Mastodawn

Eddie Dalton had 3 of the top 5 Apple Music songs, and all of the songs released on YouTube have hundreds of thousands of views within just days.

People absolutely love it.

"This song has touched the depth of my soul," one listener wrote on YouTube.

You can listen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az5FSZzm-k8

Another Day Old (Official Lyric Video)

YouTube

The music literally hits all the right notes. And it's why RIAA and a bunch of studios and music groups are suing the AI services that people are using to make these songs for theft.

It's a valid concern. But on the other hand, so much popular music is already mechanized w/autotune & beats.

And if you are a musician who doesn't fit the corporate mold, you'll never get anywhere unless the algorithm gods rescue you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUBhjOToIC0

In a study commissioned by Deezer, 80% of respondents said they wanted AI music to be labeled as such. But only 45 percent said that they would automatically filter out AI tracks.

According to Deezer, 35% of daily uploads are entirely AI-generated.

So what do the ppl who make AI music say?

Telisha Jones, the creator of a No. 1 R&B persona named Xania Monet says that she writes all of the lyrics herself, and that's what people like.

Creator of AI artist says there's "a real person behind Xania" amid controversy

YouTube

/end https://plus.flux.community/p/eddie-dalton-isnt-real-but-what-does

All of this raises lots of questions, where does art live, and do people even agree on that?

It seems that many people value art for how it makes them feel, while the history and the struggle of the artist are what attracts others.

Should only beautiful people be allowed to make music?

Must history, conception, technique, execution, and performance all be conjoined? What is art for? Are the feelings we derive from it any less real depending on its circumstances?

Eddie Dalton isn’t real, but what does that mean?

Computer-generated soul music is taking over the internet, raising questions about where humans think art lives

Flux

cognitively accessible math 1d ago

@mattsheffield I remember figuring out what a *completely different* experience it was ... hearing songs or seeing art when I actually had a clue as to the experiences behind it.

John 1d ago

I mean, it's needle drop.

Like, don't get me wrong: there's a composer who makes a couple hundred thousand a year literally listening to this and shitting their pants, but I listened to as much as I could stand (about a minute) and it was just needle drop.

You know - generic, unimaginative, cheap-o background music. Trite, formulaic, expected, sterile.

You play it behind the DeVry University commercial because they refuse to pay for real music.

Needle drop.

John 1d ago

"AI" is *garbage technology* that is *derivative*, as in everything it makes is straight-up derived from something(s) human beings made.

When you try to train them on other "AI" created stuff they break. Badly.

Because they're *garbage* that makes *generic, averaged-out garbage*. For the low, low cost of all of your freshwater, global agriculture, and the future of your kids.

And yes - there are lots of people who cannot distinguish needle drop. Taste, amirite?

🤷‍♂️

John 1d ago

I was going to say that "AI" might be able to replace needle drop composers, but tbh this is *bad* needle drop.

I worked in advertising for 20 years, and would not have selected this for $750 and an in perpetuity global license.

TransitBiker 1d ago

@johnzajac @mattsheffield “ai” “art” is as creative as an oil refinery. Just shove more isobutane into the alkylation unit. Forget the rest. 🙄

Orb 2069 1d ago

No, fake AI music bought onto a minor chart is not actually popular

Sometimes a song just comes out of nowhere and does great! But also, there’s well worn paths to buying your way to a small amount of public attention. And these ways have been common as long as the…

Pivot to AI

crouton 1d ago

@mattsheffield aside: subjective outputs coming out of genAI has a significantly different context to (supposedly) objective outputs coming out of gen AI.

When there is no need for genAI outputs to be objectively correct (e.g. 2 + 2 = 4 according to defined axioms), the picture looks different.

I don't have an easy way of mentally reconciling the following personally:

1. a human person learning music and organically creating music which necessarily has been influenced by how they learnt music and their lived experiences.

2. a gen-AI tool processing musical inputs and generating music which is necessarily informed by inputs and randomness inherent in the gen-AI tool (for sake of argument lets say authors of the inputs were suitably financially compensated)

3. when some people (I'll put me in that category) listen to music, I don't typically have an appreciation of the background of the artist. I'll also disclose that I haven't been looking for AI music.

