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

[DCrown]

@Bones
"Anyway, this is all a bit off-topic. Maybe it could be useful to start a new thread where people can share their methods of discovering new music?"

I like this idea. Will you start a thread in "everything else music related"?

[twal]

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

No, it goes far deeper than that. You can't honestly suggest that listening to the radio today will expose you to the same breadth and depth of music that you could hear on even the most commercial stations in the 80s. Sure, it might be out there somewhere on some spotty kid's podcast or internet radio but good f**king luck finding it.

You might be surprised at the range of music that gets added to reels, shorts and tik toks.

No reference to where the music came from or the context it was created in... But it's out there.

That reminds me of people saying if you watch clips on YouTube of the 90's Bulls, you will get the experience of MJ.

Impossible. You have to be there. The other players, the time, the t.v. set. Same with 80's music. Mario Bros. Woolsworth, A Different World.. All of it ties into it atmospherically. Our human history will be forever changed by AI, including our Psyche, and our entire relationship we have with reality. Reduced to nostalgia of Jane Child's hair and the smell of pizza while playing Double Dragon..

[zerocrossing]

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.

Honestly BONES, I don't hold you in high regard, but if you think those ideas are great, well good for you then. They seem like ideas that would come from a crappy corporate brainstorming meeting, where Brenda accidentally ordered all bran muffins. If that's better than what you can come up with, perhaps this technology is the crutch you need.

[Bunny_boy]

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

No, it goes far deeper than that. You can't honestly suggest that listening to the radio today will expose you to the same breadth and depth of music that you could hear on even the most commercial stations in the 80s. Sure, it might be out there somewhere on some spotty kid's podcast or internet radio but good f**king luck finding it. You only have to look at the charts today to see the truth of this. Almost all of the music I am into today is stuff I first heard on mainstream commercial radio in the 70s and 80s.

I think I last listened to the charts when I was doing my GCSEs.
Radio 3's Late Junction and Night Tracks are excellent programmes. Resonance FM is also excellent. Radio 6 Music is great as well, but I've not listened to that for a long while as my tastes have changed a bit, although there is the Freak Zone. Radio 1Xtra for Grime, Jungle, Drum n Bass, etc.

[wagtunes]

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

No, it goes far deeper than that. You can't honestly suggest that listening to the radio today will expose you to the same breadth and depth of music that you could hear on even the most commercial stations in the 80s. Sure, it might be out there somewhere on some spotty kid's podcast or internet radio but good f**king luck finding it. You only have to look at the charts today to see the truth of this. Almost all of the music I am into today is stuff I first heard on mainstream commercial radio in the 70s and 80s.

I think I last listened to the charts when I was doing my GCSEs.
Radio 3's Late Junction and Night Tracks are excellent programmes. Resonance FM is also excellent. Radio 6 Music is great as well, but I've not listened to that for a long while as my tastes have changed a bit, although there is the Freak Zone. Radio 1Xtra for Grime, Jungle, Drum n Bass, etc.

Are they all free to listen to or subscription services like Serius radio?

[vurt]

"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" -

Those are some person's ideas, fuckwit.

Go and find the f**king things, then. Because I looked and couldn't find anything even remotely similar, despite multiple searches using different queries.

The willful ignorance on display here is staggering. You're sticking your fingers in your ears and singing "la-la-la" at the top of your voice like a f**king child. Grow the f**k up.

black mirror, named after john dee's scrying device, as a metaphor for the smartphone.

off the top of my head no poogle.

[Bunny_boy]

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

No, it goes far deeper than that. You can't honestly suggest that listening to the radio today will expose you to the same breadth and depth of music that you could hear on even the most commercial stations in the 80s. Sure, it might be out there somewhere on some spotty kid's podcast or internet radio but good f**king luck finding it. You only have to look at the charts today to see the truth of this. Almost all of the music I am into today is stuff I first heard on mainstream commercial radio in the 70s and 80s.

I think I last listened to the charts when I was doing my GCSEs.
Radio 3's Late Junction and Night Tracks are excellent programmes. Resonance FM is also excellent. Radio 6 Music is great as well, but I've not listened to that for a long while as my tastes have changed a bit, although there is the Freak Zone. Radio 1Xtra for Grime, Jungle, Drum n Bass, etc.

Are they all free to listen to or subscription services like Serius radio?

