Comment by tmountain
16 hours ago
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.
If you didn’t sink a career’s worth of time doing creative work professionally, then that’s a nice relationship to have with creative output. For a lot of people, AI has been one gut-punch after another with someone selling cheap knockoffs of your work in the same marketplace using your munged up work taken without credit, compensation, or permission. Mortgages not paid, cancer not treated, birthday presents not purchased for your kids, dreams dashed… and then people telling you the real purpose of creative work ends when you expect it to be anything more than a hobby.
I completely agree. It makes something that was already very hard that much harder. I have a friend who played guitar in a "famous band". They made it. Meaning, they played on David Letterman and went on extensive tours, had a huge fanbase, etc. Some years back, he reached out to see if I had any leads on IT jobs. I was surprised to say the least, but his response was simple, "there's no money in it." That conversation really hammered it home that you can "make it" and still live without financial security. Fast forward to today, and the situation is even more dire given what is happening with AI.
I don't think highly of AI made stuff uploaded without clear labelling as such.
But it's almost certainly not AI's fault if your mortgage is not paid, your cancer not treated or you can't pay birthday presents for your kids. Music was already extremely "cheap", and success has very little with how much or little work you put into it (extremely unlikely either way).
Let's fund art, but this business model you want to do it by is hardly worth saving.
It’s not just music that is getting ripped off and what is this funding model you’re proposing? How will that help some who designs and sells a few T-shirts etc?
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> AI has been one gut-punch after another with someone selling cheap knockoffs of your work in the same marketplace using your munged up work taken without credit, compensation, or permission.
I want to be clear. I am 100% on-board with AI being absolutely shit.
Buuuut, this has always been the case. Before it was scammers taking images from the web and undercutting you with prints, now it's scammers stealing your artistic style.
It sucks, but it's not a brand new problem. What makes it particularly bad now is that there's a much larger flood of it.
The legal situation is also completely different. It seems like models IP-wash, so there is nothing legally wrong with what current people are doing with ai. In contrast, the scammer selling your photo was clearly violating IP law, and you could (at least theoretically) pursue legal remedies.
As a hobbyist musician and songwriter of decades i was excited about AI music in October. I could finally take my rough demos of me singing along to my guitar and make better demos then just using garageband as Im not much of a singer. I enjoyed using Suno for a month or less then realize this is shit .... my own songs are AI slop just like everyone else - all sounds the same and my songwriting talents are meaningless now with anyone can now do this. I didnt listen to my slop for months then the band I play in asked to hear some slop of mine and then / there my AI slop had some redeeming quaility. As with my band (church band) and I listening and then playing along to my slop. Just slop writers can now play their slop like real musicians can........
At least not yet Im sure robots will and also an AI microphone with AI built in will be created so everyone sings amazingly.....
Overall AI is stealing humanity from us all, we are allowing it and it is only to the benefit of a few rich pie holes.
> 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.
That's EXACTLY how I used to feel about creativity. I was an art major who didn't make it, and I found that expressing myself via my hobbies was good for the soul.
Then I almost died and completely lost interest in making art!
Facing my own mortality, I realized that the time I invest into my wife, kids and family will have a larger positive contribution on the world, I think.
I know that sounds like a Hallmark Card.
At the same time, I've often wondered what my life would look like if I appreciated my family MORE and my hobbies LESS when I was younger.
I can relate here. I have son, who is now 3.5 years old. I haven't had the time or energy to produce any "finished work" since he's been born, and that marks a lull after 25 years of steady output. I don't feel sad or disappointed about this in the slightest. As my wife likes to say, "it's the season we're in." That said, I do really enjoy chaotic jam sessions with my son, as he's very interested in banging on his little drum set, so in some ways, it's just a new beginning. There's no better investment than time with our children.
Not a near death experience but similarish. Im trans and from a conservative religious family, so I planned to cut them off and eventually did..
Throughout my teens and young adulthood I immersed myself really deep into drawing and writing. But as my own life has started to form around me, I got a partner who I might have kids with, friends I care about. Ive slowly come to your pov too, and Im wishing I spent less time doing art in the past
I feel a part of this is that in any creative endeavor, you can never exactly capture what you want and thus have to leave something out. There are those that try to get it perfect, they never finish.
Nothing wrong with prioritizing family over art, that's pretty rad! But occasionally you can still do art, just don't be to serious about it. All my paintings are objectively rubbish, but heck I like them and didn't put a huge amount of time into them.
