AI Music, simply explained (feat. Grimes and Spotify's CEO)

What’s more profitable? Paying artists royalties? Or having an AI generate millions of new songs for your platform that you own? Suddenly you’re paying royalties to yourself, Spotify!

The biggest problem I see with AI in any creative space is not that it can make things, but the amount of that thing it can create, an AI can create thousands of songs in the time it takes a human to write and record one and out-compete humans just through sheer volume, burying human work under piles of AI stuff and making it undiscoverable, even things like tags etc that might be used to highlight human-made work only work as long as those uploading AI-produced work are being honest. With how easily recorded works can be produced by AI now, we might see a return to how musicians got their fame and money before recording was widely available, performance, before AI comes for that too.

All previously invented technologies have been tools for artists to use. AI is the first tool to be able to replace the artist themself.

Interesting how artists were called overdramatic for reacting to the AI apocalypse but when it's affecting other fields of art suddenly everyone takes it seriously. Just find that interesting

Pretty sure everyone agrees composers/songwriters/artists/producers do NOT get fairly compensated. Yeah, not even Prince, Michael Jackson or Taylor Swift (to give three well know examples of record label disputes). So what makes us think that if we throw a very complex and non human variable to this equation, all of the sudden all these humans will be paid fairly? Not gonna happen.

I find it curious that you are using the CEO of spotify to talk about compensating artists properly with Ai stuff, when spotify themselves is one of the worst offenders for compensating artists in general.

I’m a musician, and I definitely do fear this topic. AI can be an incredible tool for filling in the gaps in like mixing and mastering (like LANDR), but what makes a musician is not only creativity but skill as well. Dedicating hours to training ur body to play an instrument, sing, learn your DAW, learning composition, etc. are all part of the journey of being a musician. I already kind of have this stance with sampling. I hear some amazing and creative uses of samples (I use them myself, as does practically everyone), but the average “beat maker” truly feels like a talentless hack. I’ve watched ppl just put a beautiful sounding loop in with some basic 808 pattern and call themselves talented with no understanding of why that sample sounds good to begin with. Letting AI make lyrics, make ur melodies, etc., it all just seems like a mask for ppl with no skill or dedication to pretend to be skilled. Ik I m probably sound elitist or gatekeeping but it’s just my perspective given my experience.

Having a discussion about the artists getting paid, featuring the CEO of Spotify, but not talking about how much artists are actually getting paid for their work is wild.

Cleo went all out with this video. Great job not letting the embarrassment get in the way 😊

Spotify's endgame would be to have a recommendation type algo feed the AI and serve you music, and cut the artists out of the picture. For the human expression part they would hire some actors or use generative AI for videos - all payrolled by Spotify, and all rights belonging to them. Great video!

What makes art amazing to me is the amount of time it takes an artist to perfect a skill, the human error, the whole process. It looses value if something generates perfection every time in my opinion. Being human is fun and full of mistakes and lack of perfect.. AI for creativity is a buzzkill for those who have trained for years just so people who haven’t trained a skill can seem just as competent in that area.

Can we take a second to appreciate how great the graphics in these videos are? They aid in our understand of complex topics and I had to remind myself that I'm watching an independent YouTube channel!

I've worked in various creative, copyright-aware fields since the early 80s. Depending on my age, I might have different opinions about this, but as of now, I view it as another tool and, potentially a collaborator in the future. Think back to the classical scribes -- how would they view a word processor or text generator? A tool to relieve their calligraphic burden or as a usurper taking their creative and financial raison d'art from them? Humans are adaptable. Change is rarely undone and reset, we just change ourselves...or our children and grandchildren do. Music, writing, art, language, technology...it's really all part of the same conveyor of building on what came before to leave our legacy lest we stagnate into robotic mediocrity.

That animation showing how an AI generator could come up with a million tracks and then plot a path to ‘success’ was chilling. The amount of dreck that’s going to be produced is going to be mindblowing.

I found your report to be very inspiring. The cuts were clean, and the changes in the background music kept my attention. I liked the way you weaved in the affiliate link and the request to subscribe at the end. I also loved how you introduced the hook for "watch more". Your subscriber count is a testament to your efforts. I am interested in learning more about your process, as my focus is now on my channel services both offline and online. I really appreciated the way you organized the description, even down to Tuba. At first, I thought you were only promoting one affiliate link, but upon reading further, I saw that you had separated them. You put the primary link at the top, and the others were listed below. If I incorporate the things I'm learning from you, do I have to pay you royalties?

I prefer raw music, raw human emotion.

I'm interested in your creativity - technical skills point. Mostly in the past it has been the constraints that have ignited the creativity. If AI removes constraints, do we lose some creativity? There will always be some constraints but I think this is an interesting topic on its own, not just in the music realm.

Props to the editor of the episode. It's absolutely beautiful, such a good composition.

I feel like having a fully AI artist would be a whole separate job (maybe paying the ones behind the AI, or having a new version of royalty-free music, or having this music personal for only you and your friends/family)

Important to point out recent legislation has established AI-generated content can’t be copyrighted. That means if you use AI to write the lyrics and music of a song, the publishing rights will be in public domain and anyone can cover the song without paying royalties. If you use AI for the voice and lyrics, the mechanical rights will be in public domain and anyone could distribute, sell, play or sample the song without paying royalties. That means if you upload the song to Spotify, they can make money off it without paying you.