[tmountain]

I’ve been involved in one music project or another (bands, albums, solo projects, etc) for the past 25 years.

During the pandemic, a friend and I decided to make a record together. We labored over it for almost two years and finally “released it” on bandcamp to very little fanfare.

A few friends and family had nice things to say, and one random stranger reached out with positive feedback.

I get a monthly stream report from bandcamp, and it almost always says zero.

I am so pleased with this project and have such great memories of making the album that I had two lathe cut vinyl copies made (one for me, and one for my friend).

I put a big part of myself into the project and was able to convey ideas and feelings that I couldn’t express effectively via other methods.

I listen to the recording about once a year. It’s a part of me now, and I couldn’t be happier with my journey in making it.

To me, this is the purpose of the creative journey. Knowing yourself better, and enjoying all of the steps involved in arriving at what is always a surprising destination.

If someone else feels something as a result of your work, that’s a nice bonus, but not something I focus on at all.

[DrewADesign]

If you didn’t sink a career’s worth of time doing creative work professionally, then that’s a nice relationship to have with creative output. For a lot of people, AI has been one gut-punch after another with someone selling cheap knockoffs of your work in the same marketplace using your munged up work taken without credit, compensation, or permission. Mortgages not paid, cancer not treated, birthday presents not purchased for your kids, dreams dashed… and then people telling you the real purpose of creative work ends when you expect it to be anything more than a hobby.

[tmountain]

I completely agree. It makes something that was already very hard that much harder. I have a friend who played guitar in a "famous band". They made it. Meaning, they played on David Letterman and went on extensive tours, had a huge fanbase, etc. Some years back, he reached out to see if I had any leads on IT jobs. I was surprised to say the least, but his response was simple, "there's no money in it." That conversation really hammered it home that you can "make it" and still live without financial security. Fast forward to today, and the situation is even more dire given what is happening with AI.

[vintermann]

I don't think highly of AI made stuff uploaded without clear labelling as such.

But it's almost certainly not AI's fault if your mortgage is not paid, your cancer not treated or you can't pay birthday presents for your kids. Music was already extremely "cheap", and success has very little with how much or little work you put into it (extremely unlikely either way).

Let's fund art, but this business model you want to do it by is hardly worth saving.

[jamespo]

It’s not just music that is getting ripped off and what is this funding model you’re proposing? How will that help some who designs and sells a few T-shirts etc?

[vintermann]

It goes for all other art as well. I wasn't proposing a specific alternative funding model right now, but I think just about anything (even nothing) is better than extending intellectual property laws.

[DrewADesign]

A) Nobody goes into the music business from the ground up planning to support themselves selling albums, like a small business. Everybody has known for decades that doing so requires laying a ton of groundwork and for the first several years, at least, you’d be lucky to have low streaming compensation be a problem for you. Planning on any other path— persistent notoriety after going viral, being irresistibly appealing to large enough audiences to sell at least dozens of albums per week right off the bat, etc.— is like planning on winning the lottery. That’s literally the least representative market for commercial art. Even for audio!

B) There’s a universe of creative workers AI fucked over that have nothing to do with retail music sales. Concept artists, stock photographers, session musicians, copywriters, video game foley artists, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. Those were all reliable career paths until very recently. Disney chopped their concept art team to replace them with models Disney trained on their work… probably posturing to look pro-AI enough after their pathetic sora debacle. As an aside, they can go fuck themselves.

[fao_]

> AI has been one gut-punch after another with someone selling cheap knockoffs of your work in the same marketplace using your munged up work taken without credit, compensation, or permission.

I want to be clear. I am 100% on-board with AI being absolutely shit.

Buuuut, this has always been the case. Before it was scammers taking images from the web and undercutting you with prints, now it's scammers stealing your artistic style.

It sucks, but it's not a brand new problem. What makes it particularly bad now is that there's a much larger flood of it.

[paul7986]

As a hobbyist musician and songwriter of decades i was excited about AI music in October. I could finally take my rough demos of me singing along to my guitar and make better demos then just using garageband as Im not much of a singer. I enjoyed using Suno for a month or less then realize this is shit .... my own songs are AI slop just like everyone else - all sounds the same and my songwriting talents are meaningless now with anyone can now do this. I didnt listen to my slop for months then the band I play in asked to hear some slop of mine and then / there my AI slop had some redeeming quaility. As with my band (church band) and I listening and then playing along to my slop. Just slop writers can now play their slop like real musicians can........