That's a bit of an issue. They are radio stations run by the BBC, so you need a license to listen to them. Which can definitely be seen as a subscription. Also there may be problems with accessing them outside the UK. I assume that VPNs can overcome these issues, but I would never, never suggest that.

Edit: I'm totally wrong. It's telly only that requires the licence, not the radio.

How to access the stations outside the UK:
https://help.bbc.com/hc/en-us/articles/ ... ide-the-UK

The BBC itself is a statutory entity so has legal commitments to fulfil. So it's not allowed to just appeal to the lowest common denominator. Before streaming (satellite TV was always niche in the UK) pretty much every house was legally compelled to pay the licence fee if they had a TV, so it always had a lot of money to give to non-mainstream programming. Also it's commercial wing is highly profitable due to stuff like Top Gear, Dr Who and all the natural history programmes. Nowadays you are allowed not to pay the licence fee as long as you don't access the BBC services TV, but it's a bit of a honesty box situation, I think.

[guitarzan]

black mirror, named after john dee's scrying device, as a metaphor for the smartphone.

off the top of my head no poogle.

GPT-5 mini spins this take on it in prose form:

A black mirror, born of obsidian and the long silence of the night, carries John Dee's old gaze into the palm-sized altar of today: a scrying device shrunk and electrified.

Its glass drinks the room and returns a parallel world of flicker—contacts become courtiers, notifications the tapping of invisible familiars, and algorithms hum like angels or demons whose language we mistake for truth.

We press our thumbs to the dark and read omens in blue light, trading private sigils for the mirror's uncanny counsel; what was once a ritual of prophecy becomes a habit of reflection, each swipe a divination, each screen-bright answer a promise that the future will be legible—if only we keep watching the glass until it watches back.

I guess… whatever

[ghettosynth]

"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" -

Those are some person's ideas, fuckwit.

Go and find the f**king things, then. Because I looked and couldn't find anything even remotely similar, despite multiple searches using different queries.

The willful ignorance on display here is staggering. You're sticking your fingers in your ears and singing "la-la-la" at the top of your voice like a f**king child. Grow the f**k up.

black mirror, named after john dee's scrying device, as a metaphor for the smartphone.

off the top of my head no poogle.

It's highly unlikely that a studio controlled script is in the training data. It would most likely have to be online already, i.e., posted by some fan. Recall that most of the training data was used unlicensed. That's what most of you are all bent out of shape over.

Moreover, the future misinterpreting things from the past, i.e., future archeology, is a longstanding sci-fi trope. In fact, that's your answer. It's such a common trope that it is a plausible continuation. Thus, just because models can give interesting combinations of the training data, doesn't mean that they will. You will get common structures re-expressed though any specifics in the query. If you don't constrain the query, then it will land in the most dense and safe parts of the distribution. That is, you will get common tropes. To move away from common tropes you have to deform the probability language and provide constraints that collide with existing scaffolds.

[wagtunes]

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

No, it goes far deeper than that. You can't honestly suggest that listening to the radio today will expose you to the same breadth and depth of music that you could hear on even the most commercial stations in the 80s. Sure, it might be out there somewhere on some spotty kid's podcast or internet radio but good f**king luck finding it. You only have to look at the charts today to see the truth of this. Almost all of the music I am into today is stuff I first heard on mainstream commercial radio in the 70s and 80s.

I think I last listened to the charts when I was doing my GCSEs.
Radio 3's Late Junction and Night Tracks are excellent programmes. Resonance FM is also excellent. Radio 6 Music is great as well, but I've not listened to that for a long while as my tastes have changed a bit, although there is the Freak Zone. Radio 1Xtra for Grime, Jungle, Drum n Bass, etc.

Are they all free to listen to or subscription services like Serius radio?

That's a bit of an issue. They are radio stations run by the BBC, so you need a license to listen to them. Which can definitely be seen as a subscription. Also there may be problems with accessing them outside the UK. I assume that VPNs can overcome these issues, but I would never, never suggest that.

The BBC itself is a statutory entity so has legal commitments to fulfil. So it's not allowed to just appeal to the lowest common denominator. Before streaming (satellite TV was always niche in the UK) pretty much every house was legally compelled to pay the licence fee if they had a TV, so it always had a lot of money to give to non-mainstream programming. Also it's commercial wing is highly profitable due to stuff like Top Gear, Dr Who and all the natural history programmes. Nowadays you are allowed not to pay the licence fee as long as you don't access the BBC services, but it's a bit of a honesty box situation, I think.

