best is far more sophisticated and deeply - sarcastically - self-referential that I think it would be a real challenge for AI to come up with something both compelling and meaningful.
I don't have strong opinions on whether the AI music I listen to is nerdcore or something else. Maybe I didn't use the correct term.
I think you touched on the point: people who don't actually care about music think musical pablum is 'good', because it slides in their ear and out without challenging them with actual 'listening'. This guy even assigns a genre to his slop while clearly knowing (and, really, caring) nothing about what he claims to like listening to.
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iTunes? i wonder what kind of sales we're talking about here. people buying music is few and far between, and i wonder what percentage of that customer base buys their music on iTunes when there are great alternatives offering lossless files
I mean music in the charts has always been total shit anyway.
Grifters figured out several years ago that the iTunes sales chart is extremely gameable, and can be juiced for some cheap headlines.