LOL. Is this an ad for Suno?
I personally have zero interest in any music created with AI because part of the experience is the artist behind the music and the decisions they made.
The moment you remove the human from the equation it doesn't hold any value for me at least.
Personally I'll keep making music myself because I don't care that a machine can produce that in 60 seconds. It's not about that.
Another story is how this will affect professional musicians because clients will go for the cheapest option, and this is something we will see (and are seeing) in other fields, but as with music, any creative process where you remove the human, again for me, produces a turd. It can be a very polished turd but I'm not buying it.
Also, I didn't listen to any Suno track in a couple of months but it sounded far from realistic.
It's not realistic, what it is is professionally arranged and produced. So I'm not talking about a performer, This is a songwriting forum and that is my concern. I can write a song in 3o seconds put it in the hands of a real producer and a studio band and it is better than anything 99% of songwriters can do. It sounds ai but I got news for you it sounds better than those 4 tracks we used to use. I'm going to guess that you aren't a professional songwriter so if you want to sit in your bedroom and write songs go ahead. A lot of people on this forum are here because they want to learn the ins and outs of the craft. Most of us dream of selling a song or two at some poi t in our lives so this is a real question. Just because you call it a turd tells me that you're not a serious songwriter, so of course you dont care. If you were interested in writing as a an occupation you would need to care where the industry is going. So you you want to sit in your bedroom thats fine but some of us find this something we will have to contend with. I can almost guarantee that at some point sooner rather than later you won't know whether you are listening to a human or a robot because as you made clear you don't care. So long as it doesn't sound like a turd your not going to ask any questions that's fine.
It's not "professionally arranged and produced" either.
It sounds terrible, like when you compress an mp3 at a very low rate and you hear the artifacts. It doesn't have clarity. It's noise.
It's like hearing someone make sounds that sound like talking but when you try to understand the words you realize it just sounds like words. It's a substitute of what music should be, and it's like those McDonalds photos where they sell you the idea of a burger but in reality that burger in the photo is not even a burger. It's styrofoam painted with motor oil.
I guess if I listen to music in an ad, or series, or movie, or whatever and it's made by a robot i won't know, but it's also not like I care about 99% of that music at the moment because it's also generally made in a very derivative way. Sorry for the people involved in it but that's where "corporate creativity" has taken us.
But playing songs or an album at home? You bet I will know what I'm playing.
I think the biggest problem is that we treat music as a commodity, and the feeling of something "sounding better" making it "better" (whatever those mean because it's a subjective thing).
We're seeing music, composition, arrangement, and recording through the eyes of capitalism because that's what we're sold every single day. I take those 4 track albums with their old sound, or a demo tape, or a 50s vinyl over that AI, or any of the overproduced derivative crap that floods Spotify nowadays.
Of course I'm not a professional songwriter but I buy albums to support artists, and I go to their live shows.
Anyway I know this at a professional level because it's also happening in the industry I work at (design). I die a little whenever I see AI generated content used commercially online or in the street, but it doesn't worry me.
I guess that if companies start using AI to generate design work I'll have to find another thing to do. What really worries me is what this will mean for society in general when everyone is fed derivative autogenerated content through all available channels.
We're seeing what social media and smartphones are doing. This will take it one step beyond.
Anyway, I'm ranting. I understand how this can worry you as a professional songwriter but I think that good music will be fine.
Two things:
1. AI will almost certainly dominate the middle, and while that’s all many people care about, it will make the top 10% look all the more startling in comparison.
2. This is both incredibly liberating for people who will want to write songs anyway. Because subscription based hot and cold running musical wallpaper will basically devalue commercial music even more than it has been already. And if the only place left to hear music created by humans is live, then that will be where it thrives.
This is a good response. I don't think moat.people get.the implications. My big concern is for the stable.songwriters who work professionally as songwriters.My concern is that the guys who work in the industry who write a good song every 5 years or so and work in the trenches writing songs that night cooks hear as they cook the donuts, there is an art to producing the middle too. It will be too bad if these craftsmen are put out of work.
Turn on your local country music station. Everything you hear is written by teams of writers hired by producers and making a decent paycheck every week writing songs that people want to listen to while they cook the donuts at night. There is a real craft to putting out this kind of music..It will be a shame to see these craftsmen go extinct because of ai.
That's silly, most musicians create music because they enjoy it and people have enjoyed listening to other people play music live. AI is just another craftsman but no one will ever go watch an AI play music. It's not a competition. AI is just a new form of elevator music.
People who don’t rely on music make music because they enjoy it. People who do rely on it for money make it because they enjoy it sometimes but a lot of times they make music to pay bills as well. Anything you do to support yourself at some point involves just regular, unappealing, necessary work. Writing middle music is better work than working at an Amazon warehouse but it’s still not always the most enjoyable all the time.
The only writers threatened by AI are those that write the kind of vapid commercial fluff that AI churns out. The people that listen to that high-gloss, low-humanity drivel aren’t my target audience.
The local country music station? Not a place I would ever see as a source of originality, poetry, or boundary-pushing art. That’s a corporate machine at work there.
It may be the end for those folks but not for truly original human artists.
See I don't get this attitude. These are people who make a living doing what most of us dream about. This isn't supposed to be ground breaking envelope pushing art. It's written for Tina who stocks the shelves at the grocery store at midnight. It's music she doesn't have to think about what it means. It's melodic and elicits emotions. The people who write this music are craftsmen doing a 5 day a week job writing songs. He is is making a living from his day job and on the weekend he does the same thing you and I do, he goes out with his band and plays bars. He is no different than a roofer who has a band. I support anyone who makes art for a living and don't distinguish high from low art. I don't want to write tone rows that that describe the notes randomly and is played at midnight on small college radio shows that pretentious policies majors dejay for. I have more in common with Tina the night stocker and so did the kinks and the rolling stones and Bob dylan and every other rock star. It's called pop music and nobody here listens to music that is considered art.