Is it as reductive as - a gen-AI tool is less creative because it can only blend inputs? And then its a matter of incremental improvement & expanding inputs until creative equilibrium is reached.

Conversely looking at it from the outside from a purely utilitarian viewpoint, why spend all the effort, resources and externalities into making music when we already have musicians?

DavidM_yeg 1d ago

“Should only beautiful people be allowed to make music?”

Woah, hold your rhetorical horses buddy: What’s this “allowed” business?

Anyone *can* make music, you just open your mouth or grab even the most rudimentary instrument. *Making* music has been an intrinsic part of the human experience (at least) since the dawn of our species.

DavidM_yeg 1d ago

What you’re referring to is much more insidious and recent:

Who is allowed to *profit* from music? Who is allowed to enclose this most fundamental human activity? Who gets to mine this most social thing, wall it off, and commodify it? First we culturally strip people of the making of music, and then we extract cash from them as they seek to fill the void.

In removing the person from the “artist” the music industry exposes itself for the sham that it is.

2/f

DavidM_yeg 1d ago

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116333406196449721

Cory Doctorow (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image Nathan Barley

Mamot - Le Mastodon de La Quadrature du Net

SatelliteOfLove 1d ago

Milli Vanilli all over again

Pusher of Pixels 1d ago

@mattsheffield So what happens if AI does a *cover*?

Since AI creations can't be copyrighted...

@pixelpusher220 They're published all the time on YouTube actually. And YouTube doesn't seem to do anything against them

Sorry, sounds awful. No soul.

@mastodonmigration Is that because you know it's AI though? Given that 97% of people cannot tell the difference, what if you didn't know the context?

There's so much formulaic music made by assembly lines of people who stitch the components together and then the singer is auto-tuned to hell while singing it.

Not saying it is worse than human generated formulaic music, but it has no creative depth. It's just bland.

@mastodonmigration I don't see it as any worse than most of the drek produced by the music industry.

I do think though that the prevalence of AI music is going to make concerts much more of a thing.

Chuckles 1d ago

@mastodonmigration @mattsheffield formulaic tastes natural if you've only ever been fed formula.

thief_of_fire 1d ago

@mattsheffield @mastodonmigration yeah, and that music sucks with no soul too

But, even though people listen to this processed music, it doesn't have any power. A good song has something special that grabs you, shakes you, and doesn't let go.

As an example consider popular artist Lorde from her first album White Teeth Teens https://youtu.be/lDwOa57FdBI. Whether you like it or not, you have to acknowledge it is brilliant and raw.

She then came under the influence of producer Jack Antonoff, who homogenized and purified her sound and the magic was lost.

White Teeth Teens

YouTube

@mastodonmigration @mattsheffield one _alleged_ listener said that.

Speaking as a musician, someone who has also been a radio professional, and who has worked in-studio on other people's albums: it sounds and feels like music for a commercial. Like it's music for an advertisement promoting an active seniors community living facility, maybe assisted living in particular.

I feel like people who like it are reacting to it punching nostalgia buttons. This works well for older people in particular.

All that makes sense given that the software is trained on pre-existing music. People will connect to parts of what it's copying, and associate the music they remember with this. But anyone looking for a new sound won't find any hint of one here.

@mastodonmigration @mattsheffield To be clear, I'm not saying that people aren't enjoying it. I have to think they are.

But a disturbing number of people - _particularly older people_ - watch commercials _on purpose_, too.

A friend of mine talks about his (elderly, now) mum protesting him muting commercials if it's one, in her words, "she hasn't seen yet."

This strikes me as very much in the same bucket.

@mastodonmigration @mattsheffield _Most people_ latch onto music in their teens, lock onto it, and don't move past it. They like new music less and less as they age. Charts showing this effect go around occasionally. GenX is a little atypical in that the percentage of GenX who aggressively seek out new music despite being long past the typical era for that is meaningfully higher than usual, but even there, that's not most people in the cohort. Just more than usual.

