This video was, like I said, a fun mess. It balances a lot of thoughts I’ve been having about music and the everpresent noise that surrounds us in the discourse void. I still hope you enjoy it and I hope it made sense, and if you didn’t enjoy/it didn’t make sense, uhhhhhhhh next video is a DDD?? (Also as usual, captions should be available within the next few days.)
Hey dude, I have no idea the extent to which you read comments but as a new RUclipsr struggling with a messy video seeing this was LIBERATING. I really love your work on a base level but this loose, idea focused format is pretty inspirational and also really engaging on the level of, “hey, crazy frog man can talk for hours from idea to idea and I’m here.” That being said if you ever do a Genesis DDD I will mail you a mixtape of funny ringtone hits and it would make me very pleased. You’re a hell of a creator man, keep doin’ you 😎
I would actually love a t-shirt that says "I willingly perform actions that make my quality of life significantly worse and I have no interest in changing said actions"... I think most people would be ready to spend the big bucks for such a shirt
“I willingly perform actions that make my quality of life significantly worse and I have no interest in changing said actions…and all I got was this stupid t-shirt..”
On one hand it's disgusting how labels are basically using AI to raise dead artists from the grave and cash in on their fame once again, basically disrespecting not only their family but also their fans but on the other hand it's absolutely hilarious to hear the cast of Spongebob Squarepants cover Off the Grid by Kanye West so idk
But you DO know. The fact such feats can be rendered at ALL....means they will happen. In a huge way. Any time people are saying "this is scary....but also, WOW...look at THIS!" Then you know that thing is the new....thing. I'm SO ambivalent about all of it. I'm not for or against. I'm curious and weirded out and watching....
As a musician, I’m definitely scared of AI when it’s being used to replace the human. When it’s being used for memes though, I have no reason to be scared, as it’s just comedy.
A channel i'm subscribed to used to post their remixes of Madonna songs, recently they've been posting Madonna AI covers. It is horrifying. One was a "duet" with Frank Sinatra with his real voice with Madonna superimposed onto Nancy Sinatra's voice...i was DISGUSTED. If you think AI "singing" sounds unnatural wait till you hear it with real singing at the same time. I'm a vocaloid fan and they don't trigger my uncanny valley the way AI "singing" does.
Ai generated voices are honestly just kjnd of funny to me. Their cheapness kind of strengthens a lot of memes with ai voices. Couldnt imagine using it for anything beyond the level of "frank sinatra sings fnaf song by living tombstone" or "eminem raps about neing a 2nd century warlord" though.
Mhm, I mean believe it or not all of my favorite anime characters just to name one for example (Son Goku) from Dragon Ball now has AI cover videos lol after seeing those president videos of Obama, Donald, and Biden I thought that was the end of it.... Nope they kept going I'm so mad as hell 😅😅😆😆😆
Vocaloid is different, because those artificial voices never belonged to a real human. Whereas when an AI imitates the sound of an actual person's voice, it becomes uncanny because we can hear how similar, yet "wrong" it sounds.
@@brittanyflora1993 It's coming and it will absolutely devastate the music industry, even harder than piracy has. Soon it won't even matter if you pirate it because the person that made it doesn't exist.
@@ghost_mall The difference between AI art and AI Music is that the music industry is NOTORIOUSLY lawsuit happy because it's usually controlled by massive record companies like Universal Music (who were a fucking plague of copywrite strikes and DMCA takedowns until youtube worked out a deal with them). Remember these were the companies that managed to get Napster shutdown....admittedly by that stage it was too late, the idea had hit the public consciousness and now was out there with other sites replacing it. Meanwhile art is barely policed when it comes to these things unless it's 'high art'. Posting a copy of the Mona Lisa online isn't an issue, hell even selling prints of it...but try to actually forge the painting and there is big issues. The music industry learns hard lessons slowly, the lesson they eventually learned from Napster and it's ilk was 'be more convienient than the pirates', hence the success of Itunes and Spotify over having to use Peer2peer downloading albums (as we had to do back in the day).
Cant help but wonder about artists and their journeys and how it relates and feeds off the fanbase. Take Keshas latest record “Gag Order” and how special it feels because of her story and the fight she continues to have in order to be her own artistic self. This would be impossible for an AI.
@ghost mall but dance monkey was produced and written and performed by someone with a vision. Maybe a month from now they release a whole different project that references their experience as One Hit Wonders and how the pandemic affected their career, etc. Sure AI could eventually replace a song or two but the evolution of artistic endeavor is unpredictable. Not as easy to model and replicate.
@@ghost_mall This, people forget that what we hear NOW when we look back on is the 'best of the decade' essentially, for every Bowie and the spiders from Mars, there's tons of absolute trash released that week in the charts that barely scrapes a notice from the general public. I mean, christ, I think when I was a kid in the 90s and the amount of unremarkable stuff that turned up in the charts here in the UK that got released and vanished into the aether. Like most people are only going to barely remember Coco Jamboo and that was a high charting song here in the UK.
"Prince would probably be down for it" The man that kept us from getting our hands on the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo PS2 game because of a reference to one of his albums would not be down for use of his voice.
@@Emme-Kappa because copyright law is much looser in Japan compared to the US. Its why the dub of the anime and official subs prior to Netflix getting their hands on the anime change most of the music references, with only a few remaining because of their references either not translating to English (for example, The Hand and The Band are written very similarly in Japanese, but are distinctly different terms in English), distinct enough to get away with the reference (such as the Zeppelis) or otherwise are just generic enough that they can get away with the reference (such as Heaven's Door)
@sparksparkle it's actually not. Their music, "robotic" as it may sound, has always been about making the most out of human creativity. Their final album, RAM, uses human made sounds in marriage with sound machines to achieve a true statement of what it means to be human. They plead for people to bring life back to music, and narrate the journey of a feeling-deprived automaton into a human in "Touch", one of their most poignant masterpieces. They are the ones who have the most authority to be saying that.
Although streaming has given us access to wayyy more music than ever before wayyy easier, it has created a ridiculous expectation that we are supposed to be fed content 24/7. And that has a disastrous effect on us a society. It means that people are often rewarded handsomely for churning out predictable, safe slop. Chasing trends and feeding algorithms is far far far more lucrative than quietly and carefully crafting a unique product. AI simply accelerates all of these issues and rewards the music industry for their worst and greediest impulses. Unless there are clear and enforceable regulations, i dont see this getting better.
While I understand the fear of AI generated replications of artist’s music, I feel like it’s one lawsuit away of being forced into obscurity, even with some artists ecstatically giving permission.
it should. stealing a person's identity is a violation of human rights. we have a right to our image and voice and it shouldn't be used without our consent
i was apprehensive when I clicked on this video since i’ve seen several RUclipsrs I generally like make extremely weak points on this topic. this is the only video i’ve watched on this topic that i agree with. there’s a level of nuance that’s necessary when discussing ai in music and art and I appreciate the amount of thought you put into this video. the ringtone analogy alone made this video worth watching.
People should have a right to their image and voice and they should NOT be used without authorization. I can't believe there arent laws about this YESTERDAY
I was thinking about this topic recently. Crazy. The way AI generated music works is you give an algorithm a bunch of music to examine and then it makes a new song based on that. But the AI can't understand or explain what makes a certain piece of music good. And if you like your favorite artists for their personal songs, an AI can't really do that. Also, how would you copyright music composed by an AI? Who would get the royalties for it? The AI? The programmers? The people whose music was used to make the AI generated music?
Regarding the copyright, I don't know the nuances between that and copyright of images (in the US), but it's been ruled that AI images cannot be copyrighted because only a human can create copyrighted work. So if a generative audio AI is used, the raw output is non-copyright. I believe then if a human mixes a track using say AI generated vocals, that mix could be copyrightable, much like using samples from public domain audio, but I guess it would depend how different it is from the raw output?
@@Forcoy Me? No. I came up with that example myself from my understanding of American copyright law. If it's the same as someone elses take then maybe I'm close. (I'm not even american I just follow a couple of lawyers on youtube.) The way I see it, companies will use AI solely in the generation of vocals, getting a human to write and mix it so they can keep copyright ownership of their output, unless/until they get the law changed so they can own the rights to AI audio.
I used to be excited about the possibilities of AI in art, and in music in particular. Artists such as Holly Herndon, and earlier exponents of algorithmic music like Autechre, Brian Eno, and back to Xenakis and Cage, used technology to generate music that was free of human ego, or that challenged our conceptions of creativity and expression, or that gave us sounds that surprised their creators as much as the listeners. But the current generation of GANs and transformers isn’t about exploration or pushing the boundaries of art: it’s about raiding the commons to produce sophomoric mashups of existing works, and using that for either direct profit or to drive down the value of human labour and imagination.
