The already embattled Fender CEO said the other day that he plans for Fender to be at the "forefront" of AI, and that covering others' songs was "analogue AI".

The simple truth of the matter is that contempt for your customers is now normal. I expect this from Fender, now; they are utterly without soul.

But D'Addario are really one of the most analogue companies ever and they are still family-owned; they should have understood the magnitude of this problem right at the beginning and just apologised.

At least one of my three guitars will likely continue to have their PB strings, probably, because they still sound the best on my cheap Weissenborn clone.

But it is very disappointing and it leaves a bad taste. Perhaps I will revisit Rotosounds (wound in a factory very near where I grew up) for my PBs. The UK also has Newtone strings so I really have no reason to continue to support D'Addario (though the low-tension Aloha set I really like for the Weissenborn copy that lets me have a 15 on the high D is always backordered).

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tpmoney 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> The already embattled Fender CEO said the other day that he plans for Fender to be at the "forefront" of AI, and that covering others' songs was "analogue AI". >The simple truth of the matter is that contempt for your customers is now normal. I expect this from Fender, now; they are utterly without soul.

I think to some degree this is going to be inevitable for a while. No matter what people think about the ethics of AI or AI use, the fact of the matter is it exists, and it is shaking up and going to shake up a lot of the world. I personally think "AI" isn't really a product anymore than "The Internet" is a product. It's infrastructure in the same way the internet is, or to quote "Halt and Catch Fire", it's "the thing that gets us to The Thing".

The problem is no one really knows what The Thing looks like, so everyone is throwing anything they can think of at the wall and hoping to see what sticks. And they're dong this because they remember Sears and they remember Blockbuster. No one wants to be the next company that was positioned perfectly to integrate the new technology into their business model and missed the boat completely for short sightedness or lack of speed. "$foo but with AI" is the current generation's "$foo but on the internet", and everyone is scrambling hard to not be the next company that someone writes a "whatever happened to them" youtube video about.

Incidentally, this "AI as infrastructure" view I have is also why I really think governments should be getting into the space of building and distributing training data sets and models. Not only because it could reduce the overall amount of bot scraping and traffic if everyone who wants to build could go to a known good and clean source of training data, but also because nominal usage fees could help manage the copyright concerns. I've pitched it before in more detail, but I imagine something akin to radio broadcast royalty licenses, where people whose copyrighted works are part of the government training sets are paid out "royalties" from the pool of money brought in from licensing the training sets.

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ethin 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> it is shaking up and going to shake up a lot of the world.

The problem is that this is only happening because the powerful are forcing it on us. This is exactly why the backlash against it has gotten so big. Had companies not jumped on the AI bandwagon and forced it down veryone's throats (sometimes putting your job on the line if you refused) the backlash probably would be non-existent. The AI boosters/pro-AI people will of course continue to claim that nobody is forcing you to use AI (I literally had this told to me on a different forum like 4 days ago, it was honestly ridiculous how delusional this particular booster was...)

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dofm 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I think to some degree this is going to be inevitable for a while. No matter what people think about the ethics of AI or AI use, the fact of the matter is it exists, and it is shaking up and going to shake up a lot of the world. I personally think "AI" isn't really a product anymore than "The Internet" is a product. It's infrastructure in the same way the internet is, or to quote "Halt and Catch Fire", it's "the thing that gets us to The Thing".

True. But the way it is approached is an exceptionally valuable yardstick for judging people's intent.

There is no way that "being at the forefront of AI" is a strategy that gets Fender anywhere except towards unthinking inward investment. Even in the narrow context of NAM captures and the like, it is clumsily antithetical to their audience to say this.

But writing off the one thing that actually sells guitars in the 21st century (covers bands!) as "analogue AI" is the most extraordinarily tone-deaf, rude, dismissive thing that someone who runs a musical instrument company could ever say.

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SyneRyder an hour ago | parent [-]

> writing off the one thing that actually sells guitars in the 21st century (covers bands!) ...

I'm not so sure about that. Guitar bands playing original music is huge where I am right now, shoegaze / nugaze / grunge / dreampop is where the zeitgeist is here. As a middle-aged guy who was a teen during grunge, it's heartening to see the 20 year olds now buying Jaguar guitars (and a bunch of pedals) and new bands emerging each week. Everyone is nerding out over their obscure Bandcamp purchases, and it's definitely a thing that you need to write your own original material. The occasional cover is okay, but there's a definite "ick" to being a cover band.

"Analogue AI" as a description of playing a cover is harsh, but I can also see some of that label sticking. You didn't write the music or the lyrics, you're taking the credit and money for someone else's work. That seems to be some of the anti-AI attitude around here.

But you're right that "the forefront of AI" is not going to appeal to that audience, at all.

(Personally I'm pro-AI - not Suno stuff, but I think it will eventually find a place in the same way that synthesizers & sampling & DAWs did, all of which were regarded as cheating at the time they came out. I remember the grunge albums with "AAD" Analog / Analog / Digital printed on the CD sleeve just as Pro Tools was emerging.)

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whstl an hour ago | parent [-]

I dunno.

Fender USA and Squier Jaguars and lots of pedals are for ppl in original bands.

But the money is in Custom Shop Gibson, Fender and PRS, which are for ppl in the older generations playing mostly in 70s cover bands, or just hanging it in the wall to occasionally play Smoke on the Water. TheGearPage has become a very influential force in the industry almost like HN has.

	▲	SyneRyder 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Okay, that's a point - there's less money in the Squier Jaguars even if they sell more of them. I know I personally can't decide on a Squier Jaguar or Vintera, when I know what I really wanted is a Fender Cobain Jaguar. There's more money in the doctors & lawyers accumulating expensive gear that they rarely ever get to play. That said - the few people I know in the "rich kid buying gear" segment are deep into AI, and wouldn't blink twice at using it to generate music for their events. Much of their audience wouldn't necessarily care. The equipment they have is more to show off "here is this expensive thing you can't afford, I have it, I don't even use it". So maybe there's lots of diverse markets and I really don't know how it will play out :)

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whstl 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In the late 2010s, the order (literally) from investors was to "hire as many devs as you can". The order now is to position the company somehow as being AI-centric or AI-powered.