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

[Sourcery4545]

I do no think moltbook is joke, and I can think of real use cases.
On the other hand, I think you are 100% right.
Like any other ai stuff, it is a joke, yes.
Error rate still around 50%, still we have no clue how to measure conciousness of ai.
Still much hallucinations and still an ai that is more like a bad shrink then anything else.
Always saying things like:
I can fully understand the crazy stuff you are asking!

really???

[Zeisner]

Still much hallucinations and still an ai that is more like a bad shrink then anything else.

That's a fitting analogy.

[Sourcery4545]

thank you. I felt attacked here, today, by others...
It is good to end discussion with some kinds of agreement, somehow.
It is crazy, that the off topic section is not for new members, here.
Maybe this was all already too far off topic - what should I do?

[Zeisner]

Maybe this was all already too far off topic - what should I do?

You could make music. Also great for self-therapy. I put all my "ghosts" into my music. Much better than talking to a bad shrink or AI.

[Sourcery4545]

Right. thanks. That is my plan, anyways: making music

[Zeisner]

Share it too! Sharing is caring.

[guitarzan]

…Otherwise its just a dumb mashup machine.

Right from the AI horse’s mouth (this is a quote from a portion of the response I got from a prompt about the future plans for the new Lyria beta about 10 minutes after it went live this morning):

It’s moving from "generate a song" to "build a song with me." For now, I'm still in Beta, focusing on these 30-second sparks of inspiration, but the end goal is definitely to give you the technical control needed to expand these ideas into full, editable works!

So at least the use that Lyria has been taught that it was created to perform is ultimately to produce raw material for the musician to then comprehensively edit into their own creative vision.

Those tools are in the works (again, according to Lyria), and that includes individual instrument editing and much more (that would imply stem separation, so you could just get rid of the parts you want to play yourself).

So that is what Lyria has been taught is coming. That’s what I was hoping for too. I’d really like to see MIDI out that preserves all the fine details, and Lyria agrees that it is possible with enough AI training.

I only really care about the instrumental parts; drums and keyboards in particular. Bass too, though I can play bass and would probably replace it with my own variations (as a guitar player I can physically play bass guitar but I don’t think like a bass player).

The MIDI data would be really nice for creative use, yes.

But it seems like the music scene will largely dumb down with these tools. Let the AI software generate a song with individual channels, including MIDI, the artist then tweaks the data, releases as their own. In 30 years do many people still know how to creatively think and design new songs from scratch? Will most be from then on co-dependent on the AI software for ideas and direction? I don't buy the lack of consistency between songs either. As you indicate, what the tool can do today isn't the limiting factors to what it may do tomorrow.

I think this has far more reaching implications for humanity too. I look at how helper technologies have affected humans in non-musical avenues and it does make me wonder.

Look at GPS, people today can't get anywhere without GPS. Or even within online searching, I see many of people now go to social media to ask the most basic of questions that could easily be searched for on google. And, even then, sometimes the words they use don't convey the request satisfactorily. We're becoming idiocracy in the West. And it is a slow, subtle degradation.

Decades ago, I watched an episode of the TV show, Star Trek The Next Generation, that seems to have covered this notion. The crew visited a planet where the inhabitants built a super complex computer system. A super "intelligence", for lack of a better term. They became codependent on it, reliant for every decision. But the technology was so adept at taking care of everything, over generations the society forgot how it functioned. They couldn't change or repair it, when they needed to.

It may seem far fetched today, considering the infancy of the AI tools, but I already see the buddings of such dependency beginning. Both some Young and Old already consult the AI prompt as if it's response is the definitive answer on everything. This also means whoever controls the AI prompt also controls the way people think.

I just don't see the smaller positives outweighing the massive negatives with AI in our future. I know how lazy humans can be (I'm one) so I know if people can offload tasks and even thinking, they will.

There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. Even after the initial bubble bursts, AI technology will still be there like the internet after dot-com.