Not trying to be a dick, but, who's making a profit off of AI covers? I'm pretty sure most people just make them for fun And on devaluing human creativity/effort, well, the biggest pop artists have been using ghost writers for how long now? It's not like this is a new phenomenon
@@gastonzumbo9860 They dont even use ghost writers, they just use writers. Like you can often see who wrote their music on spotify. People like Max Martin even receive awards for writing pop music. "tradiotional pop music" is usually a well known vocalist with a team of writers and producers, theres of course also the indie , rock/metal and hip hop where having writers is looked down upon but thats the minority
For me personally it's just the music covers, and voice covers that scare me :P Yes there is some scary AI art out there but everything else just pisses me off lol
I just remembered "Human Music" from that Rick and Morty episode, and how Jerry didn't particularly felt for it. He just found it amusing or kind of nice and went on in the car
I want to be excited about this new technology! But since it's entangled with a lot of people's livelihoods and is also a potential threat to them, I can't get excited about it and have a clear conscience.
Genuine question, if we forget the threat to people's livelihood what about this excites you? I'm not trying to start an argument but almost everywhere I look people either find this stuff inherently dystopian at worst or inherently boring and unexciting at worst (I'm on this fence). So I'm genuinely intrigued that someone wants to be into this stuff. Again, not coming for you or anything, I know how the internet can be so I'm making that very clear.
@@hikikomori_3708 The tech itself is indifferent as to how it can be used. It can be used as another tool in the tool belt of artists, just as much as an instrument or a notebook. Really any new development, especially ones of this caliber can be used for both an infinite amount of bad, as well as good. That lies on the individual. If we want a world where is as humans can live in harmony with the technology, bringing out the best in all of us, it is up to us to use it for good.
Admittedly, I think ChatGPT would be more likely to generate an interesting Max patch or Serum preset than "Write lyrics for a song about pencils in the style of Lennon-McCartney" (pop songs are way harder to write than people think), but I think maybe I'm just one of those rubes that finds the American Presidents Argue About Video Games videos extremely funny. And once again, the only AI thing that's utilised is the vocal timbre.
Hey, related to tech in music, maybe you should look into VTuber idols. They’re basically streamers who have an avatar facemapped to their own face, and thus become a new character, usually anime style. VTubers do all sorts of activities, be it just playing games, to having full concerts of original songs, complete with full 3D models for them to perform with. Vtubers really took off during quarantine back in 2020, when everyone needed an outlet, so watching an anime girl scream while dying in minecraft became an outlet for many. Just another development of the internet age.
This was honestly fascinating! (As is consistent with all your work but I digress.) Some related thoughts: I thought I couldn’t stand to be around anyone who doesn’t keep up with current music, but then I realized that’s both of my parents. And I guess it’s not that sad of a life, but it is hard to imagine. Also circling back around to the whole “we like things we already know” was soooo good. I mean, it’s why Taylor Swift’s re-recordings are so successful. From what I see on the cursed bird app, people are so excited to hear the same versions of songs they already know that she doesn’t need to add any extra tracks. Or just look at all of us who play the same album on repeat for weeks until we get bored of it and look back fondly on it a few years later. As with any new development these days, AI music could sound cool in theory but the closer you look at it, the more hellish it becomes. (Also on a personal note, I really appreciate that this was uploaded today. Definitely helped get my mind off of workday insanity, so thank you!)
I still hope never to be someone who's not keeping up with current music. I never wanna see myself losing touch with culture. As an artist I could never let myself lose sight of that sense of discovery, the horizon of another new sea. I think that eventually, people just look out over one such sea and decide it would be one sea too many. I never want it to be too many, because with that curiosity, goes your sense of creative inspiration. What good is a lifetime on an instrument you can never truly fully master if you stop and resign yourself to the same old in the end? Personally, the only reason I ever took an interest in creative things as a child was out of immediate desire for something new. If I was bored, I would make something exist. Maybe this is the bias of being someone who's basically never not been actively engaging in some form of creative endeavor, but I really think there's something fundamentally *us* about that, like... everyone. I doubt anyone benefits from letting go of that curiosity. It's part of a whole tree canopy lattice of things that keep life experiences new. I expect that as my body ages, I will slow down. And for that reason, a connection to that cultural curiosity becomes all the more vital, to continue to inject a sense of newness not yet explored into my increasingly inertial physical state. It would be nice to at least *feel* fully alive until the day I pass. I think staying connected to the world around you is a big part of that. I think a world without the music of its given era is a very cold and lonely one. It also takes the least actual effort to engage with. All you need to do is preserve your hearing.
It really depends on the meaning of "keep up with current music". Back when I was a teenager and young adult, it was only natural to keep one ear towards current music (of the time). I was into 60's and 70's music more than anything else but I also was happy to embrace current bands that released material I could emotionally connect to. It was easier to do back then. The landscape of music was a bit different and genres of music I could really sink my teeth into were a lot more mainstream. As I have gotten older, I have found that while I still enjoy newly released music, it usually comes from artists in the same general age-range as myself. It is usually albums that come from artists that I started listening to in my teens or early twenties. That kind of music is something I can relate to. It is the kind of music that speaks to me because of shared cultural/pop-cultural experience. When I do embrace artists or albums that I did not previously get into, they are usually from the 80's or 90's. The kind of stuff that I heard singles from on the radio back in the day but never explored. I have some friends who are in their twenties and they have occasionally encouraged me to listen to some very current stuff. A lot of it is quite good on a musical level. I can understand how they get so many fans and I can identify the elements that modern generations find really compelling but that music isn't really something I can relate to. The subject matter deals with pop culture I can't really connect to and perspectives that I can understand but don't share in the same way. If I am not really feeling the music, what is the point in listening to it? If I can't really connect to the lyrical content, would I just be going through the motions to stay current? I guess what I am saying here is that my relationship to music is incompatible with "keeping up" with current artists/releases. I don't really care about dance/club music. I don't really care about keeping up with pop trends that I can't really connect to anyway. I would rather just find music (regardless of its release date) that I can truly love and put all my attention into listening to entire albums worth of in a single sitting.
I had no idea that Spotify had an AI DJ until this video. Also, while watching I got a notification on my phone from spotify advertising me about it. Creepy.
I think if anything can quell your anxiety a little bit about music in the future, it’s that things like this very channel are a continuing sign that music will always be discussed and enjoyed and dissected in ways that totally run contrary to mass media consumption. So many critics and people on this website try to promote thoughtful discussion and interrogation of art, and I feel like that’s not a declining trend. People WANT that. It may be difficult to deal with on the outset of AI, but I think we can sustain ourselves and perpetuate healthy consumption and experiences with what we listen to if we put it out there enough.
My hope is that the over saturation of every kind of music you could ever want at your digital fingertips will lead people to be more interested in live performance. If everyone can make music super easily, it will become just a fun hobby for most people and they will become increasingly less impressed with musicians that make generic sounding music that only exists online and increasingly more interested in musicians who go the extra mile with their creativity and put in a lot of effort and passion into their live performances.
nothing rly gets me more than squidward singing I'm Not Okay from mcr but all jokes and laughs aside it rly is scary how AI isn't only after Art now but Music too... then again Vocaloid has been a thing since forever and it never replaced all artists, so hopefully it'll balance itself out
Let the dullards have their AI top 40. Functionally there is very little difference between that and the committee made pop you speak of. There will always be a thriving scene of real musicians playing real music to a small but passionate fans. Parcels, Idles and Foals all give me hope that the future is bright for proper music.
you have to remember that our generation is not limited to the charts no more, we have access to literally all of music history through spotify, and it's a testament to how modern day people have much more diverse interests than those even back in the early 90s
@@supathechest Not to mention how much harder it was to find 'non-charting' music at the time, usually involved going to back alley record shops that dealt with that specific genre. You wanted metal or punk music? You went to one of the metal vinyl places in a major city unless you were lucky enough to have one in your small town. Wanted 80s synth music in the early 2000s? Same again you had to go down to your local independant record shop and hope they had what you wanted on vinyl or cassette, though at that stage the internet was taking hold so music was slowly becoming easier to access. Now if I want to hear a specific genre I can just search something like spotify.
I remember being blown away by your amazing early video about The 20/20 Experience (I hope that’s the correct title) by Justin Timberlake and then being shocked again when I saw it only had like 71 views! I totally understand why creators start to dislike their early work after a few years but I thought you came in strong
It's really impeccable that Mic made this video just a day prior to the AI John Lennon Beatles news. I'd love to see a follow up video or short where Mic gives his opinion on the upcoming track and the implications of AI John Lennon as a legacy act.
Great video as always! The comment section is so interesting right now, loving reading everyone's opinions. I think for me, while it would be interesting to hear AI-generated, personalised music for me 'from' my favourite artists, something about it rings so hollow. Whether I like a song or not, when it comes from the artist themselves, I am able to connect with another person and their emotions and experiences. While I could attribute my own meaning to AI-generated music, it would be a fundamentally lonely experience, when I know that Im not hearing something from another human being.
Your point about music being a disposable medium really resonated with me. We’re at the point in music where it’s just background noise rather than being a special part of our lives. Companies are making more profit than ever and AI is the newest way for them to do that. Why pay an artist when you can have a computer make a million songs in less than an hour?
What people dont understand about AI vs Humans(any animal for that matter), is that Humans have motivation and fear. Until you can mimmick or instill fear and motivation in AI, you will never be able to replace human creativity, AI can create but it is not creative. When a human writes a song, its motivated by a feeling and fueled by a fear of failing or writing trash. AI does not have that, so it may sometime produce something good, but it will always be detached. AI cannot and will never sing its heart out, because doing so is an embodiment of your life, hopes, dreams, fears, experinces and understanding of others. I sing my heart out and that comes from the months I didnt have a bed to sleep in and the fear that I may die without ever having impacted anyone. Thats why my voice resonates with you.
