[muzani]

They're different impulses. Some want to consume. Others want to create.

TikTok and social media is a strange mix of both, people posting response videos to everything.

Personally, I've stopped subscribing to Spotify, YT music, etc because the slop from Suno is good enough to replace mainstream music or whatever lofi playlist. It's free, it's good enough, and it's not grating to hear after a few days of that favorite song.

The video slop can well replace TikTok and Reels. Make educational content about your hometown. Explain how to throw an uppercut.

But I guess the desire to create something that others would consume is also different from the desire to simply create.

[hansmayer]

Sweet Jesus. You realise this is the mental equivalent of stuffing your stomach full of junkfood and soda every day?

[muzani]

This is a mainstream break up song: https://youtu.be/ekzHIouo8Q4

This is a vocaloid break up song: https://youtu.be/9pQR4a5sisE

The first isn't bad by any means. There's a million break up songs and that's one of the best sad ones. Most are just... angry? Blaming? Empowering? They work fine. They sell records. Many have have a billion views.

But the second one, even with the clunky translation, strikes somewhere deeper. It's written by someone who had enough time ruminating on a break up. The ending hits a little harder, because break up songs are about endings.

Both are sincere, but the first feels more formulaic. I'm inclined to think the first one is the soda.

I feel Suno leans towards this group of songwriters and poets who have something to say. Sora doesn't.

[pesus]

Vocaloids are hardly similar to fully AI-generated songs. Vocaloids are still human controlled.

[q7m]

And also that VOCALOID uses "traditional" signal processing techniques as opposed to generative deep learning techniques.

[weirdmantis69]

As opposed to the kardashians and real house wives and Chappell Roan?

[hansmayer]

No, the whole horseshit belongs together of course. Just that the AI slop is the logical culmination of the dumbed down pop-culture of the last 15ish years or so.

[noelsusman]

That doesn't sound meaningfully different from what people are already doing on Instagram and TikTok all day.

[hansmayer]

Absolutely correct and my comment is by no means dedicated just strictly to the AI slop.

[neutronicus]

For a lot of people music is a focus aid, not the object of contemplation.

[camillomiller]

Some want to consume... content that they don't think they could do in one minute themselves. They want to consume content made by other humans, even if it's still brain-eating algorithmic fodder, but still. Sora proved it quite clearly. These clips had ZERO value.

[jaapz]

> Personally, I've stopped subscribing to Spotify, YT music, etc because the slop from Suno is good enough to replace mainstream music or whatever lofi playlist.

The musician in me just shed a tear

[whaleofatw2022]

Pink Beatles, in a purple Zeppelin comes to mind

[Geedis]

Had to create an account just to let you know that someone out there got the reference.

[seedboot]

That comment for sure made me sad

[NickC25]

I occasionally use Suno to re-imagine songs in different keys, tempos, and genres, and sample them. Most of the output from Suno is slop, but occasionally has a few good bits you can sample, chop up, re-pitch, and create something totally new from, which also has the added benefit of being unrecognizable to rights algorithms and lawyers from major labels.

It's a neat tool for genuine creators, and a crutch for people interested in slop.

[criley2]

Modern music has done this to itself. When the human product is already pure corporate slop, it's not hard for AI to compete.

Hopefully AI outcompeting humans at slop sparks a renaissance of humans creating truly beautiful human artwork. And if it doesn't, then was anything of value truly lost?

[BigTTYGothGF]

> Modern music has done this to itself

I get my modern music from Bandcamp. If you can't find good stuff to listen to, that's a 'you' problem.

[criley2]

How much of your super-awesome bandcamp music is topping charts, selling millions, packing mega stadiums, and is penetrating the zeitgeist so deeply that people around the world are addicted to it?

Maybe, just maybe, I'm not talking about "my" music tastes, but offering commentary on the state of music at a global scale. Weird that this point was so hard to follow!

[animuchan]

So true. AI music gens like Suno can't do Paul Shapera works even remotely, but can recreate a lot of pop or EDM music very faithfully. There's just no distance to close, it's already mainstreamly bad.

[azan_]

> Modern music has done this to itself. When the human product is already pure corporate slop, it's not hard for AI to compete.

What are you talking about? There’s lots of modern music that’s not corporate slop and that’s absolutely great. Never in history was access to great music as easy as it is now.