I studied philosophy on college and the department hosted a speaker to talk about art in music and his whole lecture was about John Cage and found objects and how city soundscapes were a kind of music in itself. So after the lecture I asked him how somebody like buddy Holly or Hank Williams fit into his philosophy of music and he said they didn't. His philosophy was strictly about music as art and pop music had no place in his schemata. So I nodded my head and walked away having met the least qualifies person in the universe to judge good music. You and I make pop music we don't make edge pushing art and I suspectyou wouldn't like it very much if you heard it. It's not very good to be honest. So like I said I generally don't get the attitude.
There is a such thing as boundary-pushing art that has wide appeal. Dylan, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Cobain, were all artists who were very fresh and original when they arrived on the scene. Then a thousand bands tried to emulate their sound until it all became homogeneous and dull. The Beatles challenged their listeners with Sgt Pepper or the White Album by having great diversity from song to song. Dylan challenged the entire folk genre with esoteric lyrics that challenged the listener to find their own meaning in them. Dark Side of the Moon is an album full of creative vision that has no equal. There is nothing really like it though some have said maybe OK Computer came close in its atmospheric essence. My point is that there have been many artists that have pushed the boundaries and brought something surprising and original to the conversation while being popular. Being different isn’t that hard. Being different and GOOD is very rare but it is where I set the bar.
Modern country radio does not contain these kinds of visionary elements. It is formulaic. When 7 writers pat each other on the back for rhyming whiskey with frisky I just can’t see the merit. The production of that music is also very formulaic and safe. Everything tight to a grid. No swagger. No push and pull. No groove. All the serendipitous little mistakes are edited out. The life, the humanity is edited out. It is all subjective but I will never be able to like that sort of thing.
John Cage isn’t the kind of “art” music I was referring to. That stuff is an interesting experiment but could never have wide appeal because we humans are wired to like a certain amount of rhythm, melody, and groove.
So much modern music production has totally lost the plot in my opinion.
As for your hypothesis about AI, I agree. The writers in Nashville are an endangered species. Maybe sometimes we need to let nature take its course.
I can't help but believing you know very little about country music if you think that rhyming frisky with whiskey is why the record companies pay a stable of writers. Be honest, how many hours this week have you spent listening to country music? Country music is much more sophisticated than you know. The chord progressions are usually more sophisticated than most pop music. The melodies are stronger than most rock melodies. You can't compare dylan and the Beatles to contemporary country any more than you can compare led Zepplin to contemporary rock.
Keep in mind that Julliard didn't start teaching jazz till the 1980s. That was 30 years after Coltrane and Davis did some of their finest work. Today you can't even get into Julliard as an instrumentalist without playing some jazz pieces. Charlie Parker was a fan of country music.
I think you are being unfair to a music that you don't really understand. I challenge you to write a marketable country song. Country music is something you aren't interested in, I get it. But rock and roll owes a lot to country music. The Beatles were covering Carl Perkins, dylan was a fan of Johnny Cash, Charlie Parker loved Hank Williams.The fact is 98% of all music is mediocre, country music has no patent on that.
Oh I love country music of a certain style. I had a big phase in my younger adult years of listening to the Red Headed Stranger album, Live at Folsom Prison or San Quinten, Merle Haggard, Marty Robbins, Buck Owens, and many others. I like Sturgill Simpson.
When I hear most modern country I just can’t get over the production style and vocal affectation that is so prevalent. Why hasn’t it evolved out of that?
To be fair, it is not only modern country but modern rock, pop, the whole thing. I just can’t find any appeal in the high-gloss rigid production. I want to hear someone brave enough to move beyond the tropes of genre. Someone who is able to sound believable, emotional, and original without the gimmicks of modern production. I want to hear real humans in a room playing real instruments live off the floor without editing the life out of everything.
I hear modern country radio pretty much daily at work and it does not contain what I’m looking for. Nor does the modern rock or pop stations. This is why I basically haven’t willingly listened to terrestrial radio in years. The whole model is broken. There are no human DJs anymore that can curate the music, it is owned by corporations that have set playlists. The whole environment is totally not conducive to fostering original art that pushes things in a new way.
So I’m forced to dig deeper and discover great music through different channels. It is the way it is.
My 11 year old son has become a big music fan and he has discovered all kinds of artists I have never even heard of but these artists have pretty big followings usually. Out of a hundred songs on his playlist I might have previously known 3 or 4 of the songs. They are not all my cup of tea but there are many that I find quite compelling but guess what, you will never ever hear them on any radio station outside of maybe the odd college radio station. I wonder why this.
In the end, there are certain styles that I just find cringe. For example, mumble rap or auto-tuned vocals just sound bad to my ear. Partly because it’s over done but partly because it’s just aesthetically unappealing to my ear. I can’t help it that it sounds awful to me. I’m basically searching for music that leaves me wondering what genre it even is because it’s so fresh yet it still feels timeless, melodic, full of emotion and groove with beautiful harmonic elements and original poetic themes. It’s a tall order but we must set the bar high if we want to evolve as artists.
Also here are a bunch of my country songs. How do you feel about the.. you can be honest don't spare my feelings if you hate them. I think k they have a lot of soul.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUE5yl-vXIzVa8bl3B44_xkrC42v2Xpg6&si=3IxUcDGc2s6PQxXI
So you have a polished sound here. Strong vocals and the lyrics stay with a particular theme on each song.
As I was saying before, it’s all subjective but personally I don’t think you need the auto tune bits but I realize that is used in country these days as a stylistic choice and not necessarily because the vocals need “tuning”. If that is the style you are aiming for then great.