Well that sucks because there are no good radio stations in the US. Oh well.

[Vortifex]

Well that sucks because there are no good radio stations in the US. Oh well.

That person is wrong. You don't need a licence to listen to BBC Radio. And if you're outside the UK you can listen to multiple BBC Radio stations using this link: https://help.bbc.com/hc/en-us/articles/ ... ide-the-UK

Just scroll down and you'll see a long list. I just tried via a USA VPN and it works.

6 Music is very eclectic and great for finding new underground acts. Radio 1 is the mainstream pop station. 1Xtra is 'urban' music. Radio 2 skews older with a more polite range of music and discussion. Radio 3 is classical. Radio 4 is a mix of news, current affairs, documentaries, plays and comedies.

[GaryG]

That's a bit of an issue. They are radio stations run by the BBC, so you need a license to listen to them.

Unless i'm misunderstanding the conversation, no license is needed to listen to BBC radio stations, believe not even to use the BBC sounds app (though may be region blocked).

As for the larger conversation; obviously my personal take but don't understand why anybody would want to create music if they don't have their own ideas... What is the point? Bragging rights...?

[Bunny_boy]

That's a bit of an issue. They are radio stations run by the BBC, so you need a license to listen to them.

Unless i'm misunderstanding the conversation, no license is needed to listen to BBC radio stations, believe not even to use the BBC sounds app (though may be region blocked).

Wait, wait - I'm going to edit that post as I'm totally wrong.

[vurt]

"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" -

Those are some person's ideas, fuckwit.

Go and find the f**king things, then. Because I looked and couldn't find anything even remotely similar, despite multiple searches using different queries.

The willful ignorance on display here is staggering. You're sticking your fingers in your ears and singing "la-la-la" at the top of your voice like a f**king child. Grow the f**k up.

black mirror, named after john dee's scrying device, as a metaphor for the smartphone.

off the top of my head no poogle.

It's highly unlikely that a studio controlled script is in the training data. It would most likely have to be online already, i.e., posted by some fan. Recall that most of the training data was used unlicensed. That's what most of you are all bent out of shape over.

Moreover, the future misinterpreting things from the past, i.e., future archeology, is a longstanding sci-fi trope. In fact, that's your answer. It's such a common trope that it is a plausible continuation. Thus, just because models can give interesting combinations of the training data, doesn't mean that they will. You will get common structures re-expressed though any specifics in the query. If you don't constrain the query, then it will land in the most dense and safe parts of the distribution. That is, you will get common tropes. To move away from common tropes you have to deform the probability language and provide constraints that collide with existing scaffolds.

i was being very specific to remove wiggle room.
if we'd have said "it's a common sci fi trope" you know he'd have said but not the specific ideas!!

as for not coming from a script, the idea behind the name was brought uo in countless interviews and freely available press packages, it was quite a common question for the interviews.

it's not a slam against ai, i realised yesterday, during local news, i have no issue with ai as such. just some specific uses.
however other uses im all for and would like to see more focus on ai as an aid for the disabled.
there was a guy who sang, but motor neurone disease took his voice, he has used ai to model his voice so he can sing again. to me, that's worth a few angry disco songs about old hairdryers as ray guns.

[vurt]

Well that sucks because there are no good radio stations in the US. Oh well.

That person is wrong. You don't need a licence to listen to BBC Radio. And if you're outside the UK you can listen to multiple BBC Radio stations using this link: https://help.bbc.com/hc/en-us/articles/ ... ide-the-UK

Just scroll down and you'll see a long list. I just tried via a USA VPN and it works.

6 Music is very eclectic and great for finding new underground acts. Radio 1 is the mainstream pop station. 1Xtra is 'urban' music. Radio 2 skews older with a more polite range of music and discussion. Radio 3 is classical. Radio 4 is a mix of news, current affairs, documentaries, plays and comedies.

radio 3 is indeed classical, night tracks not entirely so! it still has the serious music vibe, but you will find modular or laptop tracks, alongside new symphonic stuff.
cool show.
Sundays they do some good stuff too, i heard one show about tape loops through history.