Same thing that happened to video will happen to music. Cheap easily reproducable content will be vastly popular (tiktok) but there will still be a place for people who put their soul into their work, they're just gonna have to give up a piece of the pie. When video reaches the next stage which is in progress now as AI will sooner than you think be able to cut together entire movies from scratch, music too will follow suit. (also for the record video has been following digital art)
Every year, new or old, I did deep discog dived 5-10 artists or groups. Listened 20+ albums that i missed past years. Made playlists, with dozens of songs, Deleted to made new list again and again. It was fun to discover new songs. But i can’t anymore. For the first time this year I am tired of music. This year i didn’t made any lists. Listened maybe 5 or 6 albums. Deep Discog Dived only one, ONE artist and that is Sade. I listened maybe 3 or 4 SONGs not albums SONGs that released this year. Maybe it’s fatigue or i am overstuffed with music or my expectations got much higher. Still I found barely anything interesting music anymore. I completely agree on the topic about Too much music. It is so fast food, it’s not funny anymore. The AI thing; I get it it’s funny at first times, like Kanye singing Gary Come Home or other outlandish covers but novelty gets wears off. Like every other thing but at the same time It scares me, because People also use this technology as a Digital Necromancy. These are the very dark times and it is very right to be scared.
I host a weekly radio show on our local university student run radio station (WRFL in Lexington KY, we're great I promise!) that focuses on IDM and let me say I felt TARGETED when Mr The Snare said "you might even know who this is" while displaying the ...I Care Because You Do album art.
knowing that mic had to here a suggestion that "prince would probably be down" with AI music while making the prince DDD makes his response like 3x funnier
The issue with AI is that it wants to solve everyone's problems, but our lives are pushed by problems, AI art is like the art made by a band that started on someone's garage talking about the struggles of the low class and are now 40 years into the business, are filthy rich and their work is irrelevant nowadays because it doesn't have the spark that a rough life cause and now only talk about the music business because that's the only kind of problem they have. Art is fueled by a lot of decisions that go beyond notes and rhymes, even the most dull song has something behind it, even if it's pure escapism, and it doesn't really translate when an AI does it, is just there, it's like playing a game with cheats, you beat it in half a day and then forget about it, there's no connection to it, it doesn't challenge you, it gives you what you want always and that's the most pointless way of existing.
Close to every job in the world right now is at risk of eventually being replaced by ai. I think it’s more likely we’ll get more humans in the creative industries and less in manual labor/manufacturing/logistics over the next few decades. Until ai develops an understanding of human taste in art, I wouldn’t worry about ai taking over the music industry.
But we should make AI art of all types illegal. If we give capitalists and business owners a chance to fuck us over in other for them to make more money, they will. WE CAN'T GIVE TH THAT CHANCE.
Most labour jobs are going nowhere soon. All the easy to automate jobs have been automated. It's why despite the agricultural revolution American is still using undocumented immigrants to harvest much of their produce. Why your grain augers are still welded by hand and not machine. Often times human labour is cheaper than machine labour, and I don't see robotics advancing fast enough to replace most of those jobs.
It's actually really funny you mentioned the number one song and album in America cuz when i went to look it up i just said '"So what? It's just Taylor again." cuz when i looked Midnights was back to 1 and Morgan Wallen was 2 but currently he's still the number one song.
Michael, you have truly terrified me. I was going to joke about 'haha they'll be so much AI music that people will want to revert to non-synthesized recorded acoustic human music' but this video truly opened the Pandora's Box. And you even mentioned Crazy Frog too. I'm an artist, not here to plug, I make songs for my own expression, as with any art form. But with AI, it's like, damn what is an artist today if not a product? I know popular music has always had the goal to reach the masses, but at least that comes from some place of heart and expression to be timeless and resonate. But if the majority of people like to consume background wiggly music that sounds like the voice of someone they like - then what if, as you said, companies favour that? Sure AI David Bowie could continue Bowie's work but the experience, the changing of approaches, the history of the individual and expression. It'd be gone? What if this leads to a collapse in music, like you said, so much to consume that people abandon the form all together? And then also the issues of morality, using a deceased artist's voice in AI to sing something that might tarnish their legacy? Sure AI voices are real scuffed as of right now but who knows where it might end up too. WHAT IF THEY MAKE AI CRAZY FROG AND MAKE AXEL G??? MAMBO NO 6?? who's gonna stop them? I'm rambling, sorry. But I'm now even more confused with the big question - what dows music mean and what even is it? Thank you Michael The Snarington The Third for the insightful video
As an artist myself I’ve used the act of songwriting to learn more about myself and to express the way I feel. Like a form of therapy. This has always been the main motivation for me to make music. I see friends formulate songs with the primary purpose of being commercial. I’ve tried to do the same at different times and felt empty as I would listen back and say “this doesn’t sound like me. This sounds like another track destined for the forgotten part of the brain.” I don’t try to write songs like that anymore. I say all this to mean that if ai over-saturates the airwaves then it would not be worth it for a human composer to try and compete in a battle of checking off music production boxes and formulating dopamine releasing rhymes. As artists we should celebrate the individual within us. Maybe make music without the limitations of trying to cater our tastes to what we think our predetermined target demographic will resonate with. Make music and art because it will help you understand yourself better as a human.
@@ZippyRiffs You couldn't have said it any better. I'm glad to hear the whole 'being commercial and feeling empty' wasn't just a me thing LOL but I totally agree
AI will only make humans more and more replaceable and expendable. It will only take us further into Exestential dark age where all the things that makes humans, humans will be less valuable than money. And the only ones who won't be affevted by this are the 1%, the worst examples of our species, who would rather destroy the world rather than making life better.
I think it's the other way around actually. Most people are always going to want a face and a name to the music they enjoy, even if they're not invested in music otherwise, so pop music will be fine. I think it's going to be a lot more difficult for things like movies/shows and other media to justify hiring composers and orchestras, or to license already existing music, when they can just press a button and get something that's just as good to most people.
Honestly the only AI thing I've ever used is that Spotify DJ cuz I like the song selections and I can't see ahead and skip to what I want (as easily like yeah I could skip everything but I'd rather be surprised by what comes next)
I’m a bit outdated when it comes to how I take in music. I don’t use streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music. I find new music through RUclips and if I like a song, I’ll listen to more. If I like enough songs, I’ll buy an album either physically or from iTunes and then burn a copy to CD. But I’m also in my 30s and have a massive catalogue of music I’ve acquired over 25 years, most of which was purchased after my tastes had mostly solidified. I’m still listening to albums I bought 20 years ago and I’m finding new stuff from 10 years ago that I didn’t know about it when it was new. I don’t think A.I. is going to be a huge threat to music in terms of artists. I think we’re going to see a shift back towards personalities rather than songs. Right now streaming random songs seems to be the big thing, but I look at kpop and I see a fandom that obsesses over a person more do than the music. The music is the gateway, but the person they connect to drives the fandom. I also think we’ll see a rise of people playing instruments again because you can’t A.I. your way through playing a guitar on stage. And you’ll see a focus on personality again. Blink-182 was an absolutely huge act in the early 2000s. They all had distinct personalities and they played instruments. They were like the Beatles of pop punk music. During that time a lot of smaller punk bands were able to make a living by releasing albums to a small but devoted fanbase and tour regularly. I think A.I. will force music into that direction again simply by the younger generation wanting a more authentic music experience even if A.I. can create a coherent musical product in the future. It cannot replicate fun personalities playing authentic music and building fun moments.
I'm a mix of both. I care about music but at the same time I use it to have an emotion. So I enjoy the AI covers because I can hear a style from one of my favorite artists that maybe I always wanted to hear but it just makes me want to seek out REAL artists that have that style I'm looking for. My music style is very much a Movie soundtrack.. each song being memorable because you saw the main or side character have their moment in the film.
3:20 ... I'm sorry but in 2015 I was like, "Cant wait till ai can generate music to exactally my taste so I dont have to go searching the internet for music and wait for my artists to come out with stuff" like dude, once ai can make music I like to listern to, why would I listern to something someone else has made with ai to their taste when I can just generate my music with an algorythom that totally understands me????
On the FN MEKA specifically, the discourse was on if it was ok for a program made by non-white people would be allowed to use racial slurs. And even more contentious was the postulation that FN Meka doesn't use AI at all, as when originally talked about on news websites, they didn't say what aspects of Meka used AI and were extremely vague about the whole thing other than that. Jarvis Johnson has some great videos about the situation on his channel that go way more in depth than I did, but there is more than just the idea of AI hate behind Meka.
By the way the answer to the question of who has the #1 song in america is Morgan Wallen with Last Night (9 weeks and counting), and the top album artist is Taylor Swift with Midnights (recently taken back from Morgan Wallen's One Day at a Time). I had to look that up.
morgan wallen, for the 2 of you that don't know, said a naughty word (perhaps the most naughty of all) while drunk about 2 1/2 years ago (i think that was what mic was referencing in that bit of humour)
There’s a jukebox musical of Queen songs called We Will Rock You the musical and in its dystopian future all music is created by computers and I frequently think about how this dumb thing from 2003 might actually end up being right.
