AI disqualifies anyone as a musician! It's like playback.

[enroe]

Using AI to compose a song or to create the lyrics disqualifies you
as a musician. Totally.

As a true musician, you struggle – with feeling, with great effort
and sweat – to create a composition, making many changes
sometimes through the night. If you leave all this to a machine,
then you relinquish your creativity; then it is no longer you who
composed this song. It is then an AI song.

The same applies to the lyrics: You yourself wrestle with every
word and every sentence, turning its meaning over and over
countless times, rearranging the words until you're satisfied, until
you like your lyrics. If you let AI do all that, then it's no longer you
who expresses the feelings, who conveys the message. It's the AI.

You are no longer a musician, no longer an artist – but a mere
consumer! You might as well press the play button on a CD player
or select an MP3 from a long list.

You are no longer a musician!

[zerocrossing]

True. I don't think it's much to worry about, though. People will get bored with it, and those who stick with it will start finding it too expensive, once they start charging enough for it to be profitable.

[enroe]

True. I don't think it's much to worry about, though. People will get bored with it, and those who stick with it will start finding it too expensive, once they start charging enough for it to be profitable.

I like your optimism!

[jamcat]

Using AI to compose a song or to create the lyrics disqualifies you
as a musician. Totally.

No, just as playing covers doesn’t “disqualify you as a musician.” A musician plays music. That is the only qualification.

Using AI could invalidate you as a songwriter, perhaps. But even here, it depends.

Elton John writes his own music, but Bernie Taupin writes Elton’s lyrics. Is Elton John disqualified as a songwriter?

Marc Almond and Dave Ball of Soft Cell wrote ‘We Rock’ for Dio (look it up!) Does that disqualify Ronnie James Dio as a songwriter? Or as a singer?

Louis Clark (of ELO and ‘Hooked On Classics’ fame) did the string arrangement for Ozzy Osbourne’s ’Diary Of A Madman’. Does that disqualify Randy Rhoads as a songwriter? Or as a musician?

Do John Lennon and Paul McCartney disqualify each other as songwriters?

After all, if you are outsourcing, you are outsourcing. It doesn’t matter who—or what—you are outsourcing to. Whether it’s your bandmate, AI, or some guy on Fiver (who may be using AI), either way you didn’t do the work.

[GaryG]

I don't think using AI to write a song disqualifies you as a musician when you play it (classical musicians rarely play stuff they've written...) but I'd question your worth as a songwriter for sure.

People have used various methods over the years to get past writers block, cut up techniques, random word cards, thesaurus' etc so AI isn't that much of a stretch if that's how you're using it. But using it to create a complete song from some prompts... there's a cut off surely? Where you leave enough of that random, messy humanity behind so the results are just generic to the point of blandness?

Interesting view on songwriting (no AI...) : https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/ ... ng-started

[Zeisner]

Funny times we're living in. A couple of decades ago I wouldn't have thought that people will walk into a McDonald's, order a cheeseburger without a pickle and then truly believe to be a cook. And not just a cook - a master cook. Not even writers like Harlan Ellision were able to imagine such degrees of stupidity, laziness, greed, insanity and narcissism combined. It's fascinating.

But here's the thing: It's pointless trying to explain to a stupid person that they're stupid. It won't make them smarter. The same applies to all the other negative aspects mentioned. No human being ever made progress because of an explanation. There's only one thing that causes humans to make progress and it's suffering, just like artists who struggle with learning their skills and finding ways to communicate their thoughts and feelings. So let all those AI slopsters suffer.

Edit: Removed doubled paragraph.

[Hipster Bales]

David Guetta used to be so good (with his One Love album back in 2009 imho), but now he's falling off and just remixing old classics for a bit of $$$$

[starflakeprj]

AI has little to do with musicians. I don’t understand why people keep mixing up, or confusing, musicians with producers, composers or songwriters. That’s where the real comparison with AI lies.

[ksandvik]

Frankly speaking I think *avoiding* the blood, sweat and tears to write music and compose texts is the reason behind prompt music. The result is then also bland.

[Hipster Bales]

Frankly speaking I think *avoiding* the blood, sweat and tears to write music and compose texts is the reason behind prompt music. The result is then also bland.

I completely agree with this! There are people who are willing to spend a month on 1 project (like me 99% of the time) and then there are people who just want to generate slop for a quick buck.

[pekbro]

Ai means love

[zerocrossing]

I don't think using AI to write a song disqualifies you as a musician when you play it (classical musicians rarely play stuff they've written...) but I'd question your worth as a songwriter for sure.