> Nothing wrong with prioritizing family over art, that's pretty rad! But occasionally you can still do art, just don't be to serious about it. All my paintings are objectively rubbish, but heck I like them and didn't put a huge amount of time into them.
That's basically where I landed. The idea being that making art is something I should do if I'm just trying to relax. Once the hobby starts looking like a second job, I know it's too much.
I've been asking myself this question in the last year:
> Why do I want to make music?
I picked a basic DJ controller and a midi controller bundled with Ableton. I'm a novice, but I love listening to music and dissecting what makes a good performance. I crave that feeling of getting chills when I find something new that moves me in new ways. This set was a pretty recent example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfF8jzBVWvM
That being said, the world is increasingly crowded with "good enough" music.
I resolved early on that I was never going to make a money doing this, which simplified things greatly. There's a primal part of our brain that craves adoration. I do wish for others to adore my music. Even if it's a handful of people. I do wish to perform publicly one day, even if it's at a park for passersby.
Mostly I just want something to move my brain in different ways. I want to create something beautiful.
>> That being said, the world is increasingly crowded with "good enough" music.
As I enter my mid-50s this is how I feel about the music I listen to. I have decades and decades of music I love for a variety of reasons. I don’t have time for “discovery” anymore. If I get introduced to a new band by someone I know or algorithmically, that’s great but I’m not going to spend hours trying to find the next great thing when I have so much I enjoy already.
Please share your bandcamp page!
https://huggyboy.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-wilds
I think it's great stuff. If you haven't already, build a website for the band or album and leave it up as a static tribute. If it's not something that brings riches, maybe it's a contribution to the world.
And do what you can to do what AI music makers wouldn't think to do - differentiate with photos of yourselves, the process, the wilds, etc. You've done all the hard work writing and recording the music, so you might as well embellish its place in the world, and the places it's about.
Thanks to all of you for the positive feeedback! I'm happy to hear that the project landed with you.
I'm only halfway through listening but this is a rad album! Thank you for sharing.
This isn't the kind of music I'd normally listen to, but I'm enjoying your album! Very well produced. I bought a copy. Thanks for sharing!
Personally I feel this would qualify for a showHN, if the spirit leads! No pressure, but this is really cool and I’d love to more things like this
It sounds great man! Thanks for sharing both the story and the album.
I like it! Loved hearing about your journey.
Thanks for sharing.
Epic
I'm curious too now
I had a very similar experience releasing a video game. Barely anybody downloaded it because I didn’t put any effort into marketing/promoting, but “I couldn’t be happier with my journey in making it”. I have replayed it a few times and it makes me unreasonably happy (although I’m taking a break now because I want to forget where everything is on the map).
Care to share the link? I'd like to take a look.
Mind sharing where you went for your lathe cuts (assuming you are happy with how they turned out/sound)?
It isn't in your profile. Why not post it there or here?
I'm happy they shared it on a further request, but I feel not having it in GP or profile is consistent with and further strengthens what they wrote in the post.
The reality is, essentially nobody makes money by creating music. Taylor Swift, you might say, is a billionaire. Is it from selling music? Nope, it's from selling tickets to her shows. People want to see her perform live. A Taylor Swift impersonator would make no money singing the same songs. A cover band wouldn't do any better.
It's the same with authoring books. Almost nobody makes any significant money off of them. It's so paltry I don't really understand why authors are so concerned about copyright infringement.
People steal my copyrighted stuff all the time. I long ago stopped caring about it. But I do very much like Github as it protects me from others accusing me of stealing their code.
If you want to make money, you'll need a plan that does not require copyright protection.
> Taylor Swift, you might say, is a billionaire. Is it from selling music? Nope, it's from selling tickets to her shows. People want to see her perform live.
People want to see her performing...her music. She would not make nearly as much money by going up on stage and sitting quietly for a few hours.
It's also worth nothing that she literally re-recorded several of her albums due to someone else getting the rights to them instead of selling them to her, and the proportion of streams and sales they got compared to the original versions was so high that it effectively forced the person who had bought them from the previous owner to sell them to her in the end anyways.
I don't necessarily disagree with the larger point you're trying to make, but saying that she doesn't make her money from selling her music doesn't really seem accurate.
I care more about attribution than copyright infringement.
So do I. At least Sid Meyer did that!