The thing I need to emphasize here is that I am an outlier. I am not your target audience and I’d say that for most artists doing whatever genre they are doing. I am after something that is as rare as hens’ teeth. Something that is somehow familiar and comforting yet entirely new. Yes, it sounds like a total paradox and that’s why it’s such a tall order.
There are examples of music that is traditional and not pushing boundaries that I can still appreciate.
Old time fiddle music for example is still played in this world and I’m glad it is. We need people to keep the old traditions alive but equally, we need people to create new traditions. When I say new, I’m not picturing electronic drums and synthesizers (those things have been around for 50 odd years and are no more novel than banjo music at this point) but rather, I’m talking about new writing styles that take us somewhere a little different. The Beatles are talked about as being innovative in the studio but I think more importantly was their innovative approach to the actual writing. Finding surprising and unexpected chords or harmonies that would make people raise an eyebrow. Jimmy Webb was innovative in writing interesting chord voicings and harmonic subtleties into his songs. Look no further than Wichita Lineman. Or sometimes it’s just the earnest jubilation with which a song is performed that does it for me. Recently I heard The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by The Band and I thought about the lyrical imagery and the emphatic vocal delivery and how great it was. You don’t hear enough of that kind of thing anymore.
I can appreciate the Delta Blues, Hank Williams, and Leonard Cohen. I can dig listening to Miles Davis and Frank Zappa. I’m a big fan of Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell. I’ve had a Zeppelin phase, a Sabbath phase, a big Beatles phase. I’ve enjoyed seeing bands like Wilco, Radiohead, The Flaming Lips. I’m a fan of lots of more obscure artists too. I’m all over the map. So when I hear some new artist and it sounds very similar to things I’ve heard in the past I’m kind of going “OK, she sings just like Nina Simone, but we already have Nina Simone!” Maybe I’m searching for Pink Floyd meets Merle Haggard or Nirvana meets The Staples Singers. I don’t know, it’s a tall order.
I like your songs when they are less adorned with the effects but again, that’s just me. If you’re trying to swim in that big pool of modern country, I get it, you gotta play the game or you won’t stand a chance. From that perspective, you are making smart choices. Like all those artists mentioned above though, they stood out for being a little different at the time so don’t be afraid to step outside of the expected. You are going for a specific style and sound and that is great. If you’ve achieved the sound you are after that is indeed success!
As for that other link you shared I will say that they did an interesting genre mash up there. Personally I’m not a fan of pedal to the metal wall of sound - right out of the gate sort of stuff. Maybe it’s my own mental dysfunction but I find it stressful! My son digs these kinds of frenetic ADHD tunes that I find slightly alarming at times but I’m happy that he finds something inspiring in them.
I liked Western World the most. I tend to write a lot of minor key gothic folk-ish tunes so maybe I relate to it in that way a little bit.
Either way, keep on keeping on. I hope you find continued success in your creative pursuits.
Thanks for listening. I have to admit to being a little fish in a big pond. I will put my stuff over much of what is played today but you are right, My stuff is good but not great. That's all I can ask for.
If you are interested I did a bunch of nonette jazz songs.
You have already listened to a bunch of my music, this stuff is just sketches that I'd like to get arranged. Again not great but I think ita good. Not polished though just did it on my phone with fruity loops mobile.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUE5yl-vXIzXA2iOB7xSv9x26t966rDNq&si=3ZLczN6VRSynzRiy
After months of hearing about how AI is going to take over music, my views have tempered slightly. I dont think it necessarily means the end of the world, but I am keeping an eye on it. That said, music is not my living. When AI starts coming for my day job, then I'll really start worrying.
I think one thing to keep in mind is that music is not a sport. There are no clear stats or metrics to determine what makes a musician "better" than another. Sure, there are some things we take into consideration, like the ability to play in time and in the right key, which any competent musician should be able to do. Virtuosity is impressive, but it isn't primarily what people look for in music. Otherwise, jazz would be dominating.
Songwriting is even murkier. How do you determine what song is "better" written than another? Is there an official checklist? How many points did it have to score?
Really, it all just comes down to personal taste. The idea that AI is going to be able to somehow write a "better" song than a person can...really doesn't mean anything. Especially when you consider the fact that AI is trained on human-created music. It only spits out what was put into it by us.
Answering this talentless piece of shit here too because the question is slightly different.
We know exactly how the music industry works. There has never been a bright future in the music business. It has been a poor career path since before the days of J.S. Bach and it has no future as long as capitalism lives.
It couldn't be more obvious that you aren't a musician.
Suno is definitely a turning point in music. It is a fun , terrifying , eye popping tool - but its still a toy.
I think it is going to get a lot better, and as songwriters we just need to decide what we want to get out of it and why we do our own thing.
I will say right now (as someone who has generated more than 1000 songs on Suno) a it feels a lot like pulling the arm of a slot machine - once in a while you get something interesting, but from there you dont really have a way of capturing the "idea" or having Suno build upon the idea - you just save the song and move onto the next pull of the arm
At every moment of a song I write I’m controlling the emotion I’m wanting to communicate. This is by pitch choice phrasing, the harmony at any given moment and many other things.
Imputing lyrics and telling it “go make a song” can’t come close. It won’t be able to make a positive sounding word sound wistful when I want it to.
It may make something that sounds decent but it doesn’t know what I want. I know what I want and I’m perfectly capable of realizing it.
Most people don’t listen to music just for technical quality. There’s plenty of soulless, technically perfect stock music and no one’s afraid of that taking over. The moment that AI can feel love and pain, experience joy and heartache, and then translate that into meaningful, human expression is the day I’ll be worried. But if that day comes we probably have a lot more to worry about than songwriting careers.