Prince is the reason some JoJo's Bizarre Adventure related media and parts of the manga took well over a decade to finally get any sort of official release in the west, and it's only because one character was named after one of his albums. I repeat, one character named after one of Prince's albums in a manga series was the sole reason it didn't get oficially localized for many years.
Hate to be this guy, but the scenario you're describing where artists put out AI based releases once they've built up a significant enough catalog is basically the premise for the Miley Cyrus Black Mirror episode. While this could happen, I think a more pressing way AI is going to affect the music industry is in the production area. I feel like looking at how the current WGA strike intersects with AI is going to be indicative of how large studios/labels are going to use the technology to maximize profit. A big contention for the WGA is the possibility that studios will use AI to create low-quality drafts for scripts, then have a human writer turn the AI draft into something useable. The idea is that this will devalue the human writer's contributions, and will justify the studios paying them less. I could see something similar happening to producers, songwriters, and engineers in the music industry very soon. I don't think we'll have an "AI Drake" project come out in the next five years, but I definitely could see a Drake album where the production was handled mainly by AI dropping in the near future. And, unless you're someone who pays close attention to music, you probably wouldn't notice if Drake/the label didn't want you to.
I’ve been saying this for years. Once mp3 and streaming became the way, music became a mode to stardom. Your music is part of the brand, and the goal is to diversify in to other revenue streams to make money, as opposed to making money in music as it has become harder than ever to do so. My friend was a successful indie artist. He made enough residual from album sales that he didn’t have to tour 8-12 months a year and could tour 6 months or so and have a life. He went from that to having to give up his career as a full time musician because he had a wife and couldn’t now spend every day on the road to make up for the loss of album sales.
2:43 - You forgot Number 3. Prince was afraid of virtual reality, and didn't like the thought of being able to "perform beyond the grave" as a hologram. That means that even with A.I. tech to recreate his voice, there's no way in Hell he'd be "down with it."
If there was one artist to embrace AI it would be David Bowie. He pioneered the Intenert as a tool for music and foreseen how it would be used in futire, meaning now.
AI is not a tool, I'd put it to you. A tool insinuates that the decisions are being driven by a human hand. Mechanically I could excuse someone of thinking AI is a tool then, as many serious AI artists will edit, refine, or even amalgamate tools until they get something they like. However at that point that's just commission by many artificial hands, sometimes touched up by the patron.
I’ve gotten mixed feelings on the whole issue, but I think at the end of the day the fact that we’re worried about this just proves that it will never work. We are never going to have a day where AI can come up with a genuinely good song with its own heart and soul because it doesn’t have one.
I think so too. Even if it sounds good, it doesn’t sit right knowing it’s not made by an actual person. It’ll probably die out as a weird phase in the music industry.
My personal view on this is hopefully something you can understand. Why do I enjoy watching your Deep Discog Dives? There are many answers to this question, and none of them apply to AI music as it is right now. Maybe that will change someday. But the stories of how my favorite albums were made will be my North Star in the coming years.
For me it I have loved getting back into local music. Bands my friends have formed, live videos shot in my home town, etc. etc. Muncle, Toodles & The Hectic Pity, Robi Mitch, Deadheading, Drew Lorenzo (for that is me), the videos of Woodbox Productions. Then because my friends do not care to search out new music, I just share the heck out of all the above on all my social media channels. But I think music without a visual or other element nowadays ios unlikely to make it into the mainstream. The next big artists are likely to be music AND Tiktok creators or music AND film creators in some sense. I'm pretty sure AI music will have the same function as AI art: giving a cheap alternative to paying real artists for incidental music.
Hopefully AI will turn into something similar to autotune or CGI animation. Everyone will hate it at first believing that it will replace artistic media, when in reality it will be just another tool.
I have never felt so bummed out watching a video😞. Gonna have to watch your QNA to feel happy again👍🏼 Love from Norway and me and my mom whom watches your videos together
Not ai music. But the ai voices of professional singer. I just listen the IDOL(song from anime oshi no ko) performed by AI taylor swift Its crazily good. Sounds like her own self singing it. And it was in japanese lyric. What amaze me is, its like taylor herself living in japan for like...6 month. That is how its good. Its crazy
I'm a second type of listener (don't care about new music or more obscure artists that much) and I don't want music from AI. Except for memes. And let's face it, Frank Sinatra singing FNAF song is a meme music, not a sign of people preferring AI.
I cannot understand why would anyone want AI music or movies and so on. Even when people make cr2ppy stuff, we can hate it or love it, when AI makes something, it will always be a "meh".
super good rundown of the topic, liked and commented for algorithm visibility. David Cope's work is big example of AI-generated music, from all the way back in the 1990s, that I don't see mentioned much. His radiolab episode is great.
if someone made AI music and that was the purpose of it, like that was the gimmick of the project, I think it could be a thing. sort of like the gorillaz being animated characters i guess, cant think of a really good example. but trying to sell us AI music but being shady about the fact that its AI then I don't think people will go for it. although people love nickelback and that sounds like someone told an AI to make an extremely inoffensive version of grunge. like you said, theres a massive group of people who don't care about the artistry of music and just want something catchy to play in their car on the way to work.
It’s kinda crazy that Music was the medium all other entertainers attempted to get involved in like Disney stars for example and now more music artists are moving away from music and to those other forms of entertainment. (The Wknd-Acting, Ari and Rhi-Rhi, Make-up/Acting) I also just realized Ari was originally a Disney actor that moved to music that is now moving on to bigger better things. Damn girl.
This video was, like I said, a fun mess. It balances a lot of thoughts I’ve been having about music and the everpresent noise that surrounds us in the discourse void. I still hope you enjoy it and I hope it made sense, and if you didn’t enjoy/it didn’t make sense, uhhhhhhhh next video is a DDD??
(Also as usual, captions should be available within the next few days.)
Yooooo DDD time!!!
probably your best video in a while honestly, really enjoyed this one!👍
Yes I love ddd a recommendation for one is the who 😀
i would love a charli xcx ddd
Hey dude, I have no idea the extent to which you read comments but as a new RUclipsr struggling with a messy video seeing this was LIBERATING. I really love your work on a base level but this loose, idea focused format is pretty inspirational and also really engaging on the level of, “hey, crazy frog man can talk for hours from idea to idea and I’m here.”
That being said if you ever do a Genesis DDD I will mail you a mixtape of funny ringtone hits and it would make me very pleased.
You’re a hell of a creator man, keep doin’ you 😎
I would actually love a t-shirt that says "I willingly perform actions that make my quality of life significantly worse and I have no interest in changing said actions"... I think most people would be ready to spend the big bucks for such a shirt
suddenly i need this
“I willingly perform actions that make my quality of life significantly worse and I have no interest in changing said actions…and all I got was this stupid t-shirt..”
I literally thought it was an add for his merch
Posted literally an hour after I made the same exact comment
My epic chungus reddit gold was stolen 😭😭😭😭‼️‼️‼️‼️
@@OliverHeikkinen would be a smooth as hell ad transition
On one hand it's disgusting how labels are basically using AI to raise dead artists from the grave and cash in on their fame once again, basically disrespecting not only their family but also their fans
but on the other hand it's absolutely hilarious to hear the cast of Spongebob Squarepants cover Off the Grid by Kanye West so idk
But you DO know.
The fact such feats can be rendered at ALL....means they will happen. In a huge way.
Any time people are saying "this is scary....but also, WOW...look at THIS!"
Then you know that thing is the new....thing. I'm SO ambivalent about all of it. I'm not for or against. I'm curious and weirded out and watching....
@@avedic actually you probably described my stance the best. i'm not in on it, just standing afar watching it unfold
As a musician, I’m definitely scared of AI when it’s being used to replace the human.
When it’s being used for memes though, I have no reason to be scared, as it’s just comedy.
A channel i'm subscribed to used to post their remixes of Madonna songs, recently they've been posting Madonna AI covers. It is horrifying. One was a "duet" with Frank Sinatra with his real voice with Madonna superimposed onto Nancy Sinatra's voice...i was DISGUSTED. If you think AI "singing" sounds unnatural wait till you hear it with real singing at the same time. I'm a vocaloid fan and they don't trigger my uncanny valley the way AI "singing" does.
The Frank and Madonna song would be about a perfect date ruined by saying something stupid like I love you. Not sung between father and daughter.
Ai generated voices are honestly just kjnd of funny to me. Their cheapness kind of strengthens a lot of memes with ai voices.
Couldnt imagine using it for anything beyond the level of "frank sinatra sings fnaf song by living tombstone" or "eminem raps about neing a 2nd century warlord" though.
Mhm, I mean believe it or not all of my favorite anime characters just to name one for example (Son Goku) from Dragon Ball now has AI cover videos lol after seeing those president videos of Obama, Donald, and Biden I thought that was the end of it.... Nope they kept going I'm so mad as hell 😅😅😆😆😆
Remember that this is the worst ai voices will be
Vocaloid is different, because those artificial voices never belonged to a real human. Whereas when an AI imitates the sound of an actual person's voice, it becomes uncanny because we can hear how similar, yet "wrong" it sounds.
