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

[jancivil]

"useless" looks like a figures of speech to me
If the snide remark wasn't about preference of search engine I must've hallucinated this exchange:

"So you don't use a search engine?
"Not Google."
"Well I use google all the time. Sounds like a skill issue."

ignore list beckons

[coroknight]

"useless" looks like a figures of speech to me
If the snide remark wasn't about preference of search engine I must've hallucinated this exchange:

"So you don't use a search engine?
"Not Google."
"Well I use google all the time. Sounds like a skill issue."

ignore list beckons

You missed what came before that but ok.

[BBFG#]

TBF, "Google" has become a verb that doesn't necessarily mean using Google anymore. But as a search engine, I stopped using it a couple or more years ago. I'm also skeptical about information I get from Wikipedia and Snopes...
Some of the most freeing things I've done.

[Grizzellda]

Well I surely respect Wikipedia.

[DCrown]

I suppose that one's view on ai is also influenced by music you like and artists that inspired you.
I almost like all genres and I love arists like Zappa, Prince and Paco de Lucia to name three. They all have in common that they worked very hard to become successful.
Paco started playing guitar at the age of 5. Paco de Lucía practiced guitar for up to 12 hours a day.
Prince released his first album at the age of 19 and played every single instrument on the album (analog recording!).
Zappa, well his compositions and musicians who joined him speak for themselves, beyond just 4/4 beat.
I could also add Bach, everyone should know him.
I like studio/recording/mixing engineers like Dr. Susan Rogers and Al Schmitt. Susan Rogers worked 24/7 hours for Prince with good salary from 1983-1987, if Prince had a new idea at 3 am, she had to come to the studio either in Prince's bed room studio in Minneapolis or to Sunset Sound Studio in LA.
So AI is a complete no-go for me.
I was on a professional level in young years, we would often jam from 5 pm to 2 am in a kind of storage room of a brewery.
I am glad I didn't study music just to end up as a music teacher, especially when I look at the development of music in the last 30 years.

What I am trying to say is that it probably also depends on someone's musical roots (Bach on keys and music theory, Muddy Waters on guitar) whether he/she will ever use ai or not. So the age also matters and ai will be used mainly by younger generations, they just don't have time to focus on practising a lot, cuz they have to spend a lot of time on insta, TikTok&Co., music is spread and hyped via social media nowadays.

We had some drastic changes the last 30 years that completely changed the world:
Pro Tools, internet, smartphones, social media, covid, ai.
If you go deeper you could add some more (no Napster without the internet!), but these 6 things only are the cause of huge changes.


My view is that you need to practise a lot and work hard to become a talented musician, talent doesn't matter that much today, though.
There are always exceptions, it is just about a trend and about the future and about a widely disscussed current topic that will change the world, not just the music world.
The most absurd imagination of future of music is that it will become a competition of upload numbers. X uploads about 300 new tracks per day, Y is the new number one uploader, he managed to upload 410 new tracks on one day.
This imagination is not even absurd, could become true haha.

"Que sera, sera, whatever will be will be, the future..."

[Grizzellda]

We are like... "right in the future" now and we need to cope, to be aware.

Good old fashioned skill at something is gonna be valuable I think, when AI and social media level the playing field for humanity.

When anyone can "write a song like Mozart". Really? You think you actually can?

No, ya cannot, and I am growing weary of this type of nonsense.

[wagtunes]

I suppose that one's view on ai is also influenced by music you like and artists that inspired you.
I almost like all genres and I love arists like Zappa, Prince and Paco de Lucia to name three. They all have in common that they worked very hard to become successful.
Paco started playing guitar at the age of 5. Paco de Lucía practiced guitar for up to 12 hours a day.
Prince released his first album at the age of 19 and played every single instrument on the album (analog recording!).
Zappa, well his compositions and musicians who joined him speak for themselves, beyond just 4/4 beat.
I could also add Bach, everyone should know him.
I like studio/recording/mixing engineers like Dr. Susan Rogers and Al Schmitt. Susan Rogers worked 24/7 hours for Prince with good salary from 1983-1987, if Prince had a new idea at 3 am, she had to come to the studio either in Prince's bed room studio in Minneapolis or to Sunset Sound Studio in LA.
So AI is a complete no-go for me.
I was on a professional level in young years, we would often jam from 5 pm to 2 am in a kind of storage room of a brewery.
I am glad I didn't study music just to end up as a music teacher, especially when I look at the development of music in the last 30 years.