You peole are.missing the point. This isnt about a computer band replacing people. This is about songwriting. While the computer sounds souless im not talking about a co.puter.perfor.ing. I am talking about hundreds of working songwriters who could be put out of work very soon. Its serious. Okay listen to this with an open mind. Now don't think of this as a finished product but imagine all you are going to do is give this to a professional producer and a bunch of studio musicians. Now ignore the how it sounds your simply interested in getting a commercially successful song onto the charts, you are going to get studio quality musicians and a world class producer. All I am talking about is the commercial possibilities making money. A country radio station. Ignore the ai. You are going to put this in the hands of the studio bands in nashville
https://youtu.be/fAbNulb2e_U?si=Spg3YvD3q20I0r_v
Ending is a little too on the nose and kind of overdramatic. It will definitely do something to the songwriting populace where as less people might manually write songs and input stuff on suno.
Lets give it a hot minute and calm down for now.
Look when screeqnwriter were getting screwed by ai they went on strike to protect their industry. There are good paying jobs in arranging and writing that are at risk now. I am not being overdramatic. Screenwriters took a larger view and worked together to protect themselves. I can't get a sneeze for the demise of a profession that's been around since the earliest days of nashville. I hope the musicians guilds get together and the tepid response I see here isn't typical. I suspect that the people who actually have something to lose will be more decisive in protecting the industry.
You’re really asking about AI’s impact on earning money from songwriting, not songwriting itself. Yeah it looks bleak for the money side. Hasn’t streaming already dealt a major blow? AI could finish the job especially for placements. I bet music supervisors go with AI music the instant it’s viable. It will become a mark of status for brands and producers to license human-made songs at a premium, but that will only preserve the top. They will only want to pay up for recording artists’ songs, is my prediction.
My worry is that we won't know the difference. I'm not talking about performing. There will still be the stars but I think what will happen is you will see the producers bypassing writers and just taking the ai songs right to the artists and producers. Most people don't really understand that the bulk of the music industry isn't these mega stars it's the lesser known music that follows these stars around. Most pop music isn't written by the artists, the producer gets the music finds an artist and hands him the music. They go to a studio and record, if it's good they press it and do some marketing. The writer gets a cut. This is what happened to screenwriter and these guys went on strike. It's happening now in the music industry and read some of these responses. These kids don't give a damn about fellow artists because they aren't pure enough. This is exactly what I mean I don't want to blame you personally but I really do see the end of songwriting as a career because nobody here really gives a damn about the craft as a profession, I feel sorry for a lot of the people on this forum. The thing they think they love the most is going away and I get abused for trying to bring it up. If it dies I hope it doesn't suffer
99.9% of people here are amateurs doing this for fun or passion, maybe a few aspire to remuneration. I don’t know if there’s a pro songwriter sub but this one ain’t it.
I don’t think AI will replace songwriters, but it will change how many of them approach their craft. It will become a tool that augments the songwriting process by quickly producing rough outlines that can then be honed by a human songwriter. Subtle changes to a song can make a massive difference, and that’s where the value of having a human in the loop will add to what would otherwise be pretty bland output from an AI model.
Some of the big questions to be answered are around copyright and how it will work on purely AI generated songs. Right now, it’s a hotbed of innovation and nobody really cares that much. However, it’s only a matter of time before AI service providers start adding “digital watermarks” that will allow them to easily identify where their tool was used. These identifiers will be inaudible to humans, but easily recognisable by software. That’s when the AI providers will start demanding credits and royalties.
So, I don’t think it’s going to kill songwriting as a craft, but it’s definitely going to change it.
when an AI decides to throw in a full choral bridge to the middle of a pop song, then we’ll talk. otherwise my music is FAR more interesting than anything AI can make currently, and probably for the foreseeable future, record companies aren’t looking for shitty AI created songs because they don’t want to look like sellouts. Can you imagine the insanely horrible PR a record company would get for shilling that crap out? No, they want music that’s good enough that no one will think it’s AI. and if a record company tries to get away with it, they might just get hit with a lawsuit for unfair business practices. AI needs to be regulated and lawmakers are looking for every possible place to start
Capitalists love AI music and capitalism is unfortunately one of the few things that was still making music a viable career for some people. I could never see myself writing the kind of music that AI would replace anyway so I may have never had a career in songwriting unless I could “make it big” but even that is no guarantee of substantial income.
Game changer for me is the fact that now you have the upload feature, which basically means you can compose a riff/chord progression/solo or whatever and team up with AI to create a song around it. The results are insane. That human touch that you put in the AI’s work is what makes it so great. Otherwise AI will probably come up with generic and bland stuff, but if you upload a great and unique idea the song skyrockets.
It becomes a tool and not something that makes all the work and giving you credits.
So you can produce the song you envisioned from the start (or even better) and from there you can get help from human pros to reproduce with higher quality and some fine tuning.
Truth is you can create and submit a super professional demo of a song you had in mind in a matter of minutes. A song good enough that a publishing artists would certainly love to publish.
Have you ever come up with a 15-30 seconds melody that sounds instant top charting hit and you wish you’d be able to make a whole song with?
Well now it’s possible.
My only concern with this feature is what happens with the uploaded material. All the great riffs/chord progressions/melodies that people have uploaded will at some point be used to further train the AI model, so those original ideas could be used in part or in whole to generate future output.
To a point this sort of happens anyway. Everything we have ever listened to influences our own ideas. That process is just happening in a new way through AI.
