How AI will slowly destroy the music business

In today's episode I talk about some recent advancements in AI music technology and what its implications are.

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Rich Germano
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Piush Dahal

[JonKovach]

"I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes"

[zenmaster]

This is from Orwell's 1984, published in 1949: "The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound." Prophetic...

[mdogwynn]

Makes me proud to be a horrible saxophone player. No respectable AI would ever dare to reproduce my crap!

[LambrettaFunk]

What we have to remember is that music isn't the "music business" no AI can replace the joy of playing an instrument which is what it's all about.

[HerrSint]

"And the Grammy for best AI prompt goes to...."

[Danpeezie]

Problem is most pop music has already sounded like its made by robots for years

[thepastichiomedley]

AI won't stop me playing and recording music. Most of us have no audience and no money. It doesn't stop us being creative. We have to do it. The creative process means more to us.

[AvenEngineer]

I hear the 'echo' you describe and man is it weird. The best way I can describe it is, the feeling you get when you open a car window driving, and you get that pressure pulsation from the wind. It's like that but with much less sound pressure, at a higher frequency. I feel like it's some kind of phase cancellation due to how the AI produces reverb and harmony.

[MattGabnai]

hey Rick, lead audio designer from Ubisoft here (and a lifelong musician), I can also hear what your kids hear. The reason you probably don't pick up on it is because you haven't worked with text-to-speech voice synthesis that much. You can clearly hear the artifacts in the vocals (especially if you listen to the reverberation, those tend to get modulated everywhere as the algorithm doesn't pick up the reverb tails well), and the overall low-end / mid-end saturation on all of the AI generated songs, in its current iteration it's really-really similar, like a tictactoe game - very basic. They all sound as if there was heavy parallel compression on them between 200-600Hz, and there's never a lot of high end. If you focus on more the overall frequency spectrum of a song (load them up in a DAW and get a frequency analyser on them, they all have almost the same curve) and how aesthetically and dynamically similar they all are from a mixing point of view, I'm sure you'll recognize these generated songs very quickly.

[thespacealienssmogandgrog]

Rick, you need to start a "What Makes This Song Fake" series.

[suitecreative]

the other day I was at a diner and a waitress took my order ...

two eggs scrambled, rye toast ... light butter, coffee, black no sugar ... home fries lightly crispy ....

I'm an incredible cook ....

[garrettbot]

This is a very sad day for true musicians, im honored to have been able to tour and play in front of large crowds opening up for eighteen visions and bleeding through before you tube existed and partying.

[DrProgNerd]

The nail-in-the-coffin of my playing-out-days was standing on stage - looking out at the glowing faces of people who were staring at their phones instead of watching the band.
For 90% of the people who consume music (not this group obviously) they're not even going to get through a whole song before scrolling to something else. Those people deserve the crap that AI is going to give them. I'm a recording/mixing hobbyist now. I spend hundreds of hours writing and mixing songs that no one will ever hear ....and I love it. It just feels good to be creative...audience or no audience.

[tonysales]

I been playing piano and sax for 40 years. Bands, shows, tours, weddings, parties
One thing the AI cant do is give me the satisfaction I get from playing, the nuance of a real instrument vibrating the air, the people witnessing it, the subtlety of it, as I shape the sound with the reed and diaphragm. The nuance of a life lived all going into the performance.

[nicpatonmedia]

In the 1950's we outsourced reproducing timbre to tape machines.
In the 1960's we outsourced projection to amplifiers and location to reverb effects.
In the 1970's we outsourced rhythm and pulse to electronic circuits.
In the 1980's we outsourced drumming to drum machines and recall to digital discs.
In the 1990's we outsourced being in tune to Autotune and recalling mixes to DAWs and computers.
In the 2000's we outsourced field recording to sampler packages and creating strong performances to looping tech.
In the 2010's we outsourced high performance orchestral, vocal and instrumental performance to sophisticated samplers.
In the 2020's we outsourced musical performance, skill, accuracy, versatility and taste;
This year we outsource composition and bypass the need for any meaningful human involvement in music making whatsoever.

"Music is its own reward" - Neil Finn

[alwayslearning]

My fear is that the world will be pumped full of this AI stuff and the real creative will be lost in the crowd. I'm a little older than you and your channel has caused me to hit the record shops again, getting all the albums I couldn't afford when I was young. Also love your artist interviews. We live in a wonderful time when I can hear stories directly from band members. You're a treasure. I'm now addicted to your channels and Tim Pierce.

[HarryCollins]

I am a photographer that photographs people. I post a lot of work on Flickr. There is now a lot of AI imagery on Flickr created by non-photographers of non-people. The images sometimes look pretty good, but they are slightly unrealistic. They have gotten noticeably better in the last year or so. Anyway, this is happening in all of the arts, not just music. I definitely feel your pain.

[signorenzo]

I am a graphic designer and people doesn't want to hire a real graphic designer because AI make a "nice logo" for free in 1 minute. I think the problem is not AI, is people want things fast and cheap, not value imagination, good taste, long years of study and talent.

[rosspalumbo]

It’s the aliasing.
You can hear the aliasing in AI music/vocals. It sounds like a slight time-stretch or bit reduction.

[MarkTBeasley]

I Totally Agree, it's just the beginning and will only get better and better