Three songs generated by artificial intelligence topped music charts this week, reaching the highest spots on Spotify and Billboard charts.
Walk My Walk and Livin’ on Borrowed Time by the outfit Breaking Rust topped Spotify’s “Viral 50” songs in the US, which documents the “most viral tracks right now” on a daily basis, according to the streaming service. A Dutch song, We Say No, No, No to an Asylum Center, an anti-migrant anthem by JW “Broken Veteran” that protests against the creation of new asylum centers, took the top position in Spotify’s global version of the viral chart around the same time. Breaking Rust also appeared in the top five on the global chart.
These three songs are part of a flood of AI-generated music that has come to saturate streaming platforms. A study published on Wednesday by the streaming app Deezer estimates that 50,000 AI-generated songs are uploaded to the platform every day – 34% of all the music submitted.
MIDI didn’t stop people from playing instruments. Digital art didn’t stop people from painting. AI can’t put on live performances.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like AI taking peoples’ artistic jobs any more than anyone else, but I do think this is a bit of an extreme take.
Hatsune Miku has been putting on live performances for decades. There’s no reason at all why an AI-generated musical act couldn’t too.
It makes indie scene significantly harder to get into. For every mildly successful indie artist, there’s thousands of those who failed to break into the scene, now they have to compete with not only their competitor that is more famous than them, they have to compete with 0 effort music from 0 effort producer. It kinda like how game dev is getting harder and harder to get into, as the competition is getting tougher and people expectation is getting higher, even though they don’t have to compete with AI slop that plays and looks like a Ubisoft game yet.
Of course, people who persevere or talented will eventually pops up from the sea of slop, as vocaloid doesn’t kill japanese indie scene. But then vocaloid is entirely different thing than what the current AI issue is.
The industry does not necessarily care if someone’s music is digital or acoustic, but it WILL care if they have to pay you for it.
And that’s the point. Ai means basically no one is getting paid. But the industry is making money.
F ai
And also, the point is to delete the artist. Artists are problematic; they are anti-establishment, opinionated, queer, vocal. Your billionaire overlords want to silence that, by replacing you with a machine.