Is there a future of "AI"-generated nostalgia-triggering variations of old music for older people?

Maybe.

Is that what's going on here?

Also maybe.

@mastodonmigration @mattsheffield But is it art?

_Definitely, absolutely not_.

It is product. It may be a product people enjoy, that they want. But it is product.

Not art.

@moira @mattsheffield

Interesting point. As an oldster, most friends are indeed stuck back in the seventies or eighties for the music they listened to in high school and college. But, in most cases, the songs they still play are pretty good tunes that were hits at the time because they had that something special and endure the test of time for the same reason. Each era produces some great music, and AI that makes music that mimics a certain genre will still not have the right stuff.

@mastodonmigration @mattsheffield Evidence suggests it might, at least for some.

I want to be clear that my musical analysis is independent of ethics. The first thing I thought when I saw the its so-close-but-that's-not-a-real-microphone title card was "what're the odds the people behind this _aren't_ white? 50:1? 100:1?" tho' the phrase 'digital blackface' escaped me. It feels icky, and _at very best_, appropriative.

Unfortunately, where there's a way, there's a will, and nostalgia is a monstrous creature with tendrils that reach deep. And _that_ is why the AI version doesn't _have to_ have the right stuff on its own, it just needs to _invoke_ the right stuff _in the listener's memories_. The _listener_ will then fill in the rest.

I would just mention that I'm not sure those are users. There are a ton of what look like fake comments on these AI generated garbage songs.

@jmcrookston That seems unlikely considering that AI generated music is overwhelmingly popular on YouTube.

It's in every single genre, much with hundreds of thousands of views.

Elsewhere people have reported that there are swarms of bots promoting this garbage music for the monetary return. So I'm not sure what we can draw from popularity, if that is happening. Of course, maybe whatever outlet I was reading was mistaken about it being fake. That's certainly possible.

@jmcrookston There is a lot of fake traffic out there for sure. But I've seen multiple people listen to these AI covers for background mood music, so I don't think it's all fake.

I have even had someone show me a JS Bach channel with fake music that made be actively cringe.

Well nothing's ever black or white. So I'd agree it's not that 100% of it will be fake. The comments look very suspicious, then I found the article that said the numbers are getting juiced.

I only started looking into any of it after YouTube started feeding me fake AI songs on every single genre. They all had gigantic view numbers. So it does look to me like somebody is pulling a concerted attack here.

Anyway, the quality of the songs is quite good.

It's definitely impossible to tell one of these fake songs from any kind of real song.

I'm not surprised. About 5 years ago there were some computer generated songs that were full of errors overall, but the individual sections were quite good. It was very easy to tell that they were fake but 5hat was always going to be able to be overcome. I guess they've gotten there.

Androcat 1d ago

Youtube allows people to buy boosting, so "popular on youtube" means nothing other than "is paying for placement".

@jmcrookston

Rob van Kan🔻1d ago

@mattsheffield Do people actually love it? Do you trust the numbers furnished by the same assholes who created this shit? I sure as hell don't. Of course it has hundreds of thousands of views, just like most dictators have 98% of the vote.

Мя ��1d ago

@mattsheffield I can definitely hear AI traces[1], but yeah, they're harder to spot than in average slop

[1] voice *too indistinguishable* from music. Models are trained on composed tracks, and «average» voice and music by design. Here it's only noticeable at louder parts of lyrics

Paco Hope 1d ago

@mattsheffield We have to be careful looking at plays and rankings as an indicator of human sentiment. The marketplaces (Apple, Spotify, YouTube) have outsized influence. If people choose a mood and just let the service pick tracks forever, the play count reflects how many times the algorithm selected the track, not how many people sought it out and listened to it on purpose.

It’s not all algorithms. Those play counts definitely include real people really playing this song intentionally. But it is impossible to know the proportion of plays that humans initiated versus the various algorithms. And “ranks” cannot be independently verified. Apple can say whatever they want and no one can contradict them.

It’s really hard to decide what conclusions to draw from data like this.

