We've seen a steady shift in music over the past 2 decades from full length albums, to single hits, to artificially generated.
Surely there's some gained and some lost. But coming from the era of buying an entire album, spending time reading the CD booklets and art, and listening to 10 songs which tell a larger story ---- what's being lost really hits home.
There is another new trend now that some artists are doing album concerts, where the set list follows one of their albums. I thought that was cool.. probably as a reaction, on how to bring back the album in a way.
It's similar pattern that we've seen previously, but exaggerated by modern trends and modern technology: the most popular cultural items will often be meaningless and base, and if you want something substantial you need other ways to find meaningful content.
iTunes? i wonder what kind of sales we're talking about here. people buying music is few and far between, and i wonder what percentage of that customer base buys their music on iTunes when there are great alternatives offering lossless files
i love the braindead takes in the replies you are getting. attacking you for enjoying AI music. these people are in for a rude awakening... actually no. they'll assimilate quietly and pretend they were never this dense.
AI music is just as good as all human-made music. It is at the point of indistinguishability now and anyone actually using suno v5+ knows this.
my music tastes are pretty mainstream, and this just does absolutely nothing for me. it's exactly what i'd expect AI music to sound like - completely forgettable, with nothing interesting about it.
i'd be willing to believe that this music was legitimately charting if it had at least some redeeming qualities, but i can't imagine how this could honestly get eleven spots on the iTunes chart without gaming it in some way.
It's interesting to me that all AI music sounds slightly sibilant - like someone taped a sheet of paper to the speaker or covered my head in dry leaves. I know no model is perfect but I'd have thought they'd have ironed out this problem by now, given how pervasive it is and how significantly it degrades the end product.
I dabbled with AI music for a bit with Suno. Worked out well for the most part, only way I'm ever going to hear music with themes for some of niche things I like, like Shadowrun. I threw a bunch of music genres at it and some were good enough that I added them to my normal playlist but after about 30 completed songs I had a hard time coming up with new stuff. As someone who has never tried to create music myself it was fun to play with.
It can definitely produce some good songs. One issue is a lot of its output ends up being very same-y. You use Suno for any period of time and you get a "Suno ear" where you can detect AI music from a mile off.
I searched Spotify and Apple music top 100 songs and Eddie Dalton is not on either. I think the majority of users do not buy singles on iTunes anymore so this may be an easy chart to manipulate. The source mentions the name of the creator in the second line leading me to believe this is some clever advertising for Dallas Little's AI.
So absolutely tasteless it should be banned.
I think it's fine if people want to generate music at home like this but also, isn't it questionable what is even copyrightable? Apple makes you pay for this?
oh man, I just am so bummed that around 2007 I ditched my 20 year collection of CDs and went digital whaaaaa!
I wonder how well it would work to use AI as a front end to Band-in-a-Box?
Band-in-a-Box is a commercial program that has been around since 1990. What it did then was let you specify a chord progression, style, tempo, and instruments and it would make a generate a MIDI track. I think it might have also been able to take a melody and come up with a chord progression for it in a style/genre of your choosing.
The target market was musicians. Instrumentalists used it generate tracks to improvise or solo with for example, and songwriters found it useful to essentially have a full band at their beck and call while composing.
Over the years they added more features, and switched to sounds from recordings of real instruments played by real musicians. They have very good stretching and pitch transposition so you can use these at a range of tempos and keys and they still sound good.
It is still aimed at musicians, and can be overwhelming to others. This I've read is made worse because as it has grown in features and capabilities in the 25+ years it has been available the interface has become kind of disjoint.
It is not something the kind of person who just wants to describe what they want to hear and have a song produced would enjoy. But if an AI could operate it for them, maybe that would work and the result would be something with much better sounding instruments than the AI song makers (and without the risk of including unlicensed copyrighted material).
Personally I would feel ripped off if I'd bought music that would be generated by AI but there was no notification that this was done. Any group that would do so I would permanently disregard for any further consumption or attention from me.
I find the production and consumption of AI music to be uniquely... anti-human. You can make utilitarian arguments for most other uses of AI. For example, the code you're generating didn't exist before, and it would take serious time or money to write it. So, I get it, the economic argument is compelling enough.
But music? There's basically an inexhaustible supply of human-created tracks that can be accessed for next to nothing. Millions upon millions of them, in every conceivable style, for every conceivable mood. There's nothing you gain by listening to AI music day-to-day, so what's the argument for it - other than utmost indifference to human creativity?
I guess using AI is just the logical continuation of what mainstream pop already did before that: reduce music to the lowest common denominator so it can appeal to as many listeners as possible. AI only speeds up that process.
