KVR Audio

Grizzellda · Post by **Grizzellda** » Tue Jun 16, 2026 5:02 pm

Wow, you guys know... I'm reading this thread and it is deep and complex, but I must wonder, and inquire...

Is anybody here making any money in music??

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Fri Jun 26, 2026 10:00 am

Is that what music is about? It's never been the case for me. As long as we don't cost our label anything, I'm happy to make nothing. You'll probably find that those who are making money, like IvyBirds, are playing straight covers, as in with little or no artistic interpretation. There's certainly no money in original music any more, outside of the very commercial end of the mainstream genres.

ksandvik · Post by **ksandvik** » Fri Jun 26, 2026 11:27 am

Yes, if someone thinks they could make money with Suno prompting, the only ones that make money are the tech-bros selling tokens to naive users.

Zeisner · Post by **Zeisner** » Fri Jun 26, 2026 10:07 pm

ksandvik wrote: Fri Jun 26, 2026 11:27 am Yes, if someone thinks they could make money with Suno prompting, the only ones that make money are the tech-bros selling tokens to naive users.

Some money could be made with adversarial machine learning which of course requires test sessions. Might be a stretch but I find it interesting.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Sun Jun 28, 2026 7:34 am

zerocrossing wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2026 2:37 amI don't really believe that one is born with some property called "talent."

Then you are ignoring reality. So much of what constitutes talent is based on heritable traits - hand-eye co-ordination, intellect, etc. - you can't possibly dismiss it.

zerocrossing wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2026 7:54 pmNot a single Beatle really has any legacy musicians that came from their loins.

Julian Lennon would be extremely hurt by that statement. But the thing to remember about the Beates is that only one of them had any real success outside the Beatles. Even Lennon would never have had a solo career if he wasn't a former-Beatle. He released a lot of solo records to score just a couple of hit singles.

Having long fingers, good fine motor control, etc, are going to give you an advantage for playing a lot of instruments, but if you don't really have interest in it, you'll never get good, while someone who gets inspired by a musician will do the work to overcome their short, clumsy fingers.

But the thing is that someone who has those long fingers and does all the same hard work will always be better than the guy with the short fingers. What is that other than talent?

No matter how long I practice, I could never "shred" like the greats, so instead I mixed my interest in technology and songwriting to become something different.

Why? Why does that matter? I do what I do because it's what I do. I don't measure it against anyone else. If you worry about what other people do or do not do who enslave yourself. The whole basis of the Punk ethos is that you don't need musical talent to be in a band and do something that matters. Mind you, Steve Jones may not have known how to play guitar but it turned out he had plenty of talent.

Zeisner · Post by **Zeisner** » Sun Jun 28, 2026 7:08 pm

Grizzellda wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2026 5:02 pm Is anybody here making any money in music??

I know there are. But they keep quiet for good reasons.

Dirtgrain · Post by **Dirtgrain** » Mon Jun 29, 2026 5:45 pm

Is Talent Born or Created with Hard Work and Practice

mabian · Post by **mabian** » Mon Jun 29, 2026 8:53 pm

My 2 cents... If there something Suno is "killing" is enjoying the process of making music. I could be dead wrong, of course...

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Mon Jun 29, 2026 11:06 pm

You are. As I've said many times now, the process of making our new album using AI is easily the most enjoyable production process I've been involved in. Also the hardest I've ever worked on an album.

ksandvik · Post by **ksandvik** » Tue Jun 30, 2026 7:22 am

Tidal now flags AI content and does not provide any streaming profits. Hurrah, Apple Music next I hope (Spotify is hopeless but they will drown in their AI slop long term

.

I'm not against AI, I'm against AI writing music and humans sitting there prompting AI that uses pre-existing patterns shuffling them around -- it's so non-human in my humble opinion.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Tue Jun 30, 2026 10:40 am

First of all, nobody makes money from streaming anyway. We need to have a song streamed more than 9,000 times to make one Euro. Maybe if you don't have a distributor and a label taking a cut you can make a little more but not paying is hardly going to be a disincentive.

Secondly, what could be more human than using pre-existing patterns to write songs? What's a chord but a "pre-existing pattern"? What is a time signature but a "pre-exiting pattern". What is a key but a "pre-existing pattern"? And a drumloop is the very definition of a "pre-existing pattern", but that doesn't stop humans using the shit out of them to make music. Then there's 12 Bar Blues, Peter Gunn, verse-chorus structures, etc., etc., etc. It's all "pre-existing patterns", it's the "shuffling them around", how you put them together, that makes a song and AI can do that just as well as any human (and, as it turns out, better than my bandmate and I can).

mabian · Post by **mabian** » Tue Jun 30, 2026 10:48 am

BONES wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2026 10:40 am First of all, nobody makes money from streaming anyway. We need to have a song streamed more than 9,000 times to make one Euro. Maybe if you don't have a distributor and a label taking a cut you can make a little more but not paying is hardly going to be a disincentive.

Secondly, what could be more human than using pre-existing patterns to write songs? What's a chord but a "pre-existing pattern"? What is a time signature but a "pre-exiting pattern". What is a key but a "pre-existing pattern"? And a drumloop is the very definition of a "pre-existing pattern", but that doesn't stop humans using the shit out of them to make music. Then there's 12 Bar Blues, Peter Gunn, verse-chorus structures, etc., etc., etc. It's all "pre-existing patterns", it's the "shuffling them around", how you put them together, that makes a song and AI can do that just as well as any human (and, as it turns out, better than my bandmate and I can).

Yeah of course, then you're using "words" which are patterns, and just arranging them into sentences which are patterns... this is how a bot makes music, statistically and just because it worked in the training material.

But, even though I haven't listen closely to Suno productions, I'm wondering. Do they have tasteful solos? Do they have an arrangement construction that closely follows the lyrics so that they go in pairs as a unique emotional wave? To be honest, I'm not really sure. Some historical masterpieces broke the rules instead of following them. And, is Suno able to break them?
For example, let me see Suno build a song with the structure, feel and intention of something like "Purple Rain"... especially when a track like it, with its specifics, didn't exist at all...
But, I know, I'm the one who's wrong...

SUNO is killer!