Arranger keyboards wasn’t the end for musicians. Extensive use of prerecorded loops wasn’t either. Algorithmic composing tools were huge in the ‘80s. Software like Band in a Box and Jammer… Plus the plan is for increased editing abilities in AI generated music so I think we’ll survive.

Actually I see it as a boon to individual musicians like me who are just looking for material to jam over. It seems like a great unending source of material to improvise over, and improvisation was what attracted me to music in the first place. Improvisation is where truly fresh music has always been created in my opinion.

[wagtunes]

This is not going to be a popular statement but honestly, I don't care. Mind you, I only use AI to replace my vocals with better sounding vocals. I still write, perform, mix and master all my own songs.

Now that THAT'S out of the way, I think many (not all) writers, musicians, whatever, lash out against AI because of their own inadequacies as a writer, performer, whatever. They work hard to do what they do and what they do isn't all that great. Then they hear somebody use AI to do what they do and it sounds just as good if not better. So it makes them angry. It comes down to a lack of confidence in their own abilities.

I don't have a problem with people using AI because I've spent 50 years to get where I am and have finally reached a point where I can be proud of what I produce. Even if some people here still don't like my music (and many don't) it doesn't matter. I've had my success. No, I'm no Taylor Swift. But I'm also no John Doe sitting in his basement who can't even get 10 plays on Soundcloud.

So if other people want to use AI to create whole songs, doesn't bother me. I'm not threatened by them. I know I will always have my audience.

That's what this comes down to for many (AGAIN, NOT ALL) musicians. It's not a righteous thing of what's right and wrong. it's plain insecurity because their stuff isn't as good as AI stuff.

Now by all means everyone offended by what I just said, take your shot at me.

I more than expect it coming.

[ghettosynth]

Moltbook is just a joke, a prank. OpenAI has to pretend it's serious to push the image of AGI being right around the corner, that's why they hired Schlicht. They need to keep the hypetrain going to attract investors and keep the bubble from bursting which would take all other of Altman's projects with it (and of course his fortune).

OpenAI didn't buy moltbook. They hired the developer of openclaw. They know full well what moltbook is and what it isn't. The project clawdbot->moltbot->openclaw had some serious problems and was hyped up by a particular crowd, but it is useful software. If someone ran it in an open environment connected to their personal accounts, then that is their failure to do due diligence. In this context the problem is not AI, per se, it's that people don't understand internet security but set up service on the web anyway. That did not make openclaw useless for people who know how to balance safety and utility,.

You can keep telling yourself that agents aren't useful and analogizing to flying cars if it helps you sleep at night, but you are missing the point. If you can't employ agents in a useful capacity then that speaks to your own limitations. The key difference with things like flying cars is that they aren't vaporware. Flying cars were a vision, not a tool that existed in any practical sense. Many of you are reading the headlines and failing to understand that they are expressing incentives under constraint. In short, don't believe everything that you read. At the moment, much of the productivity gains from AI are accruing to individuals, particularly those running it as shadow IT. This will change, but systems building takes time and lessons are learned hard when you make knee-jerk decisions based on quarterly reports.

Don't kid yourself, people are using agents every single day to get real work accomplished. When that is a reasonable choice is a function of the type of work and the associated risk exposure from a mistake as compared to a human. Making that assessment is a key component of skill in implementing AI responsibly. It's wish thinking to believe that this is going away. A shakeup will not change any aspect of what I'm talking about.

[martinjuenke]

^^^ This.

[guitarzan]

Hey — there’s a new sub-forum for all these AI threads:
Machine Learning and AI for Music Creation

Could this thread be sent there?

Yeah, a mod could move it. They’ll probably have a roundup for all the stray AI posts and move them there eventually.

[BONES]

The DAW could become a creative tool though, in itself, with the adoption of AI generative features.

Yeah, I think Suno is already offering such a thing.

I don't necessarily agree that current mashup and averaging based AI really puts it ahead of most human created music.

Then you're not paying attention. Most music is very derivative. Most of us aren't interested in pushing boundaries, we're not obsessed with making something totally new, never heard before. We just want to make the kind of music we like and enjoy and most of the time that's stuff that sounds familiar. To anyone unfamiliar with our chosen genre, our music would undoubtedly sound just like all the other stuff in that genre.