I remember when Apple got ridiculed for running a commercial where they crushed a bunch of musical instruments and artist supplies into the shape of an iPad.
I guess if AI companies did the same, they would be crushing people into the shape of an input prompt.
Used Suno to reimagine a handful of my old demos late last year, and honestly the results floored me. I could never release those tracks though, purely out of shame. But it seems pretty practical to study the AI remixes to understand what I like about them, and use these as a practice tool for music production.
while I don't like AI music, "Millions upon millions of them, in every conceivable style, for every conceivable mood." is something that's not true. There very often is a gap which forces me to open up Ableton and make edits
What an insane take. You dont have any songs you like that there arent many others like it and that you can generate an endless supply of with AI? Come on.
I sure do love the dying thrashes of human-creativity chauvanists. AI art, AI video, and AI music will eclipse most humans and there is absolutely nothing that will stop it. And you will use it and appreciate it more too. Once you open your eyes that is.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 68.6 ms ] threadSurely there's some gained and some lost. But coming from the era of buying an entire album, spending time reading the CD booklets and art, and listening to 10 songs which tell a larger story ---- what's being lost really hits home.
I gradually went from various genres -> mostly nerdcore -> mostly AI nerdcore.
https://www.last.fm/user/testycool/library/tracks?from=2025-...
EDIT: Updated link to the most listened songs in the past 180 days. The songs are not generated by me.
AI music is just as good as all human-made music. It is at the point of indistinguishability now and anyone actually using suno v5+ knows this.
various genres: https://suno.com/s/Oc5842XzzuBTk4Ma https://suno.com/s/RdmFOKpbi4zyVbRf https://suno.com/s/J4Z8t8jU9JXVJ1DB https://suno.com/s/OhfzCYkmcZhFf1Pk https://suno.com/s/VYHHLW7Hkw2uHjrb https://suno.com/s/cTu7AkoOdAyi0eWz https://suno.com/s/QvOExImOVzo1b2Gl https://suno.com/s/MASINon9lGr9JPLS https://suno.com/s/ujpTfZwVdAKy9W0h https://suno.com/s/DwekDLuEzgyNpYGQ https://suno.com/s/psWqWzDQa6Aq96Pk https://suno.com/s/JEM8G2RxD35ZUpGy
also if you like enders game lol: https://suno.com/s/gQ8eGNgnkfktl0Xq
my music tastes are pretty mainstream, and this just does absolutely nothing for me. it's exactly what i'd expect AI music to sound like - completely forgettable, with nothing interesting about it.
i'd be willing to believe that this music was legitimately charting if it had at least some redeeming qualities, but i can't imagine how this could honestly get eleven spots on the iTunes chart without gaming it in some way.
Basically made with pirated mp3s
I'd really love to see an actual source on this claim.
The idea is explained by Rick Beato here: https://youtu.be/rGremoYVMPc
oh man, I just am so bummed that around 2007 I ditched my 20 year collection of CDs and went digital whaaaaa!
Band-in-a-Box is a commercial program that has been around since 1990. What it did then was let you specify a chord progression, style, tempo, and instruments and it would make a generate a MIDI track. I think it might have also been able to take a melody and come up with a chord progression for it in a style/genre of your choosing.
The target market was musicians. Instrumentalists used it generate tracks to improvise or solo with for example, and songwriters found it useful to essentially have a full band at their beck and call while composing.
Over the years they added more features, and switched to sounds from recordings of real instruments played by real musicians. They have very good stretching and pitch transposition so you can use these at a range of tempos and keys and they still sound good.
It is still aimed at musicians, and can be overwhelming to others. This I've read is made worse because as it has grown in features and capabilities in the 25+ years it has been available the interface has become kind of disjoint.
It is not something the kind of person who just wants to describe what they want to hear and have a song produced would enjoy. But if an AI could operate it for them, maybe that would work and the result would be something with much better sounding instruments than the AI song makers (and without the risk of including unlicensed copyrighted material).
But music? There's basically an inexhaustible supply of human-created tracks that can be accessed for next to nothing. Millions upon millions of them, in every conceivable style, for every conceivable mood. There's nothing you gain by listening to AI music day-to-day, so what's the argument for it - other than utmost indifference to human creativity?
Not that you're wrong, but human creativity doesn't mean what it used to.
I guess if AI companies did the same, they would be crushing people into the shape of an input prompt.
I sure do love the dying thrashes of human-creativity chauvanists. AI art, AI video, and AI music will eclipse most humans and there is absolutely nothing that will stop it. And you will use it and appreciate it more too. Once you open your eyes that is.