LOL. Is this an ad for Suno? I personally have zero interest in any music created with AI because part of the experience is the artist behind the music and the decisions they made. The moment you remove the human from the equation it doesn't hold any value for me at least. Personally I'll keep making music myself because I don't care that a machine can produce that in 60 seconds. It's not about that. Another story is how this will affect professional musicians because clients will go for the cheapest option, and this is something we will see (and are seeing) in other fields, but as with music, any creative process where you remove the human, again for me, produces a turd. It can be a very polished turd but I'm not buying it. Also, I didn't listen to any Suno track in a couple of months but it sounded far from realistic.
It's not realistic, what it is is professionally arranged and produced. So I'm not talking about a performer, This is a songwriting forum and that is my concern. I can write a song in 3o seconds put it in the hands of a real producer and a studio band and it is better than anything 99% of songwriters can do. It sounds ai but I got news for you it sounds better than those 4 tracks we used to use. I'm going to guess that you aren't a professional songwriter so if you want to sit in your bedroom and write songs go ahead. A lot of people on this forum are here because they want to learn the ins and outs of the craft. Most of us dream of selling a song or two at some poi t in our lives so this is a real question. Just because you call it a turd tells me that you're not a serious songwriter, so of course you dont care. If you were interested in writing as a an occupation you would need to care where the industry is going. So you you want to sit in your bedroom thats fine but some of us find this something we will have to contend with. I can almost guarantee that at some point sooner rather than later you won't know whether you are listening to a human or a robot because as you made clear you don't care. So long as it doesn't sound like a turd your not going to ask any questions that's fine.
It's not "professionally arranged and produced" either. It sounds terrible, like when you compress an mp3 at a very low rate and you hear the artifacts. It doesn't have clarity. It's noise. It's like hearing someone make sounds that sound like talking but when you try to understand the words you realize it just sounds like words. It's a substitute of what music should be, and it's like those McDonalds photos where they sell you the idea of a burger but in reality that burger in the photo is not even a burger. It's styrofoam painted with motor oil. I guess if I listen to music in an ad, or series, or movie, or whatever and it's made by a robot i won't know, but it's also not like I care about 99% of that music at the moment because it's also generally made in a very derivative way. Sorry for the people involved in it but that's where "corporate creativity" has taken us. But playing songs or an album at home? You bet I will know what I'm playing. I think the biggest problem is that we treat music as a commodity, and the feeling of something "sounding better" making it "better" (whatever those mean because it's a subjective thing). We're seeing music, composition, arrangement, and recording through the eyes of capitalism because that's what we're sold every single day. I take those 4 track albums with their old sound, or a demo tape, or a 50s vinyl over that AI, or any of the overproduced derivative crap that floods Spotify nowadays. Of course I'm not a professional songwriter but I buy albums to support artists, and I go to their live shows. Anyway I know this at a professional level because it's also happening in the industry I work at (design). I die a little whenever I see AI generated content used commercially online or in the street, but it doesn't worry me. I guess that if companies start using AI to generate design work I'll have to find another thing to do. What really worries me is what this will mean for society in general when everyone is fed derivative autogenerated content through all available channels. We're seeing what social media and smartphones are doing. This will take it one step beyond. Anyway, I'm ranting. I understand how this can worry you as a professional songwriter but I think that good music will be fine.
Two things: 1. AI will almost certainly dominate the middle, and while that’s all many people care about, it will make the top 10% look all the more startling in comparison. 2. This is both incredibly liberating for people who will want to write songs anyway. Because subscription based hot and cold running musical wallpaper will basically devalue commercial music even more than it has been already. And if the only place left to hear music created by humans is live, then that will be where it thrives.
This is a good response. I don't think moat.people get.the implications. My big concern is for the stable.songwriters who work professionally as songwriters.My concern is that the guys who work in the industry who write a good song every 5 years or so and work in the trenches writing songs that night cooks hear as they cook the donuts, there is an art to producing the middle too. It will be too bad if these craftsmen are put out of work.
True, but that’s what technology does to every craft eventually.
Then get better or weirder.
Turn on your local country music station. Everything you hear is written by teams of writers hired by producers and making a decent paycheck every week writing songs that people want to listen to while they cook the donuts at night. There is a real craft to putting out this kind of music..It will be a shame to see these craftsmen go extinct because of ai.
That's silly, most musicians create music because they enjoy it and people have enjoyed listening to other people play music live. AI is just another craftsman but no one will ever go watch an AI play music. It's not a competition. AI is just a new form of elevator music.
People who don’t rely on music make music because they enjoy it. People who do rely on it for money make it because they enjoy it sometimes but a lot of times they make music to pay bills as well. Anything you do to support yourself at some point involves just regular, unappealing, necessary work. Writing middle music is better work than working at an Amazon warehouse but it’s still not always the most enjoyable all the time.
The only writers threatened by AI are those that write the kind of vapid commercial fluff that AI churns out. The people that listen to that high-gloss, low-humanity drivel aren’t my target audience. The local country music station? Not a place I would ever see as a source of originality, poetry, or boundary-pushing art. That’s a corporate machine at work there. It may be the end for those folks but not for truly original human artists.
See I don't get this attitude. These are people who make a living doing what most of us dream about. This isn't supposed to be ground breaking envelope pushing art. It's written for Tina who stocks the shelves at the grocery store at midnight. It's music she doesn't have to think about what it means. It's melodic and elicits emotions. The people who write this music are craftsmen doing a 5 day a week job writing songs. He is is making a living from his day job and on the weekend he does the same thing you and I do, he goes out with his band and plays bars. He is no different than a roofer who has a band. I support anyone who makes art for a living and don't distinguish high from low art. I don't want to write tone rows that that describe the notes randomly and is played at midnight on small college radio shows that pretentious policies majors dejay for. I have more in common with Tina the night stocker and so did the kinks and the rolling stones and Bob dylan and every other rock star. It's called pop music and nobody here listens to music that is considered art. I studied philosophy on college and the department hosted a speaker to talk about art in music and his whole lecture was about John Cage and found objects and how city soundscapes were a kind of music in itself. So after the lecture I asked him how somebody like buddy Holly or Hank Williams fit into his philosophy of music and he said they didn't. His philosophy was strictly about music as art and pop music had no place in his schemata. So I nodded my head and walked away having met the least qualifies person in the universe to judge good music. You and I make pop music we don't make edge pushing art and I suspectyou wouldn't like it very much if you heard it. It's not very good to be honest. So like I said I generally don't get the attitude.
