If AI replaces musicians, does the entire plugin industry die with them?

[ramseysounds]

More of chance it will replace DJs before musicians.

We can but live in hope.

[Zeisner]

Where I think that this forum just doesn't get it is that people like to play with shit.

Are we talking about things like prompt injection to make AIs go haywire and actually produce something that is truly interesting, unique, original?

[IvyBirds]

Where I think that this forum just doesn't get it is that people like to play with shit. That's not going away and the teet that so many of you are hoping to suckle from, big labels, aren't going to care that AI is driving that as long as they get theirs.

Beyond that is the reality that people have been making dog shit music for decades that gets ignored by everyone, including big labels. Being able to upload music to Bandcamp and Streaming Services doesn't change that fact

So the people that used to buy presets, loops, MIDI packs and sample packs to make dog shit music no one cares about are now going to use AI.

Who the hell cares if those people use AI to make complete songs they upload to Spotify that no one listens to, that's doesn't effect the average bedroom producer who buys plugins to make music to upload to Spotify that no one listens to either

I guess if you sold those MIDI packs, and loops you might care, but really how big was that market anyway

[Zeisner]

So the people that used to buy presets, loops, MIDI packs and sample packs to make dog shit music no one cares about are now going to use AI.

Are there any numbers available how big this market is? I don't know anyone who ever bought this kind of stuff.

[DCrown]

Thanks to ai there will be millions of uploads on the same plattforms every day, complete nonsense, completely worthless.

But that's a good thing, no? Flooding the platforms with mediocre generic music will eventually lead to artists being more creative.

Well, your post made me reflect a little bit.
I don't know.
When I think of smartphones. The first smartphones were expensive, not everyone could afford , now even every teen has a smartphone.
Everyday the same scenario: 90% of people focused on their small screen of a smartphone, most of them swiping left every 7 seconds on TikTok, insta or whatever. Is it a good habit or not, does it make people wiser, happier or more creative? Isn't it also flooding with tons of mediocre or even fake information?
There were already way too many uploads on Spotify with tons of less than mediocre music before ai.

I repeat that imo a good solution would be
platforms with "real" (no ai) music professional level limited to 1000 uploads total every day. Let's say a real music platform would have 7.000 accounts, one user could post only one song per week let's say on fridays, another user only on mondays etc
The quality of uploaded music would raise a very lot.
Amateur/semi-professional musician ai-free platforms, that would probably be a platform where I could upload songs.
Hobby musician ai-free platforms and ai platforms limited to 10 Mio uploads total every day.
To me the definition of ai music is clear.
If you only use one ai plugin, it is ai music.
There could be subgroups like full ai productions or only mixing or mastering with ai etc.
And maybe a Autotune platform haha

And you would probably have to qualify to have an account to upload your music.

The big problem might be how to identify ai produced music, cuz it will get improved.

[mixyguy2]

AI will not take over the music industry. Cheese and K Rice. What is it with you people and you're doom and gloom?

AI might very well take over the music industry. To pretend that couldn't happen is to be in denial. Look at how quickly it's already making inroads. There are already ""musicians getting huge followings...that it turns out don't even exist.

[wagtunes]

AI will not take over the music industry. Cheese and K Rice. What is it with you people and you're doom and gloom?

AI might very well take over the music industry. To pretend that couldn't happen is to be in denial. Look at how quickly it's already making inroads. There are already ""musicians getting huge followings...that it turns out don't even exist.

First of all, thank God, there will always be people who...

1. Want to continue to make music the old fashioned way

and

2. People who won't listen to AI generated material.

They thought computers would do away with all manual labor. It still hasn't happened.

They thought Synthesizers were going to get rid of people playing "real" instruments. Hasn't happened.

They thought home studios were going to do away with professional recording studios. Still hasn't happened.

So stop with the gloom and doom. Real music isn't going away. I will bet every dollar I have in the bank on that.

[DCrown]

AI will not take over the music industry. Cheese and K Rice. What is it with you people and you're doom and gloom?

AI might very well take over the music industry. To pretend that couldn't happen is to be in denial. Look at how quickly it's already making inroads. There are already ""musicians getting huge followings...that it turns out don't even exist.

First of all, thank God, there will always be people who...

1. Want to continue to make music the old fashioned way

and

2. People who won't listen to AI generated material.

They thought computers would do away with all manual labor. It still hasn't happened.

They thought Synthesizers were going to get rid of people playing "real" instruments. Hasn't happened.

They thought home studios were going to do away with professional recording studios. Still hasn't happened.

So stop with the gloom and doom. Real music isn't going away. I will bet every dollar I have in the bank on that.

You are completely beyond reality in your own world. A lot of studios had to close.
.Drum machines, yes they were a topic first, but not as huge and serious topic as ai today.
Very quickly drum machines could exist side by side with real drums or even both were used for one song e.g. Sly Stone, Prince.

Synths were not a that huge topic as to danger to orchestras or musicians and the topic wasn't discussed for a long time. Just a short belch.

Neither synths nor drum machines turned music into a mass product.

