In a world where you have all the musical masterpieces of history available to you with one tap why would you waste time listening to algorithmically generated mediocrity?
In theory, I could imagine an AI which learns the exact type of music you like and generates songs precisely tuned for your brain.
If the result is too same-y and you get bored of it, no problem, just hit the big red button. The AI also knows how to make a new song which is just different enough to excite you again, but still familiar enough to grab you in all the right ways.
> In theory, I could imagine an AI which learns the exact type of music you like and generates songs precisely tuned for your brain.
We've tried it with social media (a feed generated and tuned to keep your brain clicking on ads), and the end result seems close enough to an utter disaster (in terms of impacts on society and humans) to try to avoid doing that thing again, in a different space.
Therefore, I'm sure it will happen quickly, and someone will make a lot of money on it. Feedback chambers are clearly profitable.
The interesting parts of being human, though (IMO...), are finding the different things you like. In the musical realm, conversations with other people about music where you have somewhat different tastes, find overlap, and have to be able to describe music in forms they'll understand (I personally prefer doing this without any actual music available to listen to...) is just fun.
As is tossing on something with a lot of randomness in the mix, finding something interesting, and going and exploring their catalog. I'll suggest Unleash the Archers, Northwest Passage, should you be interested in the "metal Canadian folk covers" category.
The smooth drug of AI-generated brain-rut music... sorry. I'll pass.
Your favorite song loses its ability to trigger your dopamine when you listen to it 100 times in a row. Being able to generate unlimited music in the style of your favorite song sounds amazing.
I’ve never heard of someone enjoying a song more after the 100th time. I’d say there’s a sweet spot around the 3rd or 4th play for me, after that I enjoy the song less on each play.
I just checked my last.fm stats and for my top artist I have around 7400 listens over a few years time. The artist has 110 songs listed on last.fm so on average 67 listens per track. The most listened track is at over 200 times, but that is mainly due to the shuffle algortihm.
The actual numbers are quite a bit higher since not all of the listens have been tracked.
It's interesting - I cannot wrap my head around how anybody could think that idea is amazing, but I don't really want to pass any judgement on it, I just wonder if we fundamentally have different relationships to music.
> Your favorite song loses its ability to trigger your dopamine when you listen to it 100 times in a row. Being able to generate unlimited music in the style of your favorite song sounds amazing.
One thing that would be innovative / creative:
Imagine if an artist writes a song, then trains an AI on their own new song.
After doing that, they could have the AI produce a hundred variations of the song, and crowdsource which one is the best.
I understand they do something with commercials, but in a manual way. They basically publish multiple commercials and then measure the response to gauge which commercial resonates the most.
If you've not played with mynoise.net, you might give it a shot. It's one person's passion project to do exactly this - more or less infinitely variable background noise. Each soundscape has a range of samples (typically 8-10 sections), and you can adjust the levels for each section individually - or let it automatically fade stuff around. Some of the newer stuff is more algorithmically generated "infinite variation" music.
I've easily put thousands of hours on the Flying Fortress option - both my kids slept better with the low background rumble of WWII bombers thundering away in their rooms (the womb is very loud, and, yes, there's a womb noise simulator too), and I love it for office background noise, though my office doesn't have other people in it (typically).
I'm far, far more comfortable paying for this sort of thing, where he's gone and sampled stuff in person, than with something that's just "scraped the internet" and replicated something or another.
Another +1 for mynoise.net from a happy subscriber. The neuromodulator with some binaural tones does a good job of calming down my tinnitus (and blocking out, e.g., people on public transport.)
very interesting intersection there, the unrepeatable song, like AI riffing never to be heard again. Pulling the digital into the realm of the ephemeral, almost like a live performance. What a combination of thoughts married up there.
Ha, there is no music that eveyrone agrees is a masterpiece already. People will what their ears like regardless of someone's opinion of the "quality".
AI increasing the music in the world and lowering the bar to creation will mean it can both generate music specific to a few people's tastes and guaranteed top 100 hits in some regions. Much like many human artists can do today.
Tastes vary, but the best music that exists is invariably an "acquired taste". In other words: it takes listening to a lot of good music to be able to appreciate good music.
Of course that is a completely different situation and one I would welcome but that’s not where we are now and I’m guessing not where we will be any time soon.
In a world where you can have algorithmically generated personally targeted stuff fed to you, why would you bother with the past? Why not instead live in an eternal ephemeral present?
