Ugh.
When pop groups and rock bands practice or perform, they rely on their guitars, keyboards and drumsticks to make music. Oliver McCann, a British AI music creator who goes by the stage name imoliver, fires up his chatbot.
McCann’s songs span a range of genres, from indie-pop to electro-soul to country-rap. There’s just one crucial difference between McCann and traditional musicians.
“I have no musical talent at all,” he said. “I can’t sing, I can’t play instruments, and I have no musical background at all.”
McCann, 37, who has a background as a visual designer, started experimenting with AI to see if it could boost his creativity and “bring some of my lyrics to life.” Last month, he signed with independent record label Hallwood Media after one of his tracks racked up 3 million streams, in what’s billed as the first time a music label has inked a contract with an AI music creator.
McCann is an example of how ChatGPT-style AI song generation tools like Suno and Udio have spawned a wave of synthetic music. A movement most notably highlighted by a fictitious group, Velvet Sundown, that went viral even though all its songs, lyrics and album art were created by AI.
It fueled debate about AI’s role in music while raising fears about “AI slop” — automatically generated low quality mass produced content. It also cast a spotlight on AI song generators that are democratizing song making but threaten to disrupt the music industry.
Experts say generative AI is set to transform the music world. However, there are scant details, so far, on how it’s impacting the $29.6 billion global recorded music market, which includes about $20 billion from streaming.
The most reliable figures come from music streaming service Deezer, which estimates that 18% of songs uploaded to its platform every day are purely AI generated, though they only account for a tiny amount of total streams, hinting that few people are actually listening. Other, bigger streaming platforms like Spotify haven’t released any figures on AI music.
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Some users say the debate is just a rehash of old arguments about once-new technology that eventually became widely used, such as AutoTune, drum machines and synthesizers.
People complain “that you’re using a computer to do all the work for you. I don’t see it that way. I see it as any other tool that we have,” said Scott Smith, whose AI band, Pulse Empire, was inspired by 1980s British synthesizer-driven groups like New Order and Depeche Mode.
Smith, 56 and a semi-retired former U.S. Navy public affairs officer in Portland, Oregon, said “music producers have lots of tools in their arsenal” to enhance recordings that listeners aren’t aware of.
Like McCann, Smith never mastered a musical instrument. Both say they put lots of time and effort into crafting their music.
Once Smith gets inspiration, it takes him just 10 minutes to write the lyrics. But then he’ll spend as much as eight to nine hours generating different versions until the song “matches my vision.”
McCann said he’ll often create up to 100 different versions of a song by prompting and re-prompting the AI system before he’s satisfied.
AI song generators can churn out lyrics as well as music, but many experienced users prefer to write their own words.
“AI lyrics tend to come out quite cliche and quite boring,” McCann said.
It’s hard to overstate how terrible a lot of AI music is. You should listen to this episode of What Next TBD to get the full flavor of that. I’m sure there’s some worthwhile stuff out there, but the crap factor is very high.
That said, I do have some sympathy for the “everyone complains about the use of new technology” argument. Synths and drum machines are indeed perfectly respectable and respected instruments these days – let’s be honest, though, AutoTune is still trash. I don’t know enough about their use as song generators to compare them to AI tools, which mostly have more user-friendly interfaces. I’ve taken enough AI classes at this point to know that using it for generating ideas or first drafts is greatly overrated, but I’ve never tried to write a song. I do my best to be open minded and receptive to new music – having kids who love music and make you listen to what they like really helps with that – so I should at least try to be somewhat receptive to AI as a tool for inspiration.
But at some level, I will never respect it as much as anything created by a human. As a mediocre sax player since the sixth grade, I know what it takes for people to make music. Give me a band and/or a singer every damn time.