At least not yet Im sure robots will and also an AI microphone with AI built in will be created so everyone sings amazingly.....

Overall AI is stealing humanity from us all, we are allowing it and it is only to the benefit of a few rich pie holes.

[DrewADesign]

But just think… soon we’ll be able to pay some SV company to exercise all of the creative and intellectual effort we would have had to do manually with our squishy meat thought boxes… yuck! Disgustingly inefficient. With the convenience of simulated romance, brilliance, excitement, art, music, relationships, faith, a sense of wonder, sex, human connection, joy, exploration, and everything else that manifested itself in the real world with real obstacles and pushback and negative feelings, we’ll have plenty of time to do all of the menial jobs that are left. What a win!

[jtbayly]

The legal situation is also completely different. It seems like models IP-wash, so there is nothing legally wrong with what current people are doing with ai. In contrast, the scammer selling your photo was clearly violating IP law, and you could (at least theoretically) pursue legal remedies.

[DrewADesign]

Scale makes it a completely different problem. AI has wiped out the compensation market for entire fields— like copywriting, stock photography, and concept art— practically overnight, and it happened because tech companies have conjured up a very selfish definition of “fair” in the context of fair use. (Isn’t it hilarious to see them get their knickers twisted over distillation? They can blow it straight out their assess.)

It’s comforting to think this is just an incremental change in the battle for capital-focused hyper-efficiency, but it’s absolutely not. This isn’t even the steady decline manufacturing saw over decades… it’s is like what happened to paste-up men or telephone operators but over an incomparably large swath of the creative world.

[fao_]

I'll be honest, I think that this line of "everyone creative is going to be out of work" is parroting exactly the same lies that VC are selling about genAI. At the end of the day, that's what VCs want people to think. There is, to date, basically no reason to use a generative AI system other than if you buy what the VCs are selling. And they reallllly want to sell genAI systems.

I certainly don't buy it, and IIRC only 15% of the broader workforce use genAI for their jobs. Offices are having to force people to use it, and even then people don't like it. Programming is an outlier in this regard because, it turns out, most of what we've been doing is solving the same tasks over and over again in different domains (which is what A Pattern Language was designed to solve). Most other work is not like this.

For the arts, and for most media, what humans have been craving for about a decade now is authenticity. They want a real person they can connect to, an artist whose work makes them feel seen. The artists who have recognized this with a good command of media have been growing sustainably and there's a big industry in this now. There is a certain proportion of people who like the slop, sure. But the actual fact of the matter is that the younger generations, 20 - 30yros, can smell slop from a mile away, and adding slop to advertising, to your media, to your art, actually makes it sell worse. Exactly because it is inauthentic. Talk to literally anyone in advertising whose company tried AI ads. You see an uptick among 50-60 year olds, and a massive, massive downturn among 16 - 30 yros.

From a media executive standpoint, most of the media properties that are inauthentic have been failing massively, with a handful of them able to turn a quick buck before they fail. Execs are verrrry slowly learning the fact that media produced for a very quick ROI and for the branding and marketing potential tend to fizzle out quickly, whereas passion projects are sustainable income, a well you can keep going back to. Whether or not they value that well as much as independent creatives do... ehhhh.

For programming, there's not much to stop people from using the stuff because barely any higher-up supports "building bridges safely". What executives want from programming is a quick ROI, they don't even care if customers complain. So what I forsee for programmers is that the field is going to be gradually flooded with people using genAI. This will drive the cost of our labour downwards, while people are expected to give 10x or 20x the output that they did 5 years ago "because AI makes them fast". This turns every job into a rush job which makes the software system as a whole much less stable. I forsee a number of Horizon IT level problems in the next 10 years. But by then, programming will be much more on the level of a truck job where you have to piss in a bottle and keep driving, or a sales call job where your manager will pull you up if you're 5% under par. Just remember, everyone jumping on the AI train did this to our field.

But, it's not inevitable. It's only inevitable if we all keep shouting that the AI bros have won, from the rooftops. That's the hype keeping this bubble alive. The entire AI bubble currently rests on marketing, and the first step in bursting that bubble is to simply not believe the lies that you are being sold.

