A retro-pop band called The Velvet Sundown accumulated a million monthly listeners on Spotify earlier this year. The music was catchy. The backstory was detailed. The photographs had that quality of images that reward close inspection by generating new questions.

Everything about the project was generated by artificial intelligence. The songs, the images, the biography, the entire artist identity that listeners had been following and adding to playlists. And it worked. People were fooled. That's the significant thing.

The Pack's position - human creation, human curation - is not (only) a statement about the ethics of AI as a technology. It is a governance decision about what kind of content the platform is designed to support, and whose interests it was built to serve.

An AI disclosure label doesn't resolve the structural question of whether synthetic content should compete in the same royalty pool as music made by human beings. But it is a start, and transparency and flexibility is always better than the alternative.

New blog on AI disclosure, The Velvet Sundown, and why the label on the label matters even for platforms that already say no.

👉 https://www.packmusic.au/blog/the-sound-of-transparency-why-ai-music-labels-matter-even-for-platforms-that-say-no

#AIMusic #AITransparency #HumanCuration #IndependentMusic #MusicIndustry #ThePackMusic #ArtificialIntelligence #MusicEthics

Here's a figure to understand - 71% of musicians are using AI to separate stems, not to replace themselves.

The debate about AI and music has been almost entirely about text-to-song generators. The actual data shows that's what the least number of musicians use AI for. Most are using it for stem separation, backing tracks, ear training, and mixing assistance - tools that make their practice more viable, not tools that replace it.

Bottom line - musicians are still making music. I think they always will. No-one can replace passion with technology. The consent and royalty dilution problems are real. The training data problem is real. Seven million AI-generated tracks are being uploaded every day and they are absolutely affecting the royalty pool. None of that is resolved by pretending the 71% using AI as a tool to enhance their practice are doing the same thing as the content farms flooding distribution infrastructure with synthetic material. They are not.

The Pack's position is about what kind of content the platform supports, not about which software musicians use to make it. Keeping those two questions distinct matters for the quality of the argument - and for the working musicians who don't need to be told the tools they rely on are disqualifying.

New blog explores what musicians actually use AI for, and why conflating different uses has been confusing the conversation.

👉 https://www.packmusic.au/blog/the-71-percent

#AIandMusic #MusicIndustry #IndependentArtists #AIethics #MusicTechnology #ThePackMusic #HumanCuration #ArtistRights

This FediBoard account is now fully dedicated to the extension's life and its users.

A new channel is now available for general topics not covered in existing main channels.

https://flipboard.social/@fediboard-mix

#fediboard #humancuration
🙏

If you want to browse some human-curated videos from PeerTube organised into categories, here are some playlists for you!

➡️ https://fedi.video/c/fedivideo_playlists/video-playlists

(NOTE: The latest additions to a playlist appear at the bottom, so keep scrolling if things seem old at the top. On mobiles there may only be one or two videos visible by default, swipe these up to see the rest of the playlist.)

EDIT: Scroll past the computer playlists to see more variety!

#PeerTube #HumanCuration

🔴🟡 The Analog Web
by Jay Hoffmann
@jay_hoffmann
#TheHistoryOfTheInternet #TheAnalogWeb #PersonalWebsites #algorithmicallyfortifiedcommunities #HumanCuration

https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/the-analog-web/

"In an age where technology can easily mislead or overwhelm, trusting in #humancuration becomes not a preference but a necessity for preserving the quality of the information that shapes our understanding of the world.

Across the Fediverse and beyond, respected voices are leveraging platforms like Mastodon and their websites to share personally vetted links, analysis, and creations."

https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/curation-is-the-last-best-hope-of-intelligent-discourse