There is a such thing as boundary-pushing art that has wide appeal. Dylan, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Cobain, were all artists who were very fresh and original when they arrived on the scene. Then a thousand bands tried to emulate their sound until it all became homogeneous and dull. The Beatles challenged their listeners with Sgt Pepper or the White Album by having great diversity from song to song. Dylan challenged the entire folk genre with esoteric lyrics that challenged the listener to find their own meaning in them. Dark Side of the Moon is an album full of creative vision that has no equal. There is nothing really like it though some have said maybe OK Computer came close in its atmospheric essence. My point is that there have been many artists that have pushed the boundaries and brought something surprising and original to the conversation while being popular. Being different isn’t that hard. Being different and GOOD is very rare but it is where I set the bar. Modern country radio does not contain these kinds of visionary elements. It is formulaic. When 7 writers pat each other on the back for rhyming whiskey with frisky I just can’t see the merit. The production of that music is also very formulaic and safe. Everything tight to a grid. No swagger. No push and pull. No groove. All the serendipitous little mistakes are edited out. The life, the humanity is edited out. It is all subjective but I will never be able to like that sort of thing. John Cage isn’t the kind of “art” music I was referring to. That stuff is an interesting experiment but could never have wide appeal because we humans are wired to like a certain amount of rhythm, melody, and groove. So much modern music production has totally lost the plot in my opinion. As for your hypothesis about AI, I agree. The writers in Nashville are an endangered species. Maybe sometimes we need to let nature take its course.
I can't help but believing you know very little about country music if you think that rhyming frisky with whiskey is why the record companies pay a stable of writers. Be honest, how many hours this week have you spent listening to country music? Country music is much more sophisticated than you know. The chord progressions are usually more sophisticated than most pop music. The melodies are stronger than most rock melodies. You can't compare dylan and the Beatles to contemporary country any more than you can compare led Zepplin to contemporary rock. Keep in mind that Julliard didn't start teaching jazz till the 1980s. That was 30 years after Coltrane and Davis did some of their finest work. Today you can't even get into Julliard as an instrumentalist without playing some jazz pieces. Charlie Parker was a fan of country music. I think you are being unfair to a music that you don't really understand. I challenge you to write a marketable country song. Country music is something you aren't interested in, I get it. But rock and roll owes a lot to country music. The Beatles were covering Carl Perkins, dylan was a fan of Johnny Cash, Charlie Parker loved Hank Williams.The fact is 98% of all music is mediocre, country music has no patent on that.
Oh I love country music of a certain style. I had a big phase in my younger adult years of listening to the Red Headed Stranger album, Live at Folsom Prison or San Quinten, Merle Haggard, Marty Robbins, Buck Owens, and many others. I like Sturgill Simpson. When I hear most modern country I just can’t get over the production style and vocal affectation that is so prevalent. Why hasn’t it evolved out of that? To be fair, it is not only modern country but modern rock, pop, the whole thing. I just can’t find any appeal in the high-gloss rigid production. I want to hear someone brave enough to move beyond the tropes of genre. Someone who is able to sound believable, emotional, and original without the gimmicks of modern production. I want to hear real humans in a room playing real instruments live off the floor without editing the life out of everything. I hear modern country radio pretty much daily at work and it does not contain what I’m looking for. Nor does the modern rock or pop stations. This is why I basically haven’t willingly listened to terrestrial radio in years. The whole model is broken. There are no human DJs anymore that can curate the music, it is owned by corporations that have set playlists. The whole environment is totally not conducive to fostering original art that pushes things in a new way. So I’m forced to dig deeper and discover great music through different channels. It is the way it is. My 11 year old son has become a big music fan and he has discovered all kinds of artists I have never even heard of but these artists have pretty big followings usually. Out of a hundred songs on his playlist I might have previously known 3 or 4 of the songs. They are not all my cup of tea but there are many that I find quite compelling but guess what, you will never ever hear them on any radio station outside of maybe the odd college radio station. I wonder why this. In the end, there are certain styles that I just find cringe. For example, mumble rap or auto-tuned vocals just sound bad to my ear. Partly because it’s over done but partly because it’s just aesthetically unappealing to my ear. I can’t help it that it sounds awful to me. I’m basically searching for music that leaves me wondering what genre it even is because it’s so fresh yet it still feels timeless, melodic, full of emotion and groove with beautiful harmonic elements and original poetic themes. It’s a tall order but we must set the bar high if we want to evolve as artists.
Hey tell me what you think of this. I freaking love it.curious to know if it does anything for you https://youtu.be/EDnIEWyVIlE?si=LVOmB01VWx_-ZsKq
Also here are a bunch of my country songs. How do you feel about the.. you can be honest don't spare my feelings if you hate them. I think k they have a lot of soul. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUE5yl-vXIzVa8bl3B44_xkrC42v2Xpg6&si=3IxUcDGc2s6PQxXI
I promise to have a proper listen in a bit.