At the end of the day, the only thing I care about is that whatever music we make should be good. It could be something original or it could be a cover version of someone else's song, as long as it sounds good, I'm happy. If people can listen to our music and hear the influences of other artists in it, that actually makes me proud. We even go so far as to deliberately embed little homages to artists we like in some of our songs.

At the moment Tunee is providing us with really good songs, which I am more than happy to get up on stage and perform. You can't argue with that, it's a judgement each of us will make, but to suggest that AI isn't capable of creating anything worthwhile, that it can't do at least as good a job as you or I, is utter nonsense. It absolutely can and it is only going to get better and better at it.

Even with the prompt. It's just a new representation of what is already present.

The same is true every time you use a sample pack or a preset or an arpeggiator or a common chord or something as ubiquitous as a 4/4 kick rhythm. None of that makes what you're doing invalid, does it? If AI is utilising similar tropes, then it is just doing what we all do. How is that not self-evident?

It didn't add any uniqueness or distinction to it's output.

Of course it did, otherwise you'd listen to it and be able to point to exactly where it came from, which isn't the case with any AI stuff I have heard. What I hear is the same blend of influences that I hear when I listen to any music. e.g. Tunee's output isn't as easily categorised as the way Oasis has ripped off the Beatles wholesale or how John Foxx's Sitting at the Edge of the World borrows heavily from Strawberry Fields. It's as subtle as most of our influences are and I think that's because it doesn't always see the boundaries in the way that we do, so it combines things we'd not necessarily think to do ourselves.

As you say, Garbage In -> Garbage Out. I suppose we could say the baseline output is based on a dataset that is generally more appealing to most listeners though, if that is what you meant.

No, what I meant was that the output you get from AI is a reflection of how much tie and effort you put into your prompts. If you just tell it to "write me a pop song", you'll get that "averaged out" sound you all seem so keen to vilify but if you take your time and craft a really detailed prompt, AI is capable of giving you genuinely new and exciting material. Sure, the hit rate is incredibly low, maybe less than one good thing in a hundred, but it can do really good things if you have the patience to work with it.
[quote[Humans have unique aspects that allow them to take unique, creative actions. Namely we have the option to decide, to make spurious decisions even. Which makes us spontaneous and chaotic at times.[/quote]
Nowhere near as chaotic or spontaneous as AI, believe me. Working with it can be infuriating at times - you tell it to do one thing and it does completely another. It's part of what makes it so rewarding when it gets things exactly right. Because it is hard work, a real struggle at times. I am in awe of what my bandmate has been able to achieve with AI. Maybe it puts me in a unique position, to be able to se what it's capable of in the right hands.

The AI is a prompt (today) that follows a ruleset and regurgitates data based on that ruleset, the dataset, and the prompt.

You mean like scales and chords, tempo and rhythm, the same rulesets we all work to?

It doesn't have a mind of it's own so to speak.

So f**king what? It doesn't need it's own mind, any more than a clarinet does. It's YOUR mind that's doing the heavy lifting, the AI is just your servant, doing what you tell it to do.

So I disagree it is truly creating something new from whole cloth.

I meant that in the context of it's not just cutting up other songs and pasting the bits together into something else. It's doing what we do, it's taking a whole slew of influences and using that to inform what it does, as guided by your prompt.

Even with the human guiding it, the output is still limited by it's pre-recorded dataset of songs and ruleset.

As are we all, my friend. How do you think your music would sound if you had never heard any music before in your life? We are all the sum of our influences, as is AI. The big difference is that we have preference for certain things, whereas the AI is largely agnostic, it will pump out any kind of shit you like.

It can't create happy accidents in the studio.

It does if that's where your computer is. It does it all the time, at a thousand times the rate I've ever experienced that.

It doesn't even know what a studio really is, or affect elements in the studio.

It doesn't need to, although if you ask an AI to create an image of a studio, it can do a good job of drawing one. It could undoubtedly also explain how a studio functions in more detail than you could, it just has no need to apply that to the process of creating a song. It's different to us.