[criley2]

I'm talking about modern music. Just because a couple of dweebs on hackernews have "totally amazing underground music" doesn't mean the overall zeitgeist agrees. Regardless of your esoteric music tastes, music by sales and music by charting tells a very different story. And that story is one of replaceable slop.

[voidUpdate]

So find music you like that isn't modern corporate slop. My music right now consists mainly of indie stuff I've found on youtube and daft punk. No plagiarism machine needed, just human-made music

[muzani]

"No plagiarism machine needed, just human-made music"

From wikipedia: Many Daft Punk songs feature vocals processed with effects and vocoders including Auto-Tune, a Roland SVC-350 and the Digitech Vocalist. Bangalter said: "A lot of people complain about musicians using Auto-Tune. It reminds me of the late '70s when musicians in France tried to ban the synthesiser. They said it was taking jobs away from musicians. What they didn't see was that you could use those tools in a new way instead of just for replacing the instruments that came before. People are often afraid of things that sound new."

[voidUpdate]

Did Daft Punk put in a lot of effort to remix existing sounds to make their own music? Yes. Did they type "pls make french house electronic music number 1 chart" into a text box? No. Did they also credit original authors? Yes. I've not gone through their whole library, but for example, Edwin Birdsong has songwriting credit for harder, better, faster, stronger

[criley2]

There's this fallacy with AI generation that people think that all you have to do is type "i lik musik pls remake favrite song but better" and you get amazing results.

This is patently untrue.

It's like how if a junior engineer and a principal engineer use claude opus 4.6 they get radically different results. The junior doesn't have the taste or knowledge to know good from bad so the AI oversteers and slop is made. The principal has finely tuned sense of taste and deep knowledge, so they aggressively steer the AI at every step. This is also true in other AI domains.

To be absolutely clear: you can't make good AI music. Try all you want. Try the prompt you just wrote. Show and tell. It's not something you're going to be able to do.

[bojan]

> The video slop can well replace TikTok and Reels. Make educational content about your hometown. Explain how to throw an uppercut.

There is a fundamental issue of trust here. Facebook has me tagged as history nerd so I get to see those slop videos. They are fun, but always superficial and often plainly wrong. So unless the slop comes from a known, trustworthy source, the educational element is simply not there.

For throwing an uppercut it's even more important, if you follow wrong slop instructions you can end up breaking your wrist or fingers.

[delta_p_delta_x]

> the slop from Suno is good enough to replace mainstream music

I wonder what OP categorises as 'mainstream'. As a classical musician this breaks my heart.

[muzani]

Many of the things on a top #100 list for the last few decades. That includes plenty of "indies" as well as pop.

There are exceptions though. FUKOUNA GIRL by STOMACH BOOK, for example. AI can't come close to replicating something like this. Not the cover art, not the off-key voices, not the relatable part of the lyrics. I don't believe this is a top #100 song, though it certainly is popular.

[delian66]

It is chaotic crap.

[code_for_monkey]

you could not waterboard an admission of bad taste like this out of me

[mlrtime]

How do you get Suno songs for free? You listen to others or make your own?

[animuchan]

Almost nobody listens to others' songs on Suno, that's the entire point.

You wouldn't care to order the food as I personally like it -- might be too spicy (or too bland) for your taste.

Suno songs are overtuned for personal preference in the same way.

[mlrtime]

I get that, but you have to pay to create your own.

And on the second part, I somewhat disagree. I mean, yes everyone has a personal preference, but if you bucket all those personal preferences they all fit nicely together (In many buckets).

[animuchan]

A fairly narrow buckets, sure.

I think the point of Suno is to make you not search for your specific thing though, and instead produce your own. Searching for niche music has always been a thing. If our goal is to listen for free, we don't care about Suno (or any other way to make music) one bit, it's just another DAW for those making music.

And AI music in general sure has its fans, check out Only Fire for example.

[muzani]

They have a discover section for songs made public.

[wartywhoa23]

I'm with you here, resonates so much. I'm so fed up with endless subway tunnels, they all look and sound utterly same and boring.

So I quit riding the overpriced subway altogether and now consume AI-generated subway imagery and soundscapes for free, they are just good enough to feed my passion for boring tunels.

Some ego-bloated edgelords had nerve to tell me that there are, like, other modes of transportation, but I honestly find their high-horse elitism despicable.. Damn morons.