Ecthompsonmd 1d ago

@mattsheffield the majority of what we listen to is mediocre. Eddie Dalton is no different. It is not outstanding. It is not awful. It's middle of the road. Eddie Dalton is not Buddy Walters. He is not Buddy Guy. Again, nothing outstanding.

@Ecthompsonmd Yes, that is definitely true. Almost all popular music is very mediocre.

But very few people want to admit that. They only want to say that about the music of kids these days.

Ecthompsonmd 1d ago

@mattsheffield Popular music has been mediocre for decades. Hell, come on, when I was growing up, songs like "Rock the Boat" were popular. That was such a piece of trash. Don't forget songs like "Kung Fu Fighting." Or disco duck.

@Ecthompsonmd The public hasn't cared about musical technique for probably about a century, especially in the US.

People appreciate when it's allowed to rarely surface, but they don't make it a criterion of what they will listen to.

I'm a classical and jazz snob though so this gets people angry at me sometimes, haha

Ecthompsonmd 1d ago

@mattsheffield there's nothing wrong with liking classical music and jazz. I love jazz. I've just started listening to a lot of Oscar Peterson lately. Man, he was fantastic.

Ann T. Phở 1d ago

@mattsheffield Fuck this. Digital blackface. Disgusting.

Sir-He-Oh 1d ago

@mattsheffield I'll listen someday but not today. I'm totally a ludite since Sam Altman brought LLMs into the world. He has robbed us of our way to distinguish reality from fantasy. He has created one of the worst tools of oppression. At least he gave us the original code so an open version can exist, but robbing us from the sense of what's real and what's not is something I can't get over yet. It's a new world but I can't see the upsides or this technology yet.

@sqfuentes Unfortunately, being able to distinguish truth and fiction was gone for decades in many countries because of religious extremism. Trump and his international imitators are symptoms, not causes.

Peter 1d ago

Substack is a Nazi platform.

Hot Dog Water, will not comply 1d ago

For absolutely every person who buys-into this calamitous barf in any measure, Willem Dafoe pur it best in To Live and Die in L.A.
"Your taste is in your ass."

Cat Lady Kydia Music 🇺🇦1d ago

I can tell it’s AI from how it’s mixed. They will probably figure out how to fix that someday too, but for now, AI songs are too fatiguing on the ears. There is a constant high end boost between about 9kHz to 17kHz , and then it just drops off a cliff.
I guess it makes sense that older people don’t notice as much, since we lose our ability to hear a lot of high frequencies as we age.

@KydiaMusic There are some flaws in the audio, yes. Although that could be that the person who promoted couldn't recognize them to filter them out.

Cat Lady Kydia Music 🇺🇦23h ago

No, I hear it on every AI-generated track. Much like AI-generated text, once you recognize it, it’s easier to spot. Apparently the young people (with their more keen sense of hearing) can clock it even quicker, and often refer to it as “Boomer music.”

Matthew Sheffield 22h ago

@KydiaMusic Looking at the YouTube comments of Eddie Dalton, the fans definitely seem to be older.

Cat Lady Kydia Music 🇺🇦22h ago

Interesting, it looks like a lot of those comments are bots. They follow a similar pattern and cadence, with the content all being some variation of “I’m __ years old and this is the best thing I’ve ever heard.”

No doubt designed to fool real Boomers into listening and adding it to their playlists.

There are similar bots on a lot of Taylor Swift’s YouTube videos. “I’m 73 years old and this is the first Taylor Swift song I’ve really listened to…what a talent!” etc.

Cat Lady Kydia Music 🇺🇦22h ago

Unfortunately it must work, or they wouldn’t keep doing it. At least I do see a few people in the comments who are real, and while they initially praise the song, once they realize it’s AI, most of them are bummed about it and don’t try to defend it.

Matthew Sheffield 22h ago

@KydiaMusic Based on the Deezer poll, I think you may be underestimating the number of people who would willingly listen to AI songs, because of how it makes them feel.

They don't see art as something felt by the creator and the spectator.

Drew 🇵🇭 ♾️1d ago

@mattsheffield Well, I mean, it’s garbage, so there’s that…