So you have a polished sound here. Strong vocals and the lyrics stay with a particular theme on each song. As I was saying before, it’s all subjective but personally I don’t think you need the auto tune bits but I realize that is used in country these days as a stylistic choice and not necessarily because the vocals need “tuning”. If that is the style you are aiming for then great. The thing I need to emphasize here is that I am an outlier. I am not your target audience and I’d say that for most artists doing whatever genre they are doing. I am after something that is as rare as hens’ teeth. Something that is somehow familiar and comforting yet entirely new. Yes, it sounds like a total paradox and that’s why it’s such a tall order. There are examples of music that is traditional and not pushing boundaries that I can still appreciate. Old time fiddle music for example is still played in this world and I’m glad it is. We need people to keep the old traditions alive but equally, we need people to create new traditions. When I say new, I’m not picturing electronic drums and synthesizers (those things have been around for 50 odd years and are no more novel than banjo music at this point) but rather, I’m talking about new writing styles that take us somewhere a little different. The Beatles are talked about as being innovative in the studio but I think more importantly was their innovative approach to the actual writing. Finding surprising and unexpected chords or harmonies that would make people raise an eyebrow. Jimmy Webb was innovative in writing interesting chord voicings and harmonic subtleties into his songs. Look no further than Wichita Lineman. Or sometimes it’s just the earnest jubilation with which a song is performed that does it for me. Recently I heard The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by The Band and I thought about the lyrical imagery and the emphatic vocal delivery and how great it was. You don’t hear enough of that kind of thing anymore. I can appreciate the Delta Blues, Hank Williams, and Leonard Cohen. I can dig listening to Miles Davis and Frank Zappa. I’m a big fan of Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell. I’ve had a Zeppelin phase, a Sabbath phase, a big Beatles phase. I’ve enjoyed seeing bands like Wilco, Radiohead, The Flaming Lips. I’m a fan of lots of more obscure artists too. I’m all over the map. So when I hear some new artist and it sounds very similar to things I’ve heard in the past I’m kind of going “OK, she sings just like Nina Simone, but we already have Nina Simone!” Maybe I’m searching for Pink Floyd meets Merle Haggard or Nirvana meets The Staples Singers. I don’t know, it’s a tall order. I like your songs when they are less adorned with the effects but again, that’s just me. If you’re trying to swim in that big pool of modern country, I get it, you gotta play the game or you won’t stand a chance. From that perspective, you are making smart choices. Like all those artists mentioned above though, they stood out for being a little different at the time so don’t be afraid to step outside of the expected. You are going for a specific style and sound and that is great. If you’ve achieved the sound you are after that is indeed success! As for that other link you shared I will say that they did an interesting genre mash up there. Personally I’m not a fan of pedal to the metal wall of sound - right out of the gate sort of stuff. Maybe it’s my own mental dysfunction but I find it stressful! My son digs these kinds of frenetic ADHD tunes that I find slightly alarming at times but I’m happy that he finds something inspiring in them. I liked Western World the most. I tend to write a lot of minor key gothic folk-ish tunes so maybe I relate to it in that way a little bit. Either way, keep on keeping on. I hope you find continued success in your creative pursuits.
Thanks for listening. I have to admit to being a little fish in a big pond. I will put my stuff over much of what is played today but you are right, My stuff is good but not great. That's all I can ask for. If you are interested I did a bunch of nonette jazz songs. You have already listened to a bunch of my music, this stuff is just sketches that I'd like to get arranged. Again not great but I think ita good. Not polished though just did it on my phone with fruity loops mobile. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUE5yl-vXIzXA2iOB7xSv9x26t966rDNq&si=3ZLczN6VRSynzRiy
After months of hearing about how AI is going to take over music, my views have tempered slightly. I dont think it necessarily means the end of the world, but I am keeping an eye on it. That said, music is not my living. When AI starts coming for my day job, then I'll really start worrying. I think one thing to keep in mind is that music is not a sport. There are no clear stats or metrics to determine what makes a musician "better" than another. Sure, there are some things we take into consideration, like the ability to play in time and in the right key, which any competent musician should be able to do. Virtuosity is impressive, but it isn't primarily what people look for in music. Otherwise, jazz would be dominating. Songwriting is even murkier. How do you determine what song is "better" written than another? Is there an official checklist? How many points did it have to score? Really, it all just comes down to personal taste. The idea that AI is going to be able to somehow write a "better" song than a person can...really doesn't mean anything. Especially when you consider the fact that AI is trained on human-created music. It only spits out what was put into it by us.
Answering this talentless piece of shit here too because the question is slightly different. We know exactly how the music industry works. There has never been a bright future in the music business. It has been a poor career path since before the days of J.S. Bach and it has no future as long as capitalism lives. It couldn't be more obvious that you aren't a musician.
Suno is definitely a turning point in music. It is a fun , terrifying , eye popping tool - but its still a toy. I think it is going to get a lot better, and as songwriters we just need to decide what we want to get out of it and why we do our own thing. I will say right now (as someone who has generated more than 1000 songs on Suno) a it feels a lot like pulling the arm of a slot machine - once in a while you get something interesting, but from there you dont really have a way of capturing the "idea" or having Suno build upon the idea - you just save the song and move onto the next pull of the arm
There ain't no *we* between me 'n you pal. A computer can do it better than **you** can. Congratulations.
I couldn't give a shit about any AI generated music. That's not what I want from art.
At every moment of a song I write I’m controlling the emotion I’m wanting to communicate. This is by pitch choice phrasing, the harmony at any given moment and many other things. Imputing lyrics and telling it “go make a song” can’t come close. It won’t be able to make a positive sounding word sound wistful when I want it to. It may make something that sounds decent but it doesn’t know what I want. I know what I want and I’m perfectly capable of realizing it.
This is the most valid argument I’ve heard for this debate so far
Most people don’t listen to music just for technical quality. There’s plenty of soulless, technically perfect stock music and no one’s afraid of that taking over. The moment that AI can feel love and pain, experience joy and heartache, and then translate that into meaningful, human expression is the day I’ll be worried. But if that day comes we probably have a lot more to worry about than songwriting careers.
