My point is that most of these “vibe articles” are pretty bad. They’re muddled in their ideas and full of gaps in logic or fact.

But the aesthetics are tuned enough to get upvotes from this same audience that thinks AI music is going nowhere.

Here’s a sample of my “flagged” list from just the past few days:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47972367

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952807

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47949585

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47913650

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47911524

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47897140

Not the person you're replying to, but here's one that was at the top of the homepage this morning (and that I immediately clicked out of because it had that AI stink). I would bet my next paycheck that this was heavily edited by an LLM, if not outright written by one.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47973376

Exactly backwards: These articles suck because the writing sucks. There was this morning a well-written, engaging article about building a Gameboy emulator in F# that the author admitted using some LLM help to compose. Easy upvote.

It’s not impossible to get these tools to make your writing better, and presumably that will become easier over time. But if you don’t put in the effort & your own clear ideas, the result today is garbage. But pleasing garbage to a wide swath of the hn audience. Pop tech writing!

There are underexplored musical genres?

That's a long-term challenge for the next CEO to figure out.

Unlike CTC or CTC, radio and streaming ad campaigns are notoriously hard to track and attribute, and hence trend to brand-awareness. Advertisers won't see the effect of rising fraudulent streams immediately.

Don't stop Facebook from completely making up video numbers. Seems like it's a good way to rug pull a bunch of workers and force them to accept lower rates.

I think it can sort of make sense for some people who sort of listen to music as a background noise. But for me, when I am listening to a new song, I get curious about who the artist(s) is/are. Do they sound better in a live performance? What other music or artists inspired them? What other artists sound like them?

I don’t think it would be easy for a “AI” artist to not be suspicious to me unless they were like some kind of character that is made up by a record label or another artist.

I'm put in mind of the Merchandise Marks Act 1887 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany#History - which ultimately did the opposite of what it was expected to do. There is a real chance here that people just want to listen to something that sounds nice and aren't that fussed about whether a human is involved.

Besides, people seem to go in pretty strongly with computers to tune the sound already. It wouldn't be that shocking if people were already listening to works that can only be made with the aid of a computer.

why does it matter to you if it's AI or not? if you enjoy a song you shouldn't resent it just because it's AI generated. Me personally there's many AI songs that I like and enjoy listening to.

we're measuring if people are listening to AI music, not what percentage of AI music is slop

It takes away from real human artists who do their part to slowly advance human culture. Music will not develop without human artists. Maybe for this moment in time AI can fulfill some people's musical desires, but it's not going to keep up with the times. The point of art, in a general sense, is humanity. Automating away your artistic needs is like automating away your social needs. It's a one way "relationship" that is superficial and self-indulgent. It's a step towards an empty world.

You hear a song with vocals that strongly emotionally resonate with you, reminding you of your mother who passed away recently after a long terrible illness. You want to know more about the singer that almost brought you to tears, only to find there is none and that the song was AI generated.

You won't tell from the music. It's obviously an AI generated mix when:

- the channel posts multiple mixes per week

- the thumbnail is clearly AI generated

- most importantly, the tracklist never includes any author, because there are none

If you search for "<genre> mix" on YouTube right now, 9/10 results fail these criteria.

Lo-fi channels used to show the artist and song names. These newer ones don't bother with credits, or have made up song titles.

E.g. "funky chicken jam"

It's like the MBS during the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Today it prints money, tomorrow it blows up in your face.

Yeah they put a blue check on it like Elon did. Until they get paid to put the check on slop. Rotten fish is still rotten even if you mix it with fresh fish and label it accordingly.

Apologies, I had correct my comment prior to your reply.

> Because they allow anyone to upload to Spotify.

No one is allowed to upload directly to Spotify. However, I wasn't aware that distributors might not vet content prior to publishing.

I'm old school - I tend not to blame people (or companies, for that matter) now for things they might do in the future.

> And yet somehow TIDAL is able to between three and four times the royalties per stream that Spotify does.

Looks like they do allocation differently between popular and indie artists, but the overall share, as percentage of revenue, is similar from what I've found searching online. The major record labels pressing for an allocation algorithm that favors them is kinda obvious.

This means that for an indie artist TIDAL is probably better - but not because Spotify itself is paying less, but because TIDAL was able to avoid being pressed into paying larger share to the record labels.

We get these numbers thrown online without saying if it's comparing direct artist payout, which plans are counted (Spotify has free plans, and free users are still counted in streams), is the artist indie, niche with record contract or very popular with record contract.

See: https://www.reddit.com/r/TIdaL/comments/1jxkoil/tidal_pays_a...

I don't listen to podcasts in general, wouldn't listen to Rogan even if I did listen to podcasts, and I buy (rent, tbh) my audiobooks from another evil company.

But even if they spent all that money on artists, the payouts would rise by 0.75% (percent of current, not cents): $11B artist payouts in 2025, $250M Rogan multi-year contract, assuming 3 years: 100 x (0.25 ÷ 3) ÷ 11 = 0.75%

Also, it doesn't make sense to compare a niche indie music artist with the most popular podcaster in the world. You should compare mega-stars with mega-stars.

Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Drake, The Weekend and Ariana Grande - neither of which I ever want to listen to on Spotify or anywhere else - got more money from Spotify than Rogan. (https://www.thestreet.com/entertainment/highest-paid-artists...)

You can support real human artists all you want, that is your choice. That is not purism.

Purism is saying, like a lot of intent in this thread, people who listen to AI music are dumb and tasteless.