I'm a little off being thirty years old. I've played musical instruments of my own accord since I was 3 years old learning violin in an orchestra. I did folk music through my teens. I know about 5+ instruments and I've gigged at pubs, fields, parks, events, and a wedding. I have never touched genAI for music, and I really do not need to. I've listened to the output of genAI for music. It's samey, repetitive, and bland. "Slop" is a very good descriptor. Frankly I can't see a single reason why I would want to destroy my entire creative process and have it output by a black box. Why would I contract someone else to play my own music, let alone a machine?! Baffling. Most of the people around my own age are getting super into vinyl and cassettes and records because they like the fact that you can hold something in your hands. Because they like connecting to an artist. AI slop does not give them that, cannot give them that, and artists who think that the AI slop is better than them are a) obviously not very good in the first place, b) foregoing their own personal development as an artist in service of chasing trends. Trend chasers have never lasted long in creative work, and honestly, they're selecting themselves out of the pool. They're selecting for an audience who no more likes their work than the work of any other sloptist. You can't see me but I'm giving a biiiiig fucking shrug right now, like the jurassic park guy. Nobody cares about sloptists, sloppers, soupies. They don't care about the art, they only care about the profit, and people can smell that a mile off.

"You need to learn that the product of your writing is yourself. You are the artwork. The time you spend writing will change you, it will make your better at expressing yourself. You'll have a wonderful time, but you'll also grow as a person, you'll become more empathetic. The product of your writing is you. You are the artwork." - Brandon Sanderton

https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkx9ldrFvp0RO1HNyPg8Xafh0NYlC2...

[PearlRiver]

One part of being an artist is that you are a clown who entertains people. You cannot just make music you have to be out there being outrageous and weird.

This is exactly what all the successful ones do. No AI can go on television and sing songs about how great Hitler was.

[DrewADesign]

Becoming successful enough to be on TV (or get a ton of views on media sites) is so uncommon that it’s pointless to use as a comparison for any common career path in the creative world.

And I’m speaking more broadly than music— it’s much worse in other fields. Most commercial art does not involve being an entertainer.

[johnvanommen]

> To me, this is the purpose of the creative journey. Knowing yourself better, and enjoying all of the steps involved in arriving at what is always a surprising destination.

That's EXACTLY how I used to feel about creativity. I was an art major who didn't make it, and I found that expressing myself via my hobbies was good for the soul.

Then I almost died and completely lost interest in making art!

Facing my own mortality, I realized that the time I invest into my wife, kids and family will have a larger positive contribution on the world, I think.

I know that sounds like a Hallmark Card.

At the same time, I've often wondered what my life would look like if I appreciated my family MORE and my hobbies LESS when I was younger.

[tmountain]

I can relate here. I have son, who is now 3.5 years old. I haven't had the time or energy to produce any "finished work" since he's been born, and that marks a lull after 25 years of steady output. I don't feel sad or disappointed about this in the slightest. As my wife likes to say, "it's the season we're in." That said, I do really enjoy chaotic jam sessions with my son, as he's very interested in banging on his little drum set, so in some ways, it's just a new beginning. There's no better investment than time with our children.

[HerbManic]

I feel a part of this is that in any creative endeavor, you can never exactly capture what you want and thus have to leave something out. There are those that try to get it perfect, they never finish.

Nothing wrong with prioritizing family over art, that's pretty rad! But occasionally you can still do art, just don't be to serious about it. All my paintings are objectively rubbish, but heck I like them and didn't put a huge amount of time into them.

[johnvanommen]

> Nothing wrong with prioritizing family over art, that's pretty rad! But occasionally you can still do art, just don't be to serious about it. All my paintings are objectively rubbish, but heck I like them and didn't put a huge amount of time into them.

That's basically where I landed. The idea being that making art is something I should do if I'm just trying to relax. Once the hobby starts looking like a second job, I know it's too much.

[ED_Radish]

Not a near death experience but similarish. Im trans and from a conservative religious family, so I planned to cut them off and eventually did..

Throughout my teens and young adulthood I immersed myself really deep into drawing and writing. But as my own life has started to form around me, I got a partner who I might have kids with, friends I care about. Ive slowly come to your pov too, and Im wishing I spent less time doing art in the past

[anoojb]

I've been asking myself this question in the last year:

> Why do I want to make music?

I picked a basic DJ controller and a midi controller bundled with Ableton. I'm a novice, but I love listening to music and dissecting what makes a good performance. I crave that feeling of getting chills when I find something new that moves me in new ways. This set was a pretty recent example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfF8jzBVWvM

That being said, the world is increasingly crowded with "good enough" music.

I resolved early on that I was never going to make a money doing this, which simplified things greatly. There's a primal part of our brain that craves adoration. I do wish for others to adore my music. Even if it's a handful of people. I do wish to perform publicly one day, even if it's at a park for passersby.