Ai, though, is fake and can also be copyright Infringement, but who cares about copyright today?!. You don't need any skills at all and can fake a complete song or just some parts, whereas a synth you have to know to play, two completely different things.

And you have to look at young people first and foremost, new trends and popular music is mainly created by young people. Elvis, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Prince etc etc they were all young when they got popular. Young people are the future. No I don't think they will produce music in a traditional way, cuz their roots are/will be ai.

[wagtunes]

AI will not take over the music industry. Cheese and K Rice. What is it with you people and you're doom and gloom?

AI might very well take over the music industry. To pretend that couldn't happen is to be in denial. Look at how quickly it's already making inroads. There are already ""musicians getting huge followings...that it turns out don't even exist.

First of all, thank God, there will always be people who...

1. Want to continue to make music the old fashioned way

and

2. People who won't listen to AI generated material.

They thought computers would do away with all manual labor. It still hasn't happened.

They thought Synthesizers were going to get rid of people playing "real" instruments. Hasn't happened.

They thought home studios were going to do away with professional recording studios. Still hasn't happened.

So stop with the gloom and doom. Real music isn't going away. I will bet every dollar I have in the bank on that.

You are completely beyond reality in your own world. A lot of studios had to close.
.Drum machines, yes they were a topic first, but not as huge and serious topic as ai today.
Very quickly drum machines could exist side by side with real drums or even both were used for one song e.g. Sly Stone, Prince.

Synths were not a that huge topic as to danger to orchestras or musicians and the topic wasn't discussed for a long time. Just a short belch.

Neither synths nor drum machines turned music into a mass product.

Ai, though, is fake and can also be copyright Infringement, but who cares about copyright today?!. You don't need any skills at all and can fake a complete song or just some parts, whereas a synth you have to know to play, two completely different things.

And you have to look at young people first and foremost, new trends and popular music is mainly created by young people. Elvis, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Prince etc etc they were all young when they got popular. Young people are the future. No I don't think they will produce music in a traditional way, cuz their roots are/will be ai.

If you truly believe this, I feel sorry for you. I guarantee it will not happen in my lifetime.

[IvyBirds]

So the people that used to buy presets, loops, MIDI packs and sample packs to make dog shit music no one cares about are now going to use AI.

Are there any numbers available how big this market is? I don't know anyone who ever bought this kind of stuff.

I don't know how big the market is. In the aggregate it's probably not super huge but not insignificant either, there seem to be enough players in it large and small that have been around a while so it must be somewhat viable

I don't know anyone who has bought that kind of stuff either

I think beyond using AI to make complete songs, using AI to make loops and samples for resell could be a quick way to make a few bucks, but I think it would quickly dry up as it's just to easy of a thing to do

[ghettosynth]

Where I think that this forum just doesn't get it is that people like to play with shit. That's not going away and the teet that so many of you are hoping to suckle from, big labels, aren't going to care that AI is driving that as long as they get theirs.

Beyond that is the reality that people have been making dog shit music for decades that gets ignored by everyone, including big labels. Being able to upload music to Bandcamp and Streaming Services doesn't change that fact

So the people that used to buy presets, loops, MIDI packs and sample packs to make dog shit music no one cares about are now going to use AI.

Exactly, and sorry, but let me lift up the mirror so that the Cafe can see it, that's not unique to sample packs either. Only now, the big industry, who's side some of you seem suddenly to be on, is getting paid from some of that dogshit music.

Here's the bit that's hard to swallow for some of you. It doesn't really matter how bad some of that AI slop is in terms of production value and artifacts. It's more listenable than so much of what is passed off as "original", sorry, slop, that is all over bandcamp and all of the various "upload your music and be a star" sites.

Back to my point, people like to play with shit. They like to play with AI prompts and they like to play with modular synthesizers, and they like to play with plugins, and chord generators. They like to come to KVR and talk about music-adjacent products that allow them to exchange consumption for participation tokens in a quasi-music social-media context.

There is nothing wrong with any of that as long as people are having fun. You may not be able to visualize how people fiddling about with prompts are having fun, but, the same could be said for those of you who like to fiddle about with plugins and assemble them like Legos. I recall the other day reading in a Uhe forum where some of the "serious bizniz" members of this forum were asking for quality patch randomization tools in, IIRC, Diva. I have seen the oblique strategies being defended here as if that's anything other than a layer of randomness applied to human absence of creativity.

There's a track on Suno that has something like 3.3m listens and it's created by the person who runs "Feline Music" on youtube.



The song is just "cat cat cat cat..." over and over again. You can argue "that's not original", sure it is, the concept is completely human. It's benignly funny in a light hearted way. This channel has been going for a year and has 400+ videos most of them centered around a poorly executed idea of cat music. I fail to see how that's materially different from being a dedicated KVR member with tens of thousands of posts that amount to nothing in terms of impact on the real world.

Nobody is listening to the vast majority of music posted here, nobody is ever going to buy it either. You are never going to be paid enough as a musician to quit your day job, let alone buy a big house in LA. What the complaints are really about is the compression of scarcity. They are about protecting turf. Nobody was ever going to hire a singer to make "cat cat cat cat..." just to release it for fun. Even amateurs can't see themselves making something so simple, for the most part, there are exceptions. AI collapses the friction between idea and artifact, and that's the value, independent of the quality of the artifact.

