Since you have a lot of customization though, it's hard to judge how much is the AI and how much is the human.
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Suno, a Music Generative AI, Likely Trained on Copyrighted Materials
https://80.lv/articles/suno-a-music-generative-ai-likely-tra...
Ideas in tech are cheap, it's usually the implementation that matters. With something like lyrics, that doesn't seem to be the case.
Thus spoke me
Robin Hanson recently said something to the effect that this might be the last era of human-dominated artistic production. As such, that works produced in these days -- these final days of the human arts -- might be especially prestigious and valuable in times to come.
I believe it. Suno is shockingly good already, and it's only going to get better. The curtain on human composers is probably going to drop faster than we think.
It has extremely impressive output for a music generator, and it is very fun to play with - but people will always want to hear something new, and something real.
I don't think that music fans are going to connect with completely AI-generated music without a real personality and story behind it - and good, original music will always be more impressive to people and likely more successful than an AI-generated amalgamation of what already exists.
Always good to be aware of our small tech bubble here and that things we take for granted already, might not even be close to adoption :)
/sarcasm off
Everything outside that structure is an afterthought. The occasional indie hit songs and labels have failed to upend the music industry power structure for a century (they tend to get acquired if they get big enough). Tons of people making songs mostly for themselves will only dilute the power of smaller players.
The labels will probably extract some licensing fees off the stolen copyrighted training data, but they famously don't care about their musicians earning a livelihood.
Even outside streaming, the labels should care about AI-generated works edging out material from their own catalogs for licensing opportunities.
(Not affiliated, nor have used either much - based on first impressions playing around and listening to others results.)
Does the model build up track by track vertically, which would then lend itself to a more capable product for professionals, an AI powered DAW if you will. Or is it building a linear stream of all the sounds beat by beat e.g. horizontally?
FWIW I got consistently more musically pleasing results from Udio than Suno. Although occasionally Udio would sing AI gibberish.
So, if anyone can make music, then what's the value of being able to make music?
But, if what it enables still requires some rare talent or significant learning to make good music, then how is that different from today? And, well, anyone can already make bad music.
Or maybe I'm just in my greybeard "get off my lawn" mode today.
You were sold a lie that only certain people make good music and you need to spend money.
Well, I didn't say any of that, so not quite sure what you're talking about.
>Everyone should make music. Singing to yourself doesn't make it valueless... with family and friends...
Yes. That was my point. Anyone can sing to themselves or with family and friends now.
But, I am guilty of not reading the article and grouped it with the spate of AI tools promising to enable anyone in a manner that gives them some marketplace advantage.
I see now that this is not that. They claim instead to want to help amateurs and first-timers get into music for the fun of it. More power to them.
> "make a song with Johnny Cash singing about X"
That would result in IP/copyright issues, no? I don't really know the legal specifics here, so grant me some slack if I am not using the correct language. But, assuming that input does create a legal problem, does the same apply to these sort of prompts:
> "with a guitar solo by Zakk Wylde"
> "with drum fills like Thomas Stauch"
etc...
Are there similar legal protections around instruments as the voice?
Its training on musical styles gives it a lead, its vocals needs much improvement.
Its a great tool for creativity, but its a tad far from music ending up in my playlist due to vocals. For now. Instrumentals, i can totally see using it for background music in videos, themes, trailers, etc.
I could see this paradigm becoming insanely popular with indie artists to make high quality / low skill backing tracks for their vocals.
Isn't the music industry like 10x more gangster? Will guys with bats go into the Suno CEO's office and hang him by his heels over the balcony?
I wonder how it plays out.
Major acts like Taylor Swift are a lot more threatened by AI being used to generate pictures of her having sex at a Chiefs game than they are by AI creating Swift-sounding music.
Maybe this will happen with art. In any case, I'll still listen to human-generated music.
--Glass is half full department
Sure, it's not going to trend on Apple Music... but it's the best we've ever done and a genuine step above previous efforts.