Dude when the AI lawsuits hit, its going to be crazy.
There are no more entertainers just AI
one already hit
it was complete shit
Legal eagle made a video on it
ruclips.net/video/oqSYljRYDEM/видео.html
@@brittanyflora1993 It's coming and it will absolutely devastate the music industry, even harder than piracy has. Soon it won't even matter if you pirate it because the person that made it doesn't exist.
@@brittanyflora1993 One step away from capitalism's final form, profiting from nothing. They'll still need to keep a few GPUs running.
@@ghost_mall The difference between AI art and AI Music is that the music industry is NOTORIOUSLY lawsuit happy because it's usually controlled by massive record companies like Universal Music (who were a fucking plague of copywrite strikes and DMCA takedowns until youtube worked out a deal with them). Remember these were the companies that managed to get Napster shutdown....admittedly by that stage it was too late, the idea had hit the public consciousness and now was out there with other sites replacing it. Meanwhile art is barely policed when it comes to these things unless it's 'high art'. Posting a copy of the Mona Lisa online isn't an issue, hell even selling prints of it...but try to actually forge the painting and there is big issues.
The music industry learns hard lessons slowly, the lesson they eventually learned from Napster and it's ilk was 'be more convienient than the pirates', hence the success of Itunes and Spotify over having to use Peer2peer downloading albums (as we had to do back in the day).
Cant help but wonder about artists and their journeys and how it relates and feeds off the fanbase. Take Keshas latest record “Gag Order” and how special it feels because of her story and the fight she continues to have in order to be her own artistic self. This would be impossible for an AI.
@ghost mall but dance monkey was produced and written and performed by someone with a vision. Maybe a month from now they release a whole different project that references their experience as One Hit Wonders and how the pandemic affected their career, etc. Sure AI could eventually replace a song or two but the evolution of artistic endeavor is unpredictable. Not as easy to model and replicate.
@@ghost_mall This, people forget that what we hear NOW when we look back on is the 'best of the decade' essentially, for every Bowie and the spiders from Mars, there's tons of absolute trash released that week in the charts that barely scrapes a notice from the general public. I mean, christ, I think when I was a kid in the 90s and the amount of unremarkable stuff that turned up in the charts here in the UK that got released and vanished into the aether. Like most people are only going to barely remember Coco Jamboo and that was a high charting song here in the UK.
Hm. So we're screwed if AI learns angst?
@@robertwilloughby8050 yes. We must not let it learn about Evanescence
"Prince would probably be down for it"
The man that kept us from getting our hands on the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo PS2 game because of a reference to one of his albums would not be down for use of his voice.
And yet Vento Aureo the manga still has Prince references, and Jojolion as well
@@Emme-Kappa because copyright law is much looser in Japan compared to the US. Its why the dub of the anime and official subs prior to Netflix getting their hands on the anime change most of the music references, with only a few remaining because of their references either not translating to English (for example, The Hand and The Band are written very similarly in Japanese, but are distinctly different terms in English), distinct enough to get away with the reference (such as the Zeppelis) or otherwise are just generic enough that they can get away with the reference (such as Heaven's Door)
17:27 in case anyone else was wondering who he was referring to, it's Morgan Wallen 😬
Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk put it perfectly in a interview he did earlier this year:
"The last thing we would want be in 2023 is a robot"
@sparksparkle it's actually not. Their music, "robotic" as it may sound, has always been about making the most out of human creativity. Their final album, RAM, uses human made sounds in marriage with sound machines to achieve a true statement of what it means to be human. They plead for people to bring life back to music, and narrate the journey of a feeling-deprived automaton into a human in "Touch", one of their most poignant masterpieces. They are the ones who have the most authority to be saying that.
The amount of AI covers of Ballin' I've seen has been absolutely crazy
All I'm seeing is Billie Jean
I’m in the drive thruuuu of buuurger king
I'm just seeing LowTierGod and Jsclatt
Spotify just recommended me an AI DJ to organize my music with the notification for this - so yes. I think AI music scares all of us 😭
Where are you from? It's been 4 months and that feature still hasn't popped up for me.
@The Corner I'm in Australia and I got it a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty bad lol
@@PeggyKoneko pɐɯu lɯɐo
@@caitlynsult2685 So generous of you to translate
Isn't that just their same recommendation algorithm with an added TTS?
Although streaming has given us access to wayyy more music than ever before wayyy easier, it has created a ridiculous expectation that we are supposed to be fed content 24/7. And that has a disastrous effect on us a society. It means that people are often rewarded handsomely for churning out predictable, safe slop. Chasing trends and feeding algorithms is far far far more lucrative than quietly and carefully crafting a unique product. AI simply accelerates all of these issues and rewards the music industry for their worst and greediest impulses. Unless there are clear and enforceable regulations, i dont see this getting better.
^^^
While I understand the fear of AI generated replications of artist’s music, I feel like it’s one lawsuit away of being forced into obscurity, even with some artists ecstatically giving permission.
it should. stealing a person's identity is a violation of human rights. we have a right to our image and voice and it shouldn't be used without our consent
Sure.
For maybe a year or two.
And then what?
I am much more scared of the threat to creativity a legal precedent would create re: intellectual property, than I am of the threat of AI to creativy.
@@LynnHermione That would also mean that "The beach that makes you old" is now illegal.
What is wrong with you.
People also said we were one lawsuit away from internet distributed music dying. Ask Lars Ulrich how hiw lawsuit went.
i was apprehensive when I clicked on this video since i’ve seen several RUclipsrs I generally like make extremely weak points on this topic. this is the only video i’ve watched on this topic that i agree with. there’s a level of nuance that’s necessary when discussing ai in music and art and I appreciate the amount of thought you put into this video. the ringtone analogy alone made this video worth watching.
"Getting everything you want is actually kind of boring"
Mic in his Freud era?
People should have a right to their image and voice and they should NOT be used without authorization. I can't believe there arent laws about this YESTERDAY
Ai will only make humans less and less valuable in the long run. We must take steps to stop this before it is too late.
That would also mean that "The beach that makes you old" is now illegal.
What is wrong with you.
@@HumanMediaPhile Doomer Zoomer Singularity bullshit. AI is nowhere near powerfull enough to use any of its systems for human erradication and such.
There were already laws against music piracy. That didn't stop Napster.
Sorry, I already subscribed to AI Mic The Snare and I heard all of this two weeks ago :/
I was thinking about this topic recently. Crazy.
The way AI generated music works is you give an algorithm a bunch of music to examine and then it makes a new song based on that. But the AI can't understand or explain what makes a certain piece of music good. And if you like your favorite artists for their personal songs, an AI can't really do that.
Also, how would you copyright music composed by an AI? Who would get the royalties for it? The AI? The programmers? The people whose music was used to make the AI generated music?
Regarding the copyright, I don't know the nuances between that and copyright of images (in the US), but it's been ruled that AI images cannot be copyrighted because only a human can create copyrighted work. So if a generative audio AI is used, the raw output is non-copyright. I believe then if a human mixes a track using say AI generated vocals, that mix could be copyrightable, much like using samples from public domain audio, but I guess it would depend how different it is from the raw output?
I feel like you copy and pasted this comment from somewhere else.
@@Forcoy No, I don’t believe I did
@@Forcoy Me? No. I came up with that example myself from my understanding of American copyright law. If it's the same as someone elses take then maybe I'm close. (I'm not even american I just follow a couple of lawyers on youtube.)
The way I see it, companies will use AI solely in the generation of vocals, getting a human to write and mix it so they can keep copyright ownership of their output, unless/until they get the law changed so they can own the rights to AI audio.
@@LuxurioMusic Fair enough!
I used to be excited about the possibilities of AI in art, and in music in particular. Artists such as Holly Herndon, and earlier exponents of algorithmic music like Autechre, Brian Eno, and back to Xenakis and Cage, used technology to generate music that was free of human ego, or that challenged our conceptions of creativity and expression, or that gave us sounds that surprised their creators as much as the listeners. But the current generation of GANs and transformers isn’t about exploration or pushing the boundaries of art: it’s about raiding the commons to produce sophomoric mashups of existing works, and using that for either direct profit or to drive down the value of human labour and imagination.
well said
Not trying to be a dick, but, who's making a profit off of AI covers? I'm pretty sure most people just make them for fun
And on devaluing human creativity/effort, well, the biggest pop artists have been using ghost writers for how long now? It's not like this is a new phenomenon
@@gastonzumbo9860 They dont even use ghost writers, they just use writers. Like you can often see who wrote their music on spotify. People like Max Martin even receive awards for writing pop music.
"tradiotional pop music" is usually a well known vocalist with a team of writers and producers, theres of course also the indie , rock/metal and hip hop where having writers is looked down upon but thats the minority
@@quentinh3140 well, true, i was looking at it from the lens of rap which is the mainstream genre i consume the most
looking at you, drake
@@gastonzumbo9860 were in the frontier period, people are looking for how to make money with it now but in 10 years it will have crystallized.
