I have a very pragmatic view on music: all I care about is whether it sounds good or not. That’s it. That’s literally it. And from that standpoint the advent of AI music has been a major net positive for me.

You can choose to ignore that and come tell me about the ethics of using AI or how you care about the story behind the song and so on and that’s all fine but just note that you’re no longer addressing what I’m actually saying here.

I’m also not claiming it’s great - only that it’s good. I’ve yet to discover an AI song that I go back to like I do with many human-made songs but if I want to put on a playlist playing in the background then one consisting of entirely AI-made music reliably provides me well above average track after another whereas with organic music I need to sift through a ton of absolute crap to stumble upon the occasional good track that still rarely exceeds what AI is able to output. I can go on YouTube and put on a 2 hour playlist of Jazz House or similar and I don’t get the urge to skip a single track.

Currently I feel like where AI still trips is lyrics - they still are only plausible sounding nonsense once you actually start paying attention to it but especially for instrumental music it has far exceeded the level of a good average human artist.

Few examples of what I’m refering to: with vocals and without.

  • binux@sh.itjust.works
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    5 hours ago

    AI music is objectively good

    Asserting a point of view about art — an inherently subjective medium — all while claiming that it’s objective is probably one of the most blatantly idiotic things a person can possibly say and stand behind. And that’s not even mentioning how you’re literally on a community all about opinions.

    Regardless you definitely posted this in the right place so credit where credit’s due I suppose. Enjoy your algorithmically-generated slop. A poorly-made piece of art with real human soul and intent behind it will always be infinitely better than even the best possible “creation” of the product of automated theft and assembly of human knowledge and creation.

  • Chick0nPlayz@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    There’s a time I may have agreed with you but there’s too much good music out there, and other fans of the same artists that there isn’t a need for AI music imo. Also I hate the idea of using AI for art

  • BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    12 hours ago

    This is a very good unpopular opinion. It’s actually unpopular and outs the user as an AI bro who wouldn’t know how to make a decent beat to save their life.

    • Iconoclast@feddit.ukOP
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      12 hours ago

      who wouldn’t know how to make a decent beat to save their life

      That is true and also completely unrelated to the discussion.

      • BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        12 hours ago

        It is related to the discussion because appreciation of media comes from a basic understanding of it. Not saying expertise here, but knowing what it takes to make something allows you to appreciate it.

        In addition, it kind of cements the belief that people who like AI art and consider it the same as non-AI art tend to be devoid of artistic appreciation.

        • Iconoclast@feddit.ukOP
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          11 hours ago

          If that’s the cartoon image that helps you to fit me into your “AI bro” category then by all means. Nothing for me to gain here even trying to convince you otherwise. I just don’t see what you’re hoping to achieve with this.

            • Lemmert@reddthat.com
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              3 hours ago

              Your first sentence was a simple statement. Calling someone an AI bro who wouldn’t know how to make a decent beat to save their life, to me at least, is an insult.

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    I can’t wrap my mind around this at all. Music is the result of people making music. If there is no artist, no perspective or feelings it’s just sounds.

    Sure I can’t sing, so what I as an average person make could not even charitably be called music either, but that is not the point - I want to go to concerts and see bands play music, and want computers to do grunt work that people don’t want to do, so that more of us can do better things.

    Using an AI to make musical sound just undermines all that. Tech in music being wielded by humans, yes that is music (DJs) and if machines ever develop sentience I will call their sounds music, but not before.

    Have my upvote.

    • MIDItheKID@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      “it’s just sounds”

      So, straying from the conversation about AI music being good or whatever. This is the part of AI music that perplexes me the most. So like… Audio is a wave. You can take a sine wave, and a square wave and layer them on top and you get a sine wave with some square edges because it’s both sounds. Different frequencies for different pitches, all of that.

      When AI makes music, is it just drawing that wave? If so, that’s fucking crazy. Like I could understand if it used some ingested music theory to write chords and a melody, then turn them into MIDI, then run those through a synth plugin. But AI doesn’t have a synth plugn. It just knows what a synth plugin sounds like through analasys of sound waves, right? Like AI can’t “hear” music. It doesn’t know what a cello sounds like. It just knows what the sample point values of a waveform of a cello sounds like. But then if you tell the AI to add an instrument. Let’s say an electric guitar. It knows how to re-draw that wave to actually make that sound. To add reverb? To add compression? Then more instruments?

      If that’s how it actually works, that blows my god damned mind. No human could ever write a song by drawing a line on paper and scanning it in. I suppose they could, but it would be some avant garde experimental thing, not something that sounds like actual instruments. Like I don’t think a human could ever figure out how to draw the sound of fingers sliding down the frets of an acoustic guitar between the actually strumming of a guitar.

      It’s fucking bonkers.

      • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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        3 hours ago

        See music notes as letters and different type of sound (trumpet, piano, guitar, etc) as a style of writing.

        LLMs being good at processing text, music is adjacent to this. Music styles tend to have common elements between them and the LLMs can be trained on the similarities and to predict them, just like text prediction.

    • Iconoclast@feddit.ukOP
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      11 hours ago

      When I say music I mean sounds that are intended to sound musical, or melodic or whatever. A kid banging bottoms of pots and kettles with wooden spoons counts as music in this definition. I’m describing a kind of sound.

      The sounds AI is able to produce are in some cases such that I enjoy listening to. I’m not a music connoisseur, I’m just a person who likes hearing some sounds more than others. You likely define music differently as well as consume it on a whole different level and that’s fine. I’m simply not that into music. I relate to food in a similar manner. It’s fuel - if it also tastes good, let alone is healthy, then that’s a bonus.

      I simply view the gatekeeping and hating a bit silly.