People have used various methods over the years to get past writers block, cut up techniques, random word cards, thesaurus' etc so AI isn't that much of a stretch if that's how you're using it. But using it to create a complete song from some prompts... there's a cut off surely? Where you leave enough of that random, messy humanity behind so the results are just generic to the point of blandness?

Interesting view on songwriting (no AI...) : https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/ ... ng-started

I forget the exact date, but I recently learned that somewhere around 2023, over half the internet was bot traffic. Let that sink in a second. Since then, the proliferation of generative AI must have that number up even higher. So when Sonus is out trolling for content, it's like a dog eating its own vomit. I think the quality of AI music is going to get worse as time goes on, and it didn't start out great.

I don't really have a moral issue with any of it. Lots of music has been generic since... forever. I still can't figure out why people think Taylor Swift is so great. It's the most mediocre music I've ever heard. If you're a song writer and just want to turn your melodies into fully produced tracks, have at it. I don't want to do that, because I like producing tracks. I get pleasure from it, and satisfaction from doing it, but I'm offloading stuff too. I'm not learning how to play the drums for a track I want real sounding drums on. I'm using Addictive Drums and finding the beat that's close to what's in my head and then editing it to get it the rest of the way. Why? I'm not a drummer, and have no real desire to work with one. I guess I could use Sonus for that, or whatever. I'm already using a machine model voice synthesizer, but I'm very much in control over a lot of what's happening in each moment, like I would a synthesizer line.

What really doesn't make any sense to me is the prompt jockeys who are just asking for a song in a style with a little description. What satisfaction can you get from that? Why not just listen to music? Why would anyone listen to your AI track when making them is so low effort? If people end up just asking AI to make music that only they listen to... that's some Dark Mirror sh!t. Bleak.

[BBFG#]

Whether it does or not, is or isn't, it will also have an element of "artificial".
Like saccharin in a diet pound cake.

One thing I often remind people talking about Elton John is he didn't write the words of his best.

[Bunny_boy]

One thing I often remind people talking about Elton John is he didn't write the words of his best.

He didn't write the words to his worst either!

--------------

Some singers' most famous songs are the 2nd/3rd/4th interpretation of something written by a professional songwriter. But they are all written by humans and it's finding the humanity in the song. The same with classical music, and theatre to an extent, I think.

[Tiles]

Using AI to compose a song or to create the lyrics disqualifies you
as a musician. Totally.

As a true musician, you struggle – with feeling, with great effort
and sweat – to create a composition, making many changes
sometimes through the night. If you leave all this to a machine,
then you relinquish your creativity; then it is no longer you who
composed this song. It is then an AI song.

The same applies to the lyrics: You yourself wrestle with every
word and every sentence, turning its meaning over and over
countless times, rearranging the words until you're satisfied, until
you like your lyrics. If you let AI do all that, then it's no longer you
who expresses the feelings, who conveys the message. It's the AI.

You are no longer a musician, no longer an artist – but a mere
consumer! You might as well press the play button on a CD player
or select an MP3 from a long list.

You are no longer a musician!

Ah yes, thanks for the reminder that authenticity requires suffering. Nothing says “true art” like staring at a half-finished chord progression at 3:47 AM while your coffee goes cold and your neighbors slowly learn your entire creative breakdown in surround sound.

I hope you personally consequently reject every tool since 1960, write lyrics with a quill, and wrestle your DAW into submission. And don't forget to pretend drum machines, synth presets, and vocal chains aren’t just machines doing the work for you. Keep up the good work on the “pure acoustic” front!

AI doesn’t mean you stop doing the work. It just changes where the effort goes. And honestly, this “struggle equals authenticity” argument doesn’t prove anything about music. It just shows you have no idea how modern production actually works, or what AI is capable of today. The spectrum ranges from a one-click preset with zero creative input, to using AI for vocals, instrumentation, jamming, mixing, or mastering. That’s no different anymore than traditional VSTs. Just more powerful. And more efficient.

Effort and understanding still matter if someone wants to grow. If a person stays at the “push button, done” stage, they’ll plateau quickly. But that’s been true long before AI.

So the real difference isn’t the tool, it’s how much of yourself you actually put into the result. And this part is also with AI very possible, and even necessary i may add. Using AI doesn't automatically make you a non musician in the same way that using samples or a drum comupter doesn't make you to a non musician.

But feel free to keep your tools analog and your coffee cold. That's fine for me.