I think AI in general scares most of us
For me personally it's just the music covers, and voice covers that scare me :P
Yes there is some scary AI art out there but everything else just pisses me off lol
It does seem to freak people out to an irrational degree, and it pisses me off
I just remembered "Human Music" from that Rick and Morty episode, and how Jerry didn't particularly felt for it. He just found it amusing or kind of nice and went on in the car
If Frank just released a non-limited vinyl of Blonde he wouldn't need to release anything ever again. He could live off that forever.
I hate how true this is
I saw a twitter thread using AI to expand album covers and it turns out the cover of Nevermind is in the ocean and not a pool.
I want to be excited about this new technology! But since it's entangled with a lot of people's livelihoods and is also a potential threat to them, I can't get excited about it and have a clear conscience.
Genuine question, if we forget the threat to people's livelihood what about this excites you?
I'm not trying to start an argument but almost everywhere I look people either find this stuff inherently dystopian at worst or inherently boring and unexciting at worst (I'm on this fence). So I'm genuinely intrigued that someone wants to be into this stuff.
Again, not coming for you or anything, I know how the internet can be so I'm making that very clear.
@@hikikomori_3708 The tech itself is indifferent as to how it can be used. It can be used as another tool in the tool belt of artists, just as much as an instrument or a notebook. Really any new development, especially ones of this caliber can be used for both an infinite amount of bad, as well as good. That lies on the individual. If we want a world where is as humans can live in harmony with the technology, bringing out the best in all of us, it is up to us to use it for good.
Admittedly, I think ChatGPT would be more likely to generate an interesting Max patch or Serum preset than "Write lyrics for a song about pencils in the style of Lennon-McCartney" (pop songs are way harder to write than people think), but I think maybe I'm just one of those rubes that finds the American Presidents Argue About Video Games videos extremely funny.
And once again, the only AI thing that's utilised is the vocal timbre.
Hey, related to tech in music, maybe you should look into VTuber idols. They’re basically streamers who have an avatar facemapped to their own face, and thus become a new character, usually anime style. VTubers do all sorts of activities, be it just playing games, to having full concerts of original songs, complete with full 3D models for them to perform with. Vtubers really took off during quarantine back in 2020, when everyone needed an outlet, so watching an anime girl scream while dying in minecraft became an outlet for many. Just another development of the internet age.
This was honestly fascinating! (As is consistent with all your work but I digress.)
Some related thoughts: I thought I couldn’t stand to be around anyone who doesn’t keep up with current music, but then I realized that’s both of my parents. And I guess it’s not that sad of a life, but it is hard to imagine. Also circling back around to the whole “we like things we already know” was soooo good. I mean, it’s why Taylor Swift’s re-recordings are so successful. From what I see on the cursed bird app, people are so excited to hear the same versions of songs they already know that she doesn’t need to add any extra tracks. Or just look at all of us who play the same album on repeat for weeks until we get bored of it and look back fondly on it a few years later. As with any new development these days, AI music could sound cool in theory but the closer you look at it, the more hellish it becomes.
(Also on a personal note, I really appreciate that this was uploaded today. Definitely helped get my mind off of workday insanity, so thank you!)
I still hope never to be someone who's not keeping up with current music. I never wanna see myself losing touch with culture. As an artist I could never let myself lose sight of that sense of discovery, the horizon of another new sea. I think that eventually, people just look out over one such sea and decide it would be one sea too many. I never want it to be too many, because with that curiosity, goes your sense of creative inspiration. What good is a lifetime on an instrument you can never truly fully master if you stop and resign yourself to the same old in the end? Personally, the only reason I ever took an interest in creative things as a child was out of immediate desire for something new. If I was bored, I would make something exist.
Maybe this is the bias of being someone who's basically never not been actively engaging in some form of creative endeavor, but I really think there's something fundamentally *us* about that, like... everyone. I doubt anyone benefits from letting go of that curiosity. It's part of a whole tree canopy lattice of things that keep life experiences new. I expect that as my body ages, I will slow down. And for that reason, a connection to that cultural curiosity becomes all the more vital, to continue to inject a sense of newness not yet explored into my increasingly inertial physical state. It would be nice to at least *feel* fully alive until the day I pass. I think staying connected to the world around you is a big part of that. I think a world without the music of its given era is a very cold and lonely one. It also takes the least actual effort to engage with. All you need to do is preserve your hearing.
It really depends on the meaning of "keep up with current music". Back when I was a teenager and young adult, it was only natural to keep one ear towards current music (of the time). I was into 60's and 70's music more than anything else but I also was happy to embrace current bands that released material I could emotionally connect to. It was easier to do back then. The landscape of music was a bit different and genres of music I could really sink my teeth into were a lot more mainstream.
As I have gotten older, I have found that while I still enjoy newly released music, it usually comes from artists in the same general age-range as myself. It is usually albums that come from artists that I started listening to in my teens or early twenties. That kind of music is something I can relate to. It is the kind of music that speaks to me because of shared cultural/pop-cultural experience. When I do embrace artists or albums that I did not previously get into, they are usually from the 80's or 90's. The kind of stuff that I heard singles from on the radio back in the day but never explored.
I have some friends who are in their twenties and they have occasionally encouraged me to listen to some very current stuff. A lot of it is quite good on a musical level. I can understand how they get so many fans and I can identify the elements that modern generations find really compelling but that music isn't really something I can relate to. The subject matter deals with pop culture I can't really connect to and perspectives that I can understand but don't share in the same way. If I am not really feeling the music, what is the point in listening to it? If I can't really connect to the lyrical content, would I just be going through the motions to stay current?
I guess what I am saying here is that my relationship to music is incompatible with "keeping up" with current artists/releases. I don't really care about dance/club music. I don't really care about keeping up with pop trends that I can't really connect to anyway. I would rather just find music (regardless of its release date) that I can truly love and put all my attention into listening to entire albums worth of in a single sitting.
I had no idea that Spotify had an AI DJ until this video. Also, while watching I got a notification on my phone from spotify advertising me about it.
Creepy.
I think if anything can quell your anxiety a little bit about music in the future, it’s that things like this very channel are a continuing sign that music will always be discussed and enjoyed and dissected in ways that totally run contrary to mass media consumption. So many critics and people on this website try to promote thoughtful discussion and interrogation of art, and I feel like that’s not a declining trend. People WANT that. It may be difficult to deal with on the outset of AI, but I think we can sustain ourselves and perpetuate healthy consumption and experiences with what we listen to if we put it out there enough.
My hope is that the over saturation of every kind of music you could ever want at your digital fingertips will lead people to be more interested in live performance. If everyone can make music super easily, it will become just a fun hobby for most people and they will become increasingly less impressed with musicians that make generic sounding music that only exists online and increasingly more interested in musicians who go the extra mile with their creativity and put in a lot of effort and passion into their live performances.
I think that's already happening, honestly.
Rip ppl who use daws
Thanks for the existential dread ! 🙏
ça se comprend je pense
nothing rly gets me more than squidward singing I'm Not Okay from mcr but all jokes and laughs aside it rly is scary how AI isn't only after Art now but Music too... then again Vocaloid has been a thing since forever and it never replaced all artists, so hopefully it'll balance itself out
The artistry of vocalid was composition is the thing. AI strips even composition of it's artistic merit.
When you consider how many people unironically love music-by-committee chart music, AI music has a bright future ahead, sadly
Let the dullards have their AI top 40. Functionally there is very little difference between that and the committee made pop you speak of. There will always be a thriving scene of real musicians playing real music to a small but passionate fans. Parcels, Idles and Foals all give me hope that the future is bright for proper music.
you have to remember that our generation is not limited to the charts no more, we have access to literally all of music history through spotify, and it's a testament to how modern day people have much more diverse interests than those even back in the early 90s
God, imagine being this pretentious
@@supathechest Not to mention how much harder it was to find 'non-charting' music at the time, usually involved going to back alley record shops that dealt with that specific genre. You wanted metal or punk music? You went to one of the metal vinyl places in a major city unless you were lucky enough to have one in your small town. Wanted 80s synth music in the early 2000s? Same again you had to go down to your local independant record shop and hope they had what you wanted on vinyl or cassette, though at that stage the internet was taking hold so music was slowly becoming easier to access.
Now if I want to hear a specific genre I can just search something like spotify.
I remember being blown away by your amazing early video about The 20/20 Experience (I hope that’s the correct title) by Justin Timberlake and then being shocked again when I saw it only had like 71 views! I totally understand why creators start to dislike their early work after a few years but I thought you came in strong
It's really impeccable that Mic made this video just a day prior to the AI John Lennon Beatles news. I'd love to see a follow up video or short where Mic gives his opinion on the upcoming track and the implications of AI John Lennon as a legacy act.
this video is so much deeper than i thought it would be, but i appreciate you exploring this
i think ai music scares him
Really?!
nooooo way
in my personal and very subjective opinion, i believe that from what i see and my general mindset, jus from my perspective, i actually agree.
Haven’t watched so I’m not sure yet I’ll keep y’all posted
i dont see the point of comments like these existing besides like bait
Great video as always! The comment section is so interesting right now, loving reading everyone's opinions. I think for me, while it would be interesting to hear AI-generated, personalised music for me 'from' my favourite artists, something about it rings so hollow. Whether I like a song or not, when it comes from the artist themselves, I am able to connect with another person and their emotions and experiences. While I could attribute my own meaning to AI-generated music, it would be a fundamentally lonely experience, when I know that Im not hearing something from another human being.