Mostly I just want something to move my brain in different ways. I want to create something beautiful.

[brewdad]

>> That being said, the world is increasingly crowded with "good enough" music.

As I enter my mid-50s this is how I feel about the music I listen to. I have decades and decades of music I love for a variety of reasons. I don’t have time for “discovery” anymore. If I get introduced to a new band by someone I know or algorithmically, that’s great but I’m not going to spend hours trying to find the next great thing when I have so much I enjoy already.

[cyclopeanutopia]

Please share your bandcamp page!

[tmountain]

https://huggyboy.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-wilds

[prawn]

I think it's great stuff. If you haven't already, build a website for the band or album and leave it up as a static tribute. If it's not something that brings riches, maybe it's a contribution to the world.

And do what you can to do what AI music makers wouldn't think to do - differentiate with photos of yourselves, the process, the wilds, etc. You've done all the hard work writing and recording the music, so you might as well embellish its place in the world, and the places it's about.

[traeregan]

I'm only halfway through listening but this is a rad album! Thank you for sharing.

[tmountain]

Thanks to all of you for the positive feeedback! I'm happy to hear that the project landed with you.

[ajxs]

This isn't the kind of music I'd normally listen to, but I'm enjoying your album! Very well produced. I bought a copy. Thanks for sharing!

[pinkmuffinere]

Personally I feel this would qualify for a showHN, if the spirit leads! No pressure, but this is really cool and I’d love to more things like this

[rayshan]

I like it! Loved hearing about your journey.

[johannessjoberg]

It sounds great man! Thanks for sharing both the story and the album.

[jryan49]

It's really good!

[wazHFsRy]

Thanks for sharing.

[bix6]

Epic

[mettamage]

I'm curious too now

[rozhok]

Marketing your album is a different kind of work. Thats why labels and whole distribution industry exist in a first place. Bandcamp is not a streaming platform, so you naturally wont get organic listeners here.

Good album, by the way.

[mega_dean]

I had a very similar experience releasing a video game. Barely anybody downloaded it because I didn’t put any effort into marketing/promoting, but “I couldn’t be happier with my journey in making it”. I have replayed it a few times and it makes me unreasonably happy (although I’m taking a break now because I want to forget where everything is on the map).

[tmountain]

Care to share the link? I'd like to take a look.

[Projectiboga]

It isn't in your profile. Why not post it there or here?

[croon]

I'm happy they shared it on a further request, but I feel not having it in GP or profile is consistent with and further strengthens what they wrote in the post.

[rgreasons]

Mind sharing where you went for your lathe cuts (assuming you are happy with how they turned out/sound)?

[WalterBright]

The reality is, essentially nobody makes money by creating music. Taylor Swift, you might say, is a billionaire. Is it from selling music? Nope, it's from selling tickets to her shows. People want to see her perform live. A Taylor Swift impersonator would make no money singing the same songs. A cover band wouldn't do any better.

It's the same with authoring books. Almost nobody makes any significant money off of them. It's so paltry I don't really understand why authors are so concerned about copyright infringement.

People steal my copyrighted stuff all the time. I long ago stopped caring about it. But I do very much like Github as it protects me from others accusing me of stealing their code.

If you want to make money, you'll need a plan that does not require copyright protection.

[kiba]

I care more about attribution than copyright infringement.

[WalterBright]

So do I. At least Sid Meyer did that!

[saghm]

> Taylor Swift, you might say, is a billionaire. Is it from selling music? Nope, it's from selling tickets to her shows. People want to see her perform live.

People want to see her performing...her music. She would not make nearly as much money by going up on stage and sitting quietly for a few hours.

It's also worth nothing that she literally re-recorded several of her albums due to someone else getting the rights to them instead of selling them to her, and the proportion of streams and sales they got compared to the original versions was so high that it effectively forced the person who had bought them from the previous owner to sell them to her in the end anyways.

I don't necessarily disagree with the larger point you're trying to make, but saying that she doesn't make her money from selling her music doesn't really seem accurate.

[WalterBright]

I'm sure she makes some money selling the music, but the big bucks are from filling a stadium with people paying insane prices to hear/watch her perform.

There have been many stories on HN over the years on rock bands making a pittance from record sales and having to tour to make any decent money.

[PearlRiver]

Taylor Swift is an interesting personality.

So many people can probably reach her level of music but have the charisma of a door nail.