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

[zerocrossing]

"prompt creative ideas" With the LLM you'll be barking up the wrong tree. It doesn't have ideas.

Of course it has ideas. I just asked Co-Pilot for some - literally "give us some ideas" - and this is what it gave me -

"Absolutely, Warren — and since you thrive on that intersection of art, tech, culture, and a bit of dystopian bite, here are a few creative sparks tailored to your wavelength.

Creative Ideas to Play With
1. “Post‑Human Artefacts” Mini‑Series
Imagine designing objects from a future civilisation that tried to reverse‑engineer our era.
Each artefact could be:

Misinterpreted (e.g., a smartphone treated as a ritual stone)

Over‑interpreted (e.g., a USB stick catalogued as a “memory totem”)

Beautifully wrong

This would fit your love of authenticity vs. decay, and it’s ripe for visual or lyrical exploration.

2. A Lyric Cycle Told by a Broken Algorithm
A suite of short verses where the narrator is a civic‑management AI that’s glitching —
not malicious, just tired of optimising humans.
Each verse could degrade in structure, cadence, or vocabulary as the system frays.

You already have a strong instinct for rhythm, so this could be a playground for controlled collapse.

3. “Belle Époque 2.0” — Aesthetic Reversal Project
Take the optimism and ornamentation of the Belle Époque and reimagine it through:

Emissions‑era engineering

Surveillance architecture

Consumer‑culture exhaustion

Think: Art Nouveau curves made from catalytic converters and QR codes.
A visual or lyrical contrast between gilded hope and rusted reality.

4. A Short Story Told Through Product Reviews
A dystopian narrative where the entire plot unfolds through:

1‑star reviews

Warranty complaints

“Verified purchase” testimonies

Each review reveals a little more about a society sliding into absurdity.
Perfect for your knack for moral grey zones and consumer critique.

5. “The Last Car Enthusiast” Concept Piece
A spoken‑word or lyric piece from the perspective of the final human who still cares about:

torque curves

emissions standards

the smell of petrol

the ethics of design

In a world where vehicles are identical, sealed, and centrally controlled, this lone voice becomes almost religious.

6. A Visual Moodboard Series: “Things That Shouldn’t Be Beautiful”
Curate or create imagery around:

cracked LCD screens

corroded battery terminals

abandoned GPS units

counterfeit product seams

Your analytical eye for authenticity would make this surprisingly poetic."

See, not only did it give me some "ideas", it tailored them to what it perceives as my preference. Some of them are actually pretty f**king cool ideas, too. It's kind of like your mum, always trying to be helpful and encouraging. But, of course, providing actual evidence doesn't hold any sway, does it?

It just stole those ideas from data sets taken from the internet and copyrighted materials, but you had the ultimate idea: annoy the crap out of fellow KVR members with an annoying text color tag. Write a song about that. Call it Piss Text.

[DrGonzo]

If AI really does replace a large part of music creation, who is actually going to buy plugins anymore?

Correct. No one. As photography completely replaced paintings, 3D printing replaced sculptors and sample libraries replaced real instruments.

No one in their right mind would ever learn to play the piano now when AI can come up with melodies and play the piano. Steinway, Kawai, Yamaha etc are at this moment dumping all their grand pianos in the middle of the ocean and not one painting has ever been painted since the 1890s.

[DCrown]

I feel so sad especially for Yamaha, i saw the current prices, too, they probably will have to stop completely producing and offering instruments.
My first electric guitar: Yamaha. My first keyboard: Yamaha. Still my main (master) keyboard and Midi controller at the same time is: Yamaha. About 70% of my fx I use are: Yamaha. Amps and Cab sims: Yamaha (Helix native)!

[Zeisner]

One common trick for vocalists struggling with tremolos is to plugin the vocal mic into a Stratocaster and using its tremolo bar when you need a tremolo.

Works as well.

[Zeisner]

But there are steps of progress, where you usually shape your own musical identity and make progress. You start writing, you start composing and maybe improvising a lot.

Just listen to Novakill. That tells you everything you'll need to know.

[DCrown]

Even though I would listen also to Motörhead sometimes back in the day, the voice of Novakill is not my thing, doesn't mean the music is bad.
Wagtunes posted that he is sad, that so many people don't enjoy music any more.
In the last 10 years I remember only one musician who impressed me - Mononeon, composer, bassist and singer. I saw a performance 2 months ago in a small truck, all musicians very good, good songs. It doesn't mean there was not more good music the last 10 years, everyone has a different taste.
Whenever I listen to radio in my car, I rarely do, cuz need to focus on traffic, many radio stations play music from 70ies and 80ies. Why? Not just because the music was better, there are more old people compared to young people now! Many a man or couples don't want to build a family or have children any more and it is hard for older people to find something new that's exciting, cuz the music market is oversaturated with lots of bad productions

[zerocrossing]

Pop music is made for teenagers and young adults to mate to. That's it. It's a soundtrack to the mating dance of humans, so that's why it always skews young. Old people still listen to the pop music of their youth, because it reminds them of the time they had a very brief rest period between orgasms. It doesn't matter if what's produced is made by humans or machines. Look at Italo disco. It's terrible, yet people talk about it as if it is fine art.

This actually provides a great opportunity to leave the junky music to the machines and go out there and be interesting. Many will fail at this, but that's always been true.