      • Hawanja@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        I’m just a person who likes hearing some sounds more than others.

        I know, right? Wtf is wrong with these people. It’s the PRODUCT that matters when it comes to music, not the meaning, message, artist or intent, right? Who cares who created the song, or what instruments the song was made with, or even what the song is about. All I crave is acoustic tones arranged in a pleasing manner. Message? Morals? Emotion? Bah, who needs that shit? If Hitler made a banger I’d still listen to it. I’m so glad you think the same!

        I relate to food in a similar manner. It’s fuel - if it also tastes good, let alone is healthy, then that’s a bonus.

        Wow! I also just shovel whatever disgusting shit someone places in front of my face directly into my mouth without regard for what it is, where it came from, or how it tastes! It’s so awesome to finally meet another human being who just mindlessly consumes whatever stupid bullshit that gets thrown in front of him without thinking just like me! Man we are so much alike it’s scary.

      • RBWells@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Yeah I don’t think AI has intent yet.

        Of course you should listen to whatever you like, that’s not in question. I like to hear the waves at the beach, thunder, rain. None are music but are lovely sounds.

  • Hawanja@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    Hey, I get it, you just have zero respect for the effort, creativity, imagination, or sacrifice that an artist has to put in to create a work thats any good. To you, art is merely a product. Who cares who made it, how it was made, or what it even means, or if there was any meaning at all.
    I totally understand. I went to the store yesterday and they had this hand crafted chair made of high quality wood for sale for like $300. Fuck that! I’ll just go buy a cheap plastic piece of garbage chair pumped out by the thousands in a Chinese factory. I mean it’s just a chair, right? It has one job, who cares what it’s made of. “Quality, Shmality!” I say.
    I just wish more people would understand this, like I entered this fighting game tournament last month. But I’m really ass at Street Fighter, so instead I wrote this bot that would play the game for me so I’d win with double perfect every time. Can you belive they kicked me out for cheating? CHEATING! What kind of shit is that? I just used a helpful tool to totally do all the work for me as my only contribution was giving broad parameters while the computer program makes literally every other decision. The audacity of these people! Don’t they understand this makes me a champion gamer?

    • Iconoclast@feddit.ukOP
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      13 hours ago

      That’s an interesting cartoon caricature you crafted there. I just don’t have any clue what it has to do with the topic at hand.

      Or is it “BOOO!” that you’re just trying to say here?

      • Hawanja@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        I’m just saying I agree with you 100%, and I wish more people would get it.
        Like I went to this museum because I heard this painting (The Bona Pisa? Lona Misa? Idk, something like that) was worth like two billion dollars or some shit. But you know, I’m an artist too! So I had Chat GPT create the same image and printed it out, then went down to the museum. I mean if they like the first one so much then they should pay top dollar for a percise copy, right?
        But Noooooo! They told me it was garbage and to gtfo! Can you believe that shit? I mean my painting was a pixel perfect copy of the original, so it makes sense that it should be the exact same thing, amirite? It’s the end product that matters, right? I mean it looks exactly the same! I should be getting millions of dollars for this painting! What kind of bullshit this is that?
        Fucking Luddites, right? I feel ya.

    • Iconoclast@feddit.ukOP
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      18 hours ago

      What are you even saying? You arguing against my subjective experience as if you could possibly know better?

        • Iconoclast@feddit.ukOP
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          17 hours ago

          I have no idea what you are you hoping to achieve by coming here trying to insult me other than to advertise to everyone what a mean jerk you are.

          I’m sorry that you’re in pain but I’m not the cause for it nor does hurting others make you feel any better.

  • Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    14 hours ago

    i’ll take that muzak/“average radio slop” isn’t bad. but is the energy involved really worth it, to just get muzak out of it?

      • Hawanja@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        Same here! I also just buy whatever stupid bullshit that somebody puts in front of my face. Why bother thinking about the content I consume? Fuck that, who has time? That mental energy is better put towards important shit like deciding which celebrity I’m gonna have Grok make naked pics of next, right?
        I’m so glad there’s someone else who understands!

  • abc@suppo.fi
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    16 hours ago

    There are several uses for music. For some of them, AI music like you pasted works well – like if those were playing as background music in a restaurant there’s no problem. You’re not there to listen to the music.

    But if you want to really listen to the music… you usually want to listen to old songs or then something totally new and interesting. Your links were none of those. It was sophisticated elevator music.

    Then again, I don’t see any reason why AI couldn’t some day be able to compose something new and interesting. A lot of the music humans create is derivative. The spigot of really new stuff has been kinda dry since the 90s it seems to me.

  • Live Your Lives@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    Have you just not spent any time making a playlist of good human made songs you can put on to listen to on the background?

    • Iconoclast@feddit.ukOP
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      12 hours ago

      I have but my playlists only consist of absolute bangers and I savour those. Those are the songs I listen to when I just want to listen to a good song. I don’t want to overlisten them by casually playing them on the background.

  • Frigidlollipop@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    Just sucks the ai learned it by stealing. Valid take though, I guess. It feels a lot like saying, “factory farming is great for me. All I care about is meat that tastes decent. That’s it.”

    • abc@suppo.fi
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      16 hours ago

      What actually sucks, imho, is that the only way to reach the target is to steal the stuff and (most importantly) not get caught until your product is too big to fail. Then later you can just throw some hundreds of investor millions at a lawsuit and continue business as usual.

      Systems that guide towards stealing and buying off the courts are not great.

    • Iconoclast@feddit.ukOP
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      22 hours ago

      Factory farming isn’t a bad analogue as it’s the only morally indefensible behaviour I knowingly partake in. Though personally I’m unconvinced about the unethicality of AI, but that’s not what this thread is about.