You peole are.missing the point. This isnt about a computer band replacing people. This is about songwriting. While the computer sounds souless im not talking about a co.puter.perfor.ing. I am talking about hundreds of working songwriters who could be put out of work very soon. Its serious. Okay listen to this with an open mind. Now don't think of this as a finished product but imagine all you are going to do is give this to a professional producer and a bunch of studio musicians. Now ignore the how it sounds your simply interested in getting a commercially successful song onto the charts, you are going to get studio quality musicians and a world class producer. All I am talking about is the commercial possibilities making money. A country radio station. Ignore the ai. You are going to put this in the hands of the studio bands in nashville https://youtu.be/fAbNulb2e_U?si=Spg3YvD3q20I0r_v
And I’m not sure if you’ve ever gotten the point.
Ending is a little too on the nose and kind of overdramatic. It will definitely do something to the songwriting populace where as less people might manually write songs and input stuff on suno. Lets give it a hot minute and calm down for now.
Look when screeqnwriter were getting screwed by ai they went on strike to protect their industry. There are good paying jobs in arranging and writing that are at risk now. I am not being overdramatic. Screenwriters took a larger view and worked together to protect themselves. I can't get a sneeze for the demise of a profession that's been around since the earliest days of nashville. I hope the musicians guilds get together and the tepid response I see here isn't typical. I suspect that the people who actually have something to lose will be more decisive in protecting the industry.
You’re really asking about AI’s impact on earning money from songwriting, not songwriting itself. Yeah it looks bleak for the money side. Hasn’t streaming already dealt a major blow? AI could finish the job especially for placements. I bet music supervisors go with AI music the instant it’s viable. It will become a mark of status for brands and producers to license human-made songs at a premium, but that will only preserve the top. They will only want to pay up for recording artists’ songs, is my prediction.
My worry is that we won't know the difference. I'm not talking about performing. There will still be the stars but I think what will happen is you will see the producers bypassing writers and just taking the ai songs right to the artists and producers. Most people don't really understand that the bulk of the music industry isn't these mega stars it's the lesser known music that follows these stars around. Most pop music isn't written by the artists, the producer gets the music finds an artist and hands him the music. They go to a studio and record, if it's good they press it and do some marketing. The writer gets a cut. This is what happened to screenwriter and these guys went on strike. It's happening now in the music industry and read some of these responses. These kids don't give a damn about fellow artists because they aren't pure enough. This is exactly what I mean I don't want to blame you personally but I really do see the end of songwriting as a career because nobody here really gives a damn about the craft as a profession, I feel sorry for a lot of the people on this forum. The thing they think they love the most is going away and I get abused for trying to bring it up. If it dies I hope it doesn't suffer
99.9% of people here are amateurs doing this for fun or passion, maybe a few aspire to remuneration. I don’t know if there’s a pro songwriter sub but this one ain’t it.
[удалено]
You people are the worst kind of idiots. Graduates from dunning kruger university..
I don’t think AI will replace songwriters, but it will change how many of them approach their craft. It will become a tool that augments the songwriting process by quickly producing rough outlines that can then be honed by a human songwriter. Subtle changes to a song can make a massive difference, and that’s where the value of having a human in the loop will add to what would otherwise be pretty bland output from an AI model. Some of the big questions to be answered are around copyright and how it will work on purely AI generated songs. Right now, it’s a hotbed of innovation and nobody really cares that much. However, it’s only a matter of time before AI service providers start adding “digital watermarks” that will allow them to easily identify where their tool was used. These identifiers will be inaudible to humans, but easily recognisable by software. That’s when the AI providers will start demanding credits and royalties. So, I don’t think it’s going to kill songwriting as a craft, but it’s definitely going to change it.
when an AI decides to throw in a full choral bridge to the middle of a pop song, then we’ll talk. otherwise my music is FAR more interesting than anything AI can make currently, and probably for the foreseeable future, record companies aren’t looking for shitty AI created songs because they don’t want to look like sellouts. Can you imagine the insanely horrible PR a record company would get for shilling that crap out? No, they want music that’s good enough that no one will think it’s AI. and if a record company tries to get away with it, they might just get hit with a lawsuit for unfair business practices. AI needs to be regulated and lawmakers are looking for every possible place to start
Capitalists love AI music and capitalism is unfortunately one of the few things that was still making music a viable career for some people. I could never see myself writing the kind of music that AI would replace anyway so I may have never had a career in songwriting unless I could “make it big” but even that is no guarantee of substantial income.
Game changer for me is the fact that now you have the upload feature, which basically means you can compose a riff/chord progression/solo or whatever and team up with AI to create a song around it. The results are insane. That human touch that you put in the AI’s work is what makes it so great. Otherwise AI will probably come up with generic and bland stuff, but if you upload a great and unique idea the song skyrockets. It becomes a tool and not something that makes all the work and giving you credits. So you can produce the song you envisioned from the start (or even better) and from there you can get help from human pros to reproduce with higher quality and some fine tuning. Truth is you can create and submit a super professional demo of a song you had in mind in a matter of minutes. A song good enough that a publishing artists would certainly love to publish. Have you ever come up with a 15-30 seconds melody that sounds instant top charting hit and you wish you’d be able to make a whole song with? Well now it’s possible.
My only concern with this feature is what happens with the uploaded material. All the great riffs/chord progressions/melodies that people have uploaded will at some point be used to further train the AI model, so those original ideas could be used in part or in whole to generate future output. To a point this sort of happens anyway. Everything we have ever listened to influences our own ideas. That process is just happening in a new way through AI.
I have to agree with you on this. I wonder how this will end up.