[Akuehne]

With the majority of popular music decided by a handful of people in LA, Nashville, or New York, let me ask one question: is this actually a bad thing?

Hear me out. Most of what's on the radio could have been made by AI already and no one would've noticed the difference.

To be clear, I'm not talking about legitimate artists doing something original or authentic. I'm talking about the execs who find performers to sing and dance over their perfectly manufactured hit single. Songs made by people like Max Martin, who aren't trying to express anything beyond their knowledge of which combination of notes has the highest ROI. No disrespect to Max, he's incredibly talented at what he does. But now the execs have the data, and they don't need the Max Martins, Diane Warrens, or Carole Kings anymore. They can plug in the numbers and out comes a perfect song for their next artist.

So let's embrace the new AI pop. Let it dethrone the kings who've shaped the sound of pop culture for too long.

Real art always seems to find its fans eventually, and I don't think AI will stop that. Yet. When a model writes a song that lingers the way "Linger" does, maybe it will. But at that point, if the music really is that good, does it matter?

[gbanfalvi]

> Real art always seems to find its fans eventually, and I don't think AI will stop that.

That's what's happening though. Someone is writing a prompt, generating some slop and then directing bots to collect money that will never make it to real artists.

If they were getting too small of a slice before, now it's even smaller.

> But at that point, if the music really is that good, does it matter?

We're very far from "that point". The point we're at right now, which we need to tackle is the one in which we're drowning in slop.

I'm not personally against using AI tools to write code or help someone generate music, but right now it just impedes, devalues and deplatforms the real stuff to make money from a system that hasn't caught up.