What I am trying to say is that it probably also depends on someone's musical roots (Bach on keys and music theory, Muddy Waters on guitar) whether he/she will ever use ai or not. So the age also matters and ai will be used mainly by younger generations, they just don't have time to focus on practising a lot, cuz they have to spend a lot of time on insta, TikTok&Co., music is spread and hyped via social media nowadays.

We had some drastic changes the last 30 years that completely changed the world:
Pro Tools, internet, smartphones, social media, covid, ai.
If you go deeper you could add some more (no Napster without the internet!), but these 6 things only are the cause of huge changes.


My view is that you need to practise a lot and work hard to be a talented musician, talent doesn't matter that much today, though.
There are always exceptions, it is just about a trend and about the future and about a widely disscussed current topic that will change to world, not just the music world.
The most absurd imagination of future of music is that it will become a competition of upload numbers. X uploads about 300 new tracks per day, Y is the new number one uploader, he managed to upload 410 new tracks on one day.
This imagination is not even absurd, could become true haha.

"Que sera, sera, whatever will be will be, the future..."

You sound like an elderly person like myself. The difference between you and me is that you are stuck in the past and that if things aren't the way they were, they're bad. Whereas I embrace change. I don't use everything out there that's new, but what I feel will help me, I use. I won't ever go to Sumo or whatever and type in "give me a rock song that sounds like Pink Floyd" or whatever I have to type in, make my song and call it a day. I don't think I would get any enjoyment out of that. But I don't condemn others for doing it.

I can't sing very well so I replace my voice with an AI voice. Everything else I do on my own...the writing, playing, mixing, mastering, everything else. That gives me a sense of actually doing something.

You condemn me for using an AI vocal. That's fine. You don't have to like it. But a lot of people do and I'm now getting more compliments on my music now that I've stopped singing.

And you know what? None of that even matters. I enjoy hearing my songs sung by a "better" singer. I wish I had this technology 50 years ago when I first started writing and recording. I may have made a dent in this business sooner than I did.

I look forward to the next tech breakthrough.

[DCrown]

I don't condemn you cuz you use ai for your vocals, I dislike that you don't label it as ai production whenever you post your music and you could specify that it is on vocals only). Yes, some people don't care whether you use ai and like it just like a lot of people don't care whether the fastfood they eat every day is healthy or not
You post quite a lot and that's ok, it tells me that you might prefer quantity over quality, legit!
There will be noise producers who will post or upload 100+ tracks every day, it is easy with ai.
I don't wanna waste time on listening to ai productions, maybe you could understand or accept it. I wrote about my roots and my roots will always remain my roots and I also use a daw, I just can't afford to buy an API console and Tape machines, would prefer to have it, though .
When I was young I would not just listen to the music of my era, I also listened to Django Reinhardt, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Sabicas, even Elvis and Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Sly Stone, Led Zeppelin and many more.
Gone are the days when you would read on albums who participated and find a bassist or mixing engineer or photographer or album cover designer on albums of different bands or musicians and appreciate what they were doing - humans! or even some hardware gear and instruments they used.
"Written, composed, arranged, performed and produced by Prince" on so many albums.
If you are not far away from age 45 like me, then we have a similar age.

[andi75]

For individuals, it's fantastic to be able to compensate for their weaknesses with the help of AI. I personally see nothing wrong with that.
As for the industry, I can't help but think of a quote from "The Incredibles": "When everyone is super, no one will be."
There will be bad music, and there will be good music, and eventually we will get much more from both. At the end it's music, and the only thing that matters to me personally is - do I like it or not?
Should I dislike it, just because AI is involved?
There is already so much bad music out there, remember "U96 - Das Boot" and all the other so called "Techno" crap, so bad musicians don't need AI to f**k it up.
On the other side, good musicians will use AI to improve on things, and not rely on them completely.
Finally, we all can decide what to listen to and what not.

[Grizzellda]

Just keep riff'n , I say, because we are in a kind of a "shake up" now, and just moving thru it...