[VitaminD]

The DAW could become a creative tool though, in itself, with the adoption of AI generative features.

Yeah, I think Suno is already offering such a thing.

I don't necessarily agree that current mashup and averaging based AI really puts it ahead of most human created music.

Then you're not paying attention. Most music is very derivative. Most of us aren't interested in pushing boundaries, we're not obsessed with making something totally new, never heard before. We just want to make the kind of music we like and enjoy and most of the time that's stuff that sounds familiar. To anyone unfamiliar with our chosen genre, our music would undoubtedly sound just like all the other stuff in that genre.

Oh I am paying attention, which is why my initial foray into this thread was to say AI will more quickly affect the most formulaic genres first. I've said at least once, in this thread, that the more derivative the music, the easier it will be for AI to copy. Even I can see that coming!

Yet one doesn't even need to be interested in pushing boundaries to make a new sound or introduce something fresh. Something AI isn't necessarily going to provide.

I'm thinking though, in the realm of alt-rock back in the 1990s, something like couldn't possibly have existed through AI. It's so off the wall sonically. It's a dichotomy of gentle and anger and has a unique intro, even though all the elements that make it up had been done at length. Even if one was to just take ideas from AI and record it, that song wouldn't have likely come out of an AI output.

At the end of the day, the only thing I care about is that whatever music we make should be good. It could be something original or it could be a cover version of someone else's song, as long as it sounds good, I'm happy. If people can listen to our music and hear the influences of other artists in it, that actually makes me proud. We even go so far as to deliberately embed little homages to artists we like in some of our songs.

True. I think you're right in releasing what you do enjoy, I hope we're all doing that. And influences are generally a positive attribute in music, since people do seem to value the familiar to some degree -- both artists and listener. But I think we should also be pushing ourselves a little too to make what we consider better music over time. Growth is a great aspect for an artist as well as a human, however one defines it. Maybe AI helps that for some, but I think it is going to send most into generic ruts of boringness... And we're going to have a lot more of what many will consider well packaged dross, since it will be a lot more easier to create.

[BONES]

I think many (not all) writers, musicians, whatever, lash out against AI because of their own inadequacies as a writer, performer, whatever. They work hard to do what they do and what they do isn't all that great. Then they hear somebody use AI to do what they do and it sounds just as good if not better. So it makes them angry. It comes down to a lack of confidence in their own abilities.

This hits the nail on the head. It is insecurity and fragile egos, afraid that their lack of ability will see them left behind.

I don't have a problem with people using AI because I've spent 50 years to get where I am and have finally reached a point where I can be proud of what I produce.

I think this is another really important aspect that many people don't understand. I've been doing this for 40+ years and I am still improving. Every new album is better than everything that's gone before. Better songs, better performance, better production. I keep wondering when we'll top out, our last three albums are all better than I ever believed we were capable of, but we seem to keep improving.

[BONES]

yeah, this is all scientific covered, already.
When I was young, china had a law, that only one child was allowed.
Now, they do not have this law anymore, because they do not need it:
China's fertility rate has dropped to a record low of approximately 1.0 births per woman as of 2023-2025.

The thing is, the CCP may have relaxed the one child rule but most Chinese still think it was a good idea, because that's how they were indoctrinated, so they tend to stick to one child anyway.

Arrogance, laziness, greed, narcissism, egocentrism, solipsism, sociopathy, sadism, stupidity - those are the final bosses of the high-tech societies. AI is just a catalyst.

Don't make me laugh, most of those traits are being exhibited in spades on your side of the argument, along with paranoia and fear of the unknown.

To all the shitty AI music? Really?

He won't know whether it's shitty AI music or shitty human music, given that it all sounds the same and it's almost all shitty.

Still much hallucinations and still an ai that is more like a bad shrink then anything else.
Always saying things like:
I can fully understand the crazy stuff you are asking! really???

To me it's more like an encouraging mum, trying to be supportive even if it doesn't really understand.