EDIT: The video only claims that AI would not be able to pass a "Musical Direction Test", but a blind Turing test only on output, yes.
Making music is not just about whether a song measures up to some objective standard of goodness. It is about the process of connection and sharing between the musician and audience (which I mean in a broad way -- it could be another musician in the band). There are many amazing musical experiences that I have had that are not possible except in a live experience. My concern is that these kinds of tools will dissuade people from participating, in no small part because ai music is better than what most people can produce -- by the standards of recorded music. Why should I even try if I can't even come close to an ai?
In a worst case scenario, and I'm not saying this will happen, ai generated art (not just music) creates a doom loop where people stop making art themselves. Communities formed around participation in art wither away and we lose the ability to make art ourselves. We then become solely reliant upon ai for art, which means that art will primarily be consumed through the human -> ai interface rather than the human -> human interface. I'm not opposed to people experimenting with ai but I am worried about it replacing the human -> human interface and, frankly, the last 20 years of social media give me ample reason for those concerns.
That seems highly unlikely to be true.
I don't really want "anyone" to make music. I want people who are good at making music to make music. Yeah we should remove barriers for those people, but honestly nothing beats practice and dedication. Tech seems more and more focused on regurgitation instead of creation.
Drum machines sounds different from kits, which doesn't mean that drum machines are an inferior version of drum kits. They are different, and there's room for both.
Maybe you will never like any song with autotune in it. That's fine. But the idea of objectively "good at making music" leads to some nonsense. There's no accounting for taste.
In my opinion, the more music made, the better. There's something for everyone.
The thing is, we have already removed all of the financial/logistic barriers. Anyone who owns a laptop can setup their own little home studio with a mic + audio interface + pair of speakers for under 200 bucks. That's how I started as a kid. But as you say, you still need practice and dedication (and some talent). If you get rid of that, you essentially get rid of art.
That being said, I do remember Magix Music Maker and Acid Music from the early 2000s where you could easily create your own songs by drag&dropping loops on a timeline. Actually, that's what got me into music production as a kid. I think this kind of software can be a great starting point. The problem with Suno and Udio, IMO, is that the interface is too basic and offers very little control over the actual music.
Now, the actual problem is that people will abuse these programs to spam established distribution channels with low effort AI garbage on a massive scale. We already see this happening in other domains (digital visual art, books).
Of course, you can't expect tech companies to consider the broad effects of their products on society...
I'm starting to wonder if this stuff is actually going to make real art "hand made" by real people more valuable in some ways because it'll stand out from the mountains of auto-generated trash. Problem will be finding it.
Exactly! Looks like we will need more curation again.
I think it's already flooded with spam from non real artists. I had weekly discovery playlists, where I did downvote all of proposed songs... Each new set was still coming with most boring, uninspired, flat and predictable structure (and abstract cover art), which for me is an exact equivalent of those NFT images.
The images are designed to be a set of replaceable elements that have to follow the same "joint structure". Once you see it, all charm is lost and that vague "why does it look so funny" feeling is simply replaced with disappointment.
I had wanted to coax it to produce structured/"melodic" dark ambient music like this: https://youtu.be/2L-lA0xqzKo?si=SESlJhPjKvRyUeTm&t=614
What it came up with was not much like what I had intended. It appears to have interpreted "ambient" in the alternative way -- as in ambient café noises and background murmurs. What it produced was a conventional hazy ambient track with what seems, in a dreamlike way that's hard to grasp, like a conversation running in the background. Quite unusual! https://suno.com/song/45b23814-59e2-480e-9a2a-7c7a895b3957
I am a composer of experimental music and I can totally see how I could incorporate these AI tools into my existing art practice and use it in transformative ways. But that's not how most people - and the bad actors in particular - will use it!
This is the principle behind AI-generated SEO blogs, the content is garbage that nobody wants, but they are profitable nonetheless.