I am watching alot of movie clips about "The Founder" all about McDonalds, and really enjoying this. Michael Keaton rocks!!! That all American burger!

And I realize how silly that sounds,right?

[guitarzan]

I’m most interested in the AI bandmate type apps like the AI Session Players in Logic Pro 2 or the EZDrummer AI bandmate feature, as described here:

https://www.audiocipher.com/post/ai-bandmate

The idea of an AI DAW is interesting too, the one described in the link above (WavTool) does collaborative ai composition, but all through MIDI, so it’s really just the next generational step for tools that have been around for decades (band in a box stuff, chord progression generators, etc).

I still haven’t tried any of these, but it seem like these types of things would be a lot of fun for musicians to use — they are just advanced tools, they are not designed to spit out finished tunes. The more they perfect these types of tools the funner they would get in my opinion.

[whyterabbyt]

yes. the entire plugin industry dies. also, every daw explodes, killing anyone within a ten-foot radius(*)

in addition, all electronic and electracoustic instruments will corrode to dust, and all acoustic instruments will spontaneously combust, while singers and beatboxers will be rendered mute.

(* only fruitsyloops users will survive, given that its not a real daw)

[Bojo34]

There should be musical compositions/artefacts around that solely depends on computer tech in the most practical sense, as a gigantic re-enforcer/organizing frame of whatever your imagination may produce. If it is at all possible to make computer art with a lasting impression/aesthetical value it should have been done by now.

What music/art can only be created with an AI? There should be something, a certain capability that sets it apart from everything else, but will anybody go look for it? Worth the effort?

Seems to me that the high art avant garde people abandoned computers a long time ago, like already in the 1970's or so. I wonder why.

[jules99]

Imagine being an actual producer for a virtual band: "play F minor here instead", "really lean in to the chords on the pre-chorus", "do a stop and fill like chad smith does in Song XYZ", "can you play this melody (humms) at bar 16?", "ride the fader a little harder on this part in verse 2", "pull the guitars back in the bridge".

This is one way producers producing bands and other artists work and used to work in studios. There could be an AI DAW that allows this, fully offline, fully in real-time. There is enormous creative potential in that, freeing the home producer from too many tedious technical tasks.

But the question that will ultimately decide this is whether there is a market for that. With a big chunk of the user base rejecting generative AI in its current form (rightfully so) and a new user base that wants to just prompt songs, this is the kind of development that takes so much time and money that probably some companies have already considered it but rejected it for that reason.

[wagtunes]

I don't condemn you cuz you use ai for your vocals, I dislike that you don't label it as ai production whenever you post your music and you could specify that it is on vocals only). Yes, some people don't care whether you use ai and like it just like a lot of people don't care whether the fastfood they eat every day is healthy or not
You post quite a lot and that's ok, it tells me that you might prefer quantity over quality, legit!
There will be noise producers who will post or upload 100+ tracks every day, it is easy with ai.
I don't wanna waste time on listening to ai productions, maybe you could understand or accept it. I wrote about my roots and my roots will always remain my roots and I also use a daw, I just can't afford to buy an API console and Tape machines, would prefer to have it, though .
When I was young I would not just listen to the music of my era, I also listened to Django Reinhardt, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Sabicas, even Elvis and Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Sly Stone, Led Zeppelin and many more.
Gone are the days when you would read on albums who participated and find a bassist or mixing engineer or photographer or album cover designer on albums of different bands or musicians and appreciate what they were doing - humans! or even some hardware gear and instruments they used.
"Written, composed, arranged, performed and produced by Prince" on so many albums.
If you are not far away from age 45 like me, then we have a similar age.

No far away from 45? I'm 68 years old my friend. I was listening to music before you were even born. And I too miss the days of a vinyl album with liner notes and inserts.

But here's what I don't miss. All the clicks, pops and skips when records wore out or just never worked properly. I bought 3 copies of Poco's "A Good Feeling To Know" single and ALL of them skipped in the same place.

You want me to make my songs and Ai vocals?

1. Nobody reads any of the stuff I post anyway. I'm lucky if they even click on the song link to listen to it. And this is going back to way before I started using AI vocals.

2. I don't have time to take extra effort to type in words that nobody is going to read.

Hey, I get it. You are NEVER going to listen to a song I post.

Ask me if I care.