Your point about music being a disposable medium really resonated with me. We’re at the point in music where it’s just background noise rather than being a special part of our lives. Companies are making more profit than ever and AI is the newest way for them to do that. Why pay an artist when you can have a computer make a million songs in less than an hour?
What people dont understand about AI vs Humans(any animal for that matter), is that Humans have motivation and fear. Until you can mimmick or instill fear and motivation in AI, you will never be able to replace human creativity, AI can create but it is not creative.
When a human writes a song, its motivated by a feeling and fueled by a fear of failing or writing trash. AI does not have that, so it may sometime produce something good, but it will always be detached.
AI cannot and will never sing its heart out, because doing so is an embodiment of your life, hopes, dreams, fears, experinces and understanding of others. I sing my heart out and that comes from the months I didnt have a bed to sleep in and the fear that I may die without ever having impacted anyone. Thats why my voice resonates with you.
Same thing that happened to video will happen to music. Cheap easily reproducable content will be vastly popular (tiktok) but there will still be a place for people who put their soul into their work, they're just gonna have to give up a piece of the pie. When video reaches the next stage which is in progress now as AI will sooner than you think be able to cut together entire movies from scratch, music too will follow suit. (also for the record video has been following digital art)
Every year, new or old, I did deep discog dived 5-10 artists or groups.
Listened 20+ albums that i missed past years.
Made playlists, with dozens of songs, Deleted to made new list again and again.
It was fun to discover new songs.
But i can’t anymore. For the first time this year I am tired of music.
This year i didn’t made any lists.
Listened maybe 5 or 6 albums.
Deep Discog Dived only one, ONE artist and that is Sade.
I listened maybe 3 or 4 SONGs not albums SONGs that released this year.
Maybe it’s fatigue or i am overstuffed with music or my expectations got much higher. Still I found barely anything interesting music anymore.
I completely agree on the topic about Too much music. It is so fast food, it’s not funny anymore.
The AI thing;
I get it it’s funny at first times, like Kanye singing Gary Come Home or other outlandish covers but novelty gets wears off. Like every other thing but at the same time It scares me, because People also use this technology as a Digital Necromancy.
These are the very dark times and it is very right to be scared.
I dont think ai generated voice using memes are going anywhere.
I host a weekly radio show on our local university student run radio station (WRFL in Lexington KY, we're great I promise!) that focuses on IDM and let me say I felt TARGETED when Mr The Snare said "you might even know who this is" while displaying the ...I Care Because You Do album art.
I was just making some ai dungeon synth for fun, I'm very excited for the future of music because of Ai.
knowing that mic had to here a suggestion that "prince would probably be down" with AI music while making the prince DDD makes his response like 3x funnier
The issue with AI is that it wants to solve everyone's problems, but our lives are pushed by problems, AI art is like the art made by a band that started on someone's garage talking about the struggles of the low class and are now 40 years into the business, are filthy rich and their work is irrelevant nowadays because it doesn't have the spark that a rough life cause and now only talk about the music business because that's the only kind of problem they have. Art is fueled by a lot of decisions that go beyond notes and rhymes, even the most dull song has something behind it, even if it's pure escapism, and it doesn't really translate when an AI does it, is just there, it's like playing a game with cheats, you beat it in half a day and then forget about it, there's no connection to it, it doesn't challenge you, it gives you what you want always and that's the most pointless way of existing.
I like how you mentioned Holly Herndon. Her album Proto is amazing. Ethereal, experimental, futuristic, with folk vocals, and glitchy instrumentals.
Close to every job in the world right now is at risk of eventually being replaced by ai. I think it’s more likely we’ll get more humans in the creative industries and less in manual labor/manufacturing/logistics over the next few decades. Until ai develops an understanding of human taste in art, I wouldn’t worry about ai taking over the music industry.
But we should make AI art of all types illegal. If we give capitalists and business owners a chance to fuck us over in other for them to make more money, they will. WE CAN'T GIVE TH THAT CHANCE.
THEM*
@@HumanMediaPhile what
Most labour jobs are going nowhere soon. All the easy to automate jobs have been automated. It's why despite the agricultural revolution American is still using undocumented immigrants to harvest much of their produce. Why your grain augers are still welded by hand and not machine. Often times human labour is cheaper than machine labour, and I don't see robotics advancing fast enough to replace most of those jobs.
It's actually really funny you mentioned the number one song and album in America cuz when i went to look it up i just said '"So what? It's just Taylor again." cuz when i looked Midnights was back to 1 and Morgan Wallen was 2 but currently he's still the number one song.
Michael, you have truly terrified me.
I was going to joke about 'haha they'll be so much AI music that people will want to revert to non-synthesized recorded acoustic human music' but this video truly opened the Pandora's Box. And you even mentioned Crazy Frog too.
I'm an artist, not here to plug, I make songs for my own expression, as with any art form. But with AI, it's like, damn what is an artist today if not a product? I know popular music has always had the goal to reach the masses, but at least that comes from some place of heart and expression to be timeless and resonate. But if the majority of people like to consume background wiggly music that sounds like the voice of someone they like - then what if, as you said, companies favour that? Sure AI David Bowie could continue Bowie's work but the experience, the changing of approaches, the history of the individual and expression. It'd be gone? What if this leads to a collapse in music, like you said, so much to consume that people abandon the form all together? And then also the issues of morality, using a deceased artist's voice in AI to sing something that might tarnish their legacy? Sure AI voices are real scuffed as of right now but who knows where it might end up too. WHAT IF THEY MAKE AI CRAZY FROG AND MAKE AXEL G??? MAMBO NO 6?? who's gonna stop them?
I'm rambling, sorry. But I'm now even more confused with the big question - what dows music mean and what even is it?
Thank you Michael The Snarington The Third for the insightful video
As an artist myself I’ve used the act of songwriting to learn more about myself and to express the way I feel. Like a form of therapy. This has always been the main motivation for me to make music. I see friends formulate songs with the primary purpose of being commercial. I’ve tried to do the same at different times and felt empty as I would listen back and say “this doesn’t sound like me. This sounds like another track destined for the forgotten part of the brain.” I don’t try to write songs like that anymore.
I say all this to mean that if ai over-saturates the airwaves then it would not be worth it for a human composer to try and compete in a battle of checking off music production boxes and formulating dopamine releasing rhymes. As artists we should celebrate the individual within us. Maybe make music without the limitations of trying to cater our tastes to what we think our predetermined target demographic will resonate with. Make music and art because it will help you understand yourself better as a human.
@@ZippyRiffs You couldn't have said it any better. I'm glad to hear the whole 'being commercial and feeling empty' wasn't just a me thing LOL but I totally agree
AI will only make humans more and more replaceable and expendable. It will only take us further into Exestential dark age where all the things that makes humans, humans will be less valuable than money. And the only ones who won't be affevted by this are the 1%, the worst examples of our species, who would rather destroy the world rather than making life better.
AI generated crazy frog is a concept I can barely imagine. If it can do that, we all might as well just end it here, humanity is done for.
Nice foreshadowing with the bit about Prince!
Prince was so based
That Aphex Twin flashbang at 15:50 gave me a heart attack!
LMAAAAAOOOOOO for a second i thought you were gonna reveal at the end that Mic the AI was the voice-over this whole time
2:00 Meanwhile, Apparently Beck got an AI-generated Beck Song from a friend, And decided to play it live while laughing about how ridiculous it is.
I think it's the other way around actually. Most people are always going to want a face and a name to the music they enjoy, even if they're not invested in music otherwise, so pop music will be fine. I think it's going to be a lot more difficult for things like movies/shows and other media to justify hiring composers and orchestras, or to license already existing music, when they can just press a button and get something that's just as good to most people.
Honestly the only AI thing I've ever used is that Spotify DJ cuz I like the song selections and I can't see ahead and skip to what I want (as easily like yeah I could skip everything but I'd rather be surprised by what comes next)
Snare, you don't have to be scared of Allen Iverson.
I’m a bit outdated when it comes to how I take in music. I don’t use streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music. I find new music through RUclips and if I like a song, I’ll listen to more. If I like enough songs, I’ll buy an album either physically or from iTunes and then burn a copy to CD. But I’m also in my 30s and have a massive catalogue of music I’ve acquired over 25 years, most of which was purchased after my tastes had mostly solidified. I’m still listening to albums I bought 20 years ago and I’m finding new stuff from 10 years ago that I didn’t know about it when it was new.
I don’t think A.I. is going to be a huge threat to music in terms of artists. I think we’re going to see a shift back towards personalities rather than songs. Right now streaming random songs seems to be the big thing, but I look at kpop and I see a fandom that obsesses over a person more do than the music. The music is the gateway, but the person they connect to drives the fandom.
I also think we’ll see a rise of people playing instruments again because you can’t A.I. your way through playing a guitar on stage. And you’ll see a focus on personality again. Blink-182 was an absolutely huge act in the early 2000s. They all had distinct personalities and they played instruments. They were like the Beatles of pop punk music. During that time a lot of smaller punk bands were able to make a living by releasing albums to a small but devoted fanbase and tour regularly. I think A.I. will force music into that direction again simply by the younger generation wanting a more authentic music experience even if A.I. can create a coherent musical product in the future. It cannot replicate fun personalities playing authentic music and building fun moments.
literally just clicked on this for the ITYSL thumbnail lmao
How do we move our bodies... ever?
