4 Comments

I wonder if the way it will enter the music market (as music, rather than as post-production, or effects-types tools) is through elevator music? That's always been a de-valued music market. I think this gets to what some of the others are commenting about relevancy - but this is a place where music that has already lost its economic relevancy has found "new life" (though it's often belittled as "bad music").

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Well, because today's music sucks. See if A.I. can create a good symphony or a baroque quartet piece.

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Also, I’d like to point out that there is indeed a more detailed compositional AI music tool out there in the wild. It’s called WavTool and I’ve been experimenting with it of late. It’s still fairly rudimentary but I’d be very interested to hear what your guests take would be on this and whatever other tools are born from this type of thing as time goes on

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I think that the real long-term concern with AI music is that music will eventually lose relevancy to the average person. Much like “the Truth,” once people begin to tire of thinking about whether this song is actually Drake or whoever, they’ll just stop questioning altogether and simply use the metric of “good song/bad song” (or, “Does this idea conform with my pre-conceived personal beliefs,” in the case of “the Truth”) as their guiding principle. The named artist attached to the music might become irrelevant and then it’s off to the races, so to speak, for AI-created music.

The real losers in the end are: First, the labels, critics and those who make music for profit (read: the Industry). Second, those who make music and aspire to make it their career, and finally, those who experience music in a humanistic way (if that’s the right word)… those folks who play a song at a funeral, as your guest mentioned, or those whose identities are guided or formed by the music that they listen to.

I guess I’m saying that I think the battleground for this stuff will eventually be shown to not be about whose IP is being stolen but rather whether music and art is truly as central to the human experience as we all think it is, and what the fallout of this seismic change will be for the next generation of humans in the world.

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