I find the production and consumption of AI music to be uniquely... anti-human. You can make utilitarian arguments for most other uses of AI. For example, the code you're generating didn't exist before, and it would take serious time or money to write it. So, I get it, the economic argument is compelling enough.

But music? There's basically an inexhaustible supply of human-created tracks that can be accessed for next to nothing. Millions upon millions of them, in every conceivable style, for every conceivable mood. There's nothing you gain by listening to AI music day-to-day, so what's the argument for it - other than utmost indifference to human creativity?

But what if you like to listen to a specific genre? Say electo-swing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_swing)

There isn't that much good electro-swing made by humans, and not much new coming out. One can easily consume it all and want to hear some new tunes in that genre, and maybe AI can help with that.

You’ve hit upon a bit of a paradox inherent in music - the average listener really gives next to no shits about human creativity or the artistry and hard work that goes into being a musician capable of releasing music. They can’t even comprehend, so don’t. Music is something that comes out of a speaker same as water is something that comes out of a tap.

>But music? There's basically an inexhaustible supply of human-created tracks that can be accessed for next to nothing.

Isn’t this an argument against all new music, even human made?

Either we have it all already, or there’s room for new things that we haven’t heard before.

Sometimes you can't even tell. I was in an uber drive where the driver had this incredible playlist of Brazilian bossa nova. It was sublime and some of the best tracks I ever heard. He even said he loves the singer but cannot find their name anywhere. It turns out it's a youtube playlist that is fully AI generated and genuinely some of the best bossa nova you can imagine. I still hear that playlist daily tbh. Moreover, imagine if you are an independent musician, have a good voice, know how to play instruments...you could ask AI to generate hit tracks for you and then you can play them at concerts or shows and claim them for yourself

Because human singers will usually sing about what they like. They will use their own life experience and imagination to write and sing songs. Other people may or may not like them.

AI will only sing songs that other people like, so AI singers will naturally attract more listeners.

Is formulaic pop music produced by a corporate label that's designed to push all the right buttons more "human" than the average track you find published on Suno? I wouldn't say so. Pop music was already to some extent a commodity.

There's basically an inexhaustible supply of human-created tracks that can be accessed for next to nothing

You train an AI on that, in order to create something that combines all of the best parts that you want. If anything, I think AI music is the natural progression of innate human desire to leverage and "stand on the shoulders of giants" to create something bigger from smaller pieces.

> what's the argument for it

Record companies can sell it and don't have to pay any royalties. They only pay the artists pennies as it is, but that's too much for them.

Have you heard of dubstep? It sounds like robots falling down stairs, and humans made it and love it. If AI can make music less crappy, I'm all for it.

If you consider say elevator music - music that's just there to fill space, rather than to be listened too - then I don't think there's that much difference between using AI to produce it and using AI to produce clip art or boilerplate code.

It's not that people want to listen to AI music, per se. According to the article, this artist charting was part of an April fools gag. It's about ego, or maybe hubris. People think their idea for a record is good, but don't want to learn musical composition. Instead, they put blind faith in AI generation. Gen AI is more for the idea men unwilling to put in the effort than the consumers.

It isn’t indifference, it’s obliviousness. My mother keeps on listening to AI music, and I’ll be like “why are you listening to this slop” and she’ll then argue back that it isn’t AI, it’s actually really very good and I’m just jealous, as the synthetic voice continues to warble nonsenses like a fucking arcade machine full of snakes in the background.

It’s an even more uncomfortable truth: your average Joe cannot tell the difference between human made music or AI generations, just as they also really think that that 8 year old African boy with a huge beard and no hands built a helicopter out of old bottles, or that that cat walked into a hairdresser wearing a suit and had its whiskers curled.

So there’s no argument for it apart from “people will buy the product because they can’t tell that it isn’t real”.

> I find the production and consumption of AI music to be uniquely... anti-human.

I mean, I'm a professional musician - not sure if that gives me more credibility or less - but I don't feel slighted by folks listening to music made by others (whether those others are other humans, or birds, or whales, or AI).

As you point out, music has an infinite edge; one can spend a lifetime exploring either its niches or its closures and still have an infinity of each to continue discovering.

As moat identification goes, I do feel slightly secure in the sense that AI music (and the information age generally) seems to stoke a hunger for dirty traditionals played well on thick steel strings, and it's going to be a minute before robots can pick 'em like we can.