I'm a mix of both. I care about music but at the same time I use it to have an emotion. So I enjoy the AI covers because I can hear a style from one of my favorite artists that maybe I always wanted to hear but it just makes me want to seek out REAL artists that have that style I'm looking for. My music style is very much a Movie soundtrack.. each song being memorable because you saw the main or side character have their moment in the film.
Now today Paul McCartney announced he's working on a Beatles track with AI John Lennon.
I dont want art to be hijacked more by corporations than it already has.
3:20 ...
I'm sorry but in 2015 I was like, "Cant wait till ai can generate music to exactally my taste so I dont have to go searching the internet for music and wait for my artists to come out with stuff"
like dude, once ai can make music I like to listern to, why would I listern to something someone else has made with ai to their taste when I can just generate my music with an algorythom that totally understands me????
the only thing i know about matty healy is that i don’t want to know anything about him
probably a good idea
This video is making me question whether I want to become a musician. I mean, I'm good, but if I can't even make any impact, what's the point?
On the FN MEKA specifically, the discourse was on if it was ok for a program made by non-white people would be allowed to use racial slurs. And even more contentious was the postulation that FN Meka doesn't use AI at all, as when originally talked about on news websites, they didn't say what aspects of Meka used AI and were extremely vague about the whole thing other than that. Jarvis Johnson has some great videos about the situation on his channel that go way more in depth than I did, but there is more than just the idea of AI hate behind Meka.
By the way the answer to the question of who has the #1 song in america is Morgan Wallen with Last Night (9 weeks and counting), and the top album artist is Taylor Swift with Midnights (recently taken back from Morgan Wallen's One Day at a Time). I had to look that up.
morgan wallen, for the 2 of you that don't know, said a naughty word (perhaps the most naughty of all) while drunk about 2 1/2 years ago (i think that was what mic was referencing in that bit of humour)
whys the thumbnail look like ai generated tim robinson that is insane
I think you should leave spotted this video is the realest ever
There’s a jukebox musical of Queen songs called We Will Rock You the musical and in its dystopian future all music is created by computers and I frequently think about how this dumb thing from 2003 might actually end up being right.
Prince is the reason some JoJo's Bizarre Adventure related media and parts of the manga took well over a decade to finally get any sort of official release in the west, and it's only because one character was named after one of his albums.
I repeat, one character named after one of Prince's albums in a manga series was the sole reason it didn't get oficially localized for many years.
I think there will be a lot of lawsuits especially if they go ahead using AI generated voices of those artists who are deceased
Hate to be this guy, but the scenario you're describing where artists put out AI based releases once they've built up a significant enough catalog is basically the premise for the Miley Cyrus Black Mirror episode. While this could happen, I think a more pressing way AI is going to affect the music industry is in the production area. I feel like looking at how the current WGA strike intersects with AI is going to be indicative of how large studios/labels are going to use the technology to maximize profit. A big contention for the WGA is the possibility that studios will use AI to create low-quality drafts for scripts, then have a human writer turn the AI draft into something useable. The idea is that this will devalue the human writer's contributions, and will justify the studios paying them less.
I could see something similar happening to producers, songwriters, and engineers in the music industry very soon. I don't think we'll have an "AI Drake" project come out in the next five years, but I definitely could see a Drake album where the production was handled mainly by AI dropping in the near future. And, unless you're someone who pays close attention to music, you probably wouldn't notice if Drake/the label didn't want you to.
i, for one, am a fan of both music AND the poetry of emily dickinson
I’ve been saying this for years. Once mp3 and streaming became the way, music became a mode to stardom. Your music is part of the brand, and the goal is to diversify in to other revenue streams to make money, as opposed to making money in music as it has become harder than ever to do so.
My friend was a successful indie artist. He made enough residual from album sales that he didn’t have to tour 8-12 months a year and could tour 6 months or so and have a life. He went from that to having to give up his career as a full time musician because he had a wife and couldn’t now spend every day on the road to make up for the loss of album sales.
I'm sorry, but the mental image of Nick Cave living in my walls is hilarious, thank you.
KEEP RUNNING FROM THE FUTURE, OLD MAN
2:43 - You forgot Number 3. Prince was afraid of virtual reality, and didn't like the thought of being able to "perform beyond the grave" as a hologram. That means that even with A.I. tech to recreate his voice, there's no way in Hell he'd be "down with it."
Who else thought the title was “All music scares me”
This is more about advanced Vocaloids, than AI music.
That's true as well, MLM is more a concern. This affects pop musicians more than anything.
Initially read the title as 'All music scares me' and thought "Oh buddy you're in the wrong line of work"
IDK, I'd feel really really icky listening to a new Nirvana album long after Kurt Cobain died.
Same
If there was one artist to embrace AI it would be David Bowie. He pioneered the Intenert as a tool for music and foreseen how it would be used in futire, meaning now.
If he were still with us he'd probably get so much inspiration just from playing around with AI. Imagine the stories and personas he could create.
Ai should be uses as a tool, not as a primary gimmick that gives value to art in and of itself
AI is not a tool, I'd put it to you. A tool insinuates that the decisions are being driven by a human hand. Mechanically I could excuse someone of thinking AI is a tool then, as many serious AI artists will edit, refine, or even amalgamate tools until they get something they like. However at that point that's just commission by many artificial hands, sometimes touched up by the patron.
16:26 This is especially funny because 'drake' is the technical term for a male duck.
I misread this as ‘all music scares me’ which would be unfortunate considering your career
I’ve gotten mixed feelings on the whole issue, but I think at the end of the day the fact that we’re worried about this just proves that it will never work. We are never going to have a day where AI can come up with a genuinely good song with its own heart and soul because it doesn’t have one.
I think so too. Even if it sounds good, it doesn’t sit right knowing it’s not made by an actual person. It’ll probably die out as a weird phase in the music industry.
My personal view on this is hopefully something you can understand.
Why do I enjoy watching your Deep Discog Dives?
There are many answers to this question, and none of them apply to AI music as it is right now.
Maybe that will change someday. But the stories of how my favorite albums were made will be my North Star in the coming years.
For me it I have loved getting back into local music. Bands my friends have formed, live videos shot in my home town, etc. etc. Muncle, Toodles & The Hectic Pity, Robi Mitch, Deadheading, Drew Lorenzo (for that is me), the videos of Woodbox Productions.
Then because my friends do not care to search out new music, I just share the heck out of all the above on all my social media channels.
But I think music without a visual or other element nowadays ios unlikely to make it into the mainstream. The next big artists are likely to be music AND Tiktok creators or music AND film creators in some sense.
I'm pretty sure AI music will have the same function as AI art: giving a cheap alternative to paying real artists for incidental music.
I lost my job at Corncob TV to ai
Out of context but could you do a discog dive of the My Bloody Valentine? Please I give you this heart emoji as reward?! ❤️
I thought the title said “all music scares me” for a second there
Hopefully AI will turn into something similar to autotune or CGI animation. Everyone will hate it at first believing that it will replace artistic media, when in reality it will be just another tool.
AI music is probably good for RUclipsrs, as most songs these days are copyrighted.
They can always use the RUclips audio library.
I have never felt so bummed out watching a video😞.
Gonna have to watch your QNA to feel happy again👍🏼
Love from Norway and me and my mom whom watches your videos together
Not ai music. But the ai voices of professional singer.
I just listen the IDOL(song from anime oshi no ko) performed by AI taylor swift
Its crazily good. Sounds like her own self singing it. And it was in japanese lyric. What amaze me is, its like taylor herself living in japan for like...6 month. That is how its good.
Its crazy
I'm a second type of listener (don't care about new music or more obscure artists that much) and I don't want music from AI. Except for memes. And let's face it, Frank Sinatra singing FNAF song is a meme music, not a sign of people preferring AI.
I cannot understand why would anyone want AI music or movies and so on. Even when people make cr2ppy stuff, we can hate it or love it, when AI makes something, it will always be a "meh".
This is why I like old music better.
super good rundown of the topic, liked and commented for algorithm visibility.
David Cope's work is big example of AI-generated music, from all the way back in the 1990s, that I don't see mentioned much. His radiolab episode is great.
if someone made AI music and that was the purpose of it, like that was the gimmick of the project, I think it could be a thing. sort of like the gorillaz being animated characters i guess, cant think of a really good example. but trying to sell us AI music but being shady about the fact that its AI then I don't think people will go for it.
although people love nickelback and that sounds like someone told an AI to make an extremely inoffensive version of grunge. like you said, theres a massive group of people who don't care about the artistry of music and just want something catchy to play in their car on the way to work.
It’s kinda crazy that Music was the medium all other entertainers attempted to get involved in like Disney stars for example and now more music artists are moving away from music and to those other forms of entertainment. (The Wknd-Acting, Ari and Rhi-Rhi, Make-up/Acting) I also just realized Ari was originally a Disney actor that moved to music that is now moving on to bigger better things. Damn girl.