[wagtunes]

Where I think that this forum just doesn't get it is that people like to play with shit. That's not going away and the teet that so many of you are hoping to suckle from, big labels, aren't going to care that AI is driving that as long as they get theirs.

Beyond that is the reality that people have been making dog shit music for decades that gets ignored by everyone, including big labels. Being able to upload music to Bandcamp and Streaming Services doesn't change that fact

So the people that used to buy presets, loops, MIDI packs and sample packs to make dog shit music no one cares about are now going to use AI.

Exactly, and sorry, but let me lift up the mirror so that the Cafe can see it, that's not unique to sample packs either. Only now, the big industry, who's side some of you seem suddenly to be on, is getting paid from some of that dogshit music.

Here's the bit that's hard to swallow for some of you. It doesn't really matter how bad some of that AI slop is in terms of production value and artifacts. It's more listenable than so much of what is passed off as "original", sorry, slop, that is all over bandcamp and all of the various "upload your music and be a star" sites.

Back to my point, people like to play with shit. They like to play with AI prompts and they like to play with modular synthesizers, and they like to play with plugins, and chord generators. They like to come to KVR and talk about music-adjacent products that allow them to exchange consumption for participation tokens in a quasi-music social-media context.

There is nothing wrong with any of that as long as people are having fun. You may not be able to visualize how people fiddling about with prompts are having fun, but, the same could be said for those of you who like to fiddle about with plugins and assemble them like Legos. I recall the other day reading in a Uhe forum where some of the "serious bizniz" members of this forum were asking for quality patch randomization tools in, IIRC, Diva. I have seen the oblique strategies being defended here as if that's anything other than a layer of randomness applied to human absence of creativity.

There's a track on Suno that has something like 3.3m listens and it's created by the person who runs "Feline Music" on youtube.



The song is just "cat cat cat cat..." over and over again. You can argue "that's not original", sure it is, the concept is completely human. It's benignly funny in a light hearted way. This channel has been going for a year and has 400+ videos most of them centered around a poorly executed idea of cat music. I fail to see how that's materially different from being a dedicated KVR member with tens of thousands of posts that amount to nothing in terms of impact on the real world.

Nobody is listening to the vast majority of music posted here, nobody is ever going to buy it either. You are never going to be paid enough as a musician to quit your day job, let alone buy a big house in LA. What the complaints are really about is the compression of scarcity. They are about protecting turf. Nobody was ever going to hire a singer to make "cat cat cat cat..." just to release it for fun. Even amateurs can't see themselves making something so simple, for the most part, there are exceptions. AI collapses the friction between idea and artifact, and that's the value, independent of the quality of the artifact.

This is so brilliantly said I wish I could give you a prize.

[coroknight]

AI is going to have a profound effect on the industry.

For example, I asked chatgpt to write a basic analog filter simulation in Python. It actually works, and I could take it farther by asking it to convert the code into a faster language and package it up as a CLAP plugin.

It’s a small thing and like I said you have to know what you’re doing but we’re getting to the point where I can ask AI to create tools and it’s actually able to do it.

The scope of what’s possible and accessible will only increase. Eventually we’ll get to the point where people will be able to ask for specialized instruments and effects and AI will be able to make them on the fly. At that point only the most advanced plugins will be able to make money.

Beyond that, we’ll have AI that can operate directly on audio like those smart filters in Photoshop where you can tell the program “remove that person from my photo” but instead something like “make this bassline sound crunchier”.

This stuff isn’t science fiction, it’s already happening just on the fringes so most people don’t know about it.

[IvyBirds]

AI is going to have a profound effect on the industry.

For example, I asked chatgpt to write a basic analog filter simulation in Python. It actually works, and I could take it farther by asking it to convert the code into a faster language and package it up as a CLAP plugin.

It’s a small thing and like I said you have to know what you’re doing but we’re getting to the point where I can ask AI to create tools and it’s actually able to do it.

The scope of what’s possible and accessible will only increase. Eventually we’ll get to the point where people will be able to ask for specialized instruments and effects and AI will be able to make them on the fly. At that point only the most advanced plugins will be able to make money.

Beyond that, we’ll have AI that can operate directly on audio like those smart filters in Photoshop where you can tell the program “remove that person from my photo” but instead something like “make this bassline sound crunchier”.

This stuff isn’t science fiction, it’s already happening just on the fringes so most people don’t know about it.

Google Gemini is exceptionally good at coming up with basic recipes for sounds. I used to use ChatGPT a bunch but made the switch 6 months a go

It knows what plugins I have, the MIDI controllers I use, and the DAWs I have. I can the describe to it the type of sound I want. It will then present me with one or more options as far as Synths go and how to set up and program them. It has been rather fascinating as it often will approach things very differently than I would, and I have learned a lot from analyzing it's approach. It's made me think about things differently, and if you ask it, it will go into great detail about why it does things the way it does

It's also amazingly good at writing scripts for various plugins and software I own

[Cuauhtli]

The listener will be replaced by AI so what's the problem?