[BONES]

It just stole those ideas from data sets taken from the internet and copyrighted materials

Really? Because I did searches on a couple of them and couldn't find anything even remotely similar. Perhaps you did a better search than I did and you can provide links to the sources Co-Pilot supposedly stole the ideas from?

Aesthetic reversal, for example, apparently refers to cosmetic surgery correction. The idea to "take the optimism and ornamentation of the Belle Époque and reimagine it through Emissions‑era engineering" is something that doesn't come up in searches at all. Ditto for "A Lyric Cycle Told by a Broken Algorithm".

Or maybe the cognitive dissonance that finding the truth would induce is more than your tiny brain can handle?

In the last 10 years I remember only one musician who impressed me - Mononeon, composer, bassist and singer.

I'm impressed by music, not musicians. The only way in which any musician has ever impressed me is in a live performance setting (and mostly drummers, who we all know aren't real musicians). If you need your music to be made by impressive musicians, then you don't have anything like the connection to music that I do. Shouldn't a good piece of music stand on its own? Surely it shouldn't need to be propped up by impressive musicianship?

Whenever I listen to radio in my car, I rarely do, cuz need to focus on traffic, many radio stations play music from 70ies and 80ies. Why? Not just because the music was better, there are more old people compared to young people now!

Yes, it has nothing to do with the relative quality of the music, its' all about ratings. But it's not just about an aging population, it amazes me how many kids like the same music as their parents. I f**king hate the music my parents liked (and my Mum hated the music Dad was into).

it is hard for older people to find something new that's exciting, cuz the music market is oversaturated with lots of bad productions

Honestly, it's actually much easier to find new music now than it was 15-20 years ago. I've bought five new albums this month already. OK, they are all from artists I've been following for decades but those guys are still putting out new music. There are currently around 110 albums in my collection released since 2020 (Zune lets me sort by release year), so that's about 20 purchases a year, one new album every two or three weeks, which is pretty good, I reckon.

In the last 15 years or so I have also discovered a lot of music from back in the day that I had overlooked or never seen, which adds a lot more to the overall number of my purchases. I reckon I buy more music now that I have since I co-owned a record shop in the mid-90s and I was still discovering how much EBM stuff there was.

[DCrown]

Wow, really?, I spent about 40 USD for music since 2004, when I bought my last CDs.
If I was 20 in 80ies or 70ies now, I would probably by one or two albums every week.
Let us say an album has 10 songs (average) and 80 albums per year. 800 songs to listen to in one year, makes more sense than having to find 800 nice songs amongst more than 50 Mio. new song/track releases every year nowadays. 50 Mio!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is insane and it will be a lot more in future, maybe 50 Mio per month.
Only one new musician since 2004 that impressed me, I want to be impressed by lyrics, vibe, arrangement, performance, originality, voice, maybe virtuosity not just by average garbage.
I still find great music or performances from the padt, though. Charles Valentine Alkan was a cool composer and pianist in 19th century.

[Tubeman]

Of course it has ideas. I just asked Co-Pilot for some - literally "give us some ideas" - and this is what it gave me -

It just stole those ideas from data sets taken from the internet and copyrighted materials, but you had the ultimate idea: annoy the crap out of fellow KVR members with an annoying text color tag. Write a song about that. Call it Piss Text.

How about "Piss to the Bone"? "Pi-pi-pi-pi-piss to the bone"

[jancivil]

"AI is thinking, but it is also not conscious"
A contradiction in terms. It may tell you it's thinking but it doesn't have the first clue what that is.
Intelligence is a part of consciousness. Consciousness is not computational - Roger Penrose.

Don't listen to me:

---

click on the URL.

"It's not in any meaningful sense understanding. When you're having a conversation with Chat GPT [...] there is no mind on the other end." - AI researcher (and long-time enthusiast) Michael Woolridge.

This is the LLM. I honestly can't speak to neural networks in development but this is where we're at. Anything I say is derived strictly from my understanding from those with expertise and I'm not hallucinating.

[DCrown]

I think the best way to describe AI productions is,
there are people who prefer handmade products,
for example a table can be made of real wood by a carpenter and there are mass production tables made of plastic, both can be used as tables, but there is a difference.
It doesn't automatically mean all tables made by a carpenter are good, there are differences in quality, material and style and skills of a carpenter also matter.

[Tj Shredder]

Art without expression is called kitsch. Any music AI creates is kitsch by definition. Humans create often enough kitsch as well. It sells better usually, as there are more people who can’t distinguish kitsch from real expression…
AI as perfect assistant for artists on the other hand is valuable in a way that it will make a lot of jobs obsolete…
There is nothing to worry about…

[DCrown]

it will make a lot of jobs obselete is nothing to worry about, haha strange kind of humor.
And it won't just affect music business

[Bunny_boy]

Wow, really?, I spent about 40 USD for music since 2004, when I bought my last CDs.
If I was 20 in 80ies or 70ies now, I would probably by one or two albums every week.
Let us say an album has 10 songs (average) and 80 albums per year. 800 songs to listen to in one year, makes more sense than having to find 800 nice songs amongst more than 50 Mio. new song/track releases every year nowadays.

But the way to find new music hasn't changed though. There's definitely more ways of doing it, but even then they are just variations on an existing theme.

Radio, magazines, concerts, friends all still exist. They might exist in different ways now, but that is just modernisation.

Even those algorithmically suggested songs are a bit like a friend suggesting something to you (if that friend had a hidden agenda, and wasn't actually your friend)