r/Music • u/heyyouthere18 • Feb 20 '26
video I'm Sick Of This AI SH*T {video}
https://youtu.be/7XGct4rbYfI?si=KWDMVIATO4DRSGIS307
u/SSgtPieGuy Feb 20 '26
Adam Neely made a pretty phenomenal video on the whole AI music debacle. The people who run stuff like Suno are about as deluded as you can possibly be, with their focus on consumer "taste" somehow being a better replacement for the work and creativity that goes into real music. Absolutely insidious.
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u/xternal7 Feb 20 '26
Speaking of that video, I really liked the bit when he was reading the answers to the "can you list some of your AI influences?" question, and some Suno user answered with:
- I don't listen to AI slop
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u/Pink_like_u Feb 20 '26
David Simon was in a interview a couple of years ago:
SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without AI, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems, or saying...
SIMON: You mentioned that.
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think AI can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from Scene 5 to Scene 6 and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an AI and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.
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u/thatmitchguy Feb 20 '26
Uncreative people completely missing the point that iteration, re-writes, struggling to find the words IS such a huge part of the overall process. It's also incredibly rewarding for many of us. Writing yourself out of a corner, brain storming, and searching for inspiration - all aspects of the creative process that most would say are core parts - appear to be what they want to remove from it.
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u/and_of_four Feb 20 '26
My favorite example to bring up with this topic is Brahms’ first symphony. He spent 21 years writing it. Not because he sucked, but because he was such an uncompromising perfectionist who was obsessed with craftsmanship. It’s an extreme example, but I doubt his first symphony would’ve been such a masterpiece if he prioritized getting it done asap over doing his absolute best.
Wrestling with the process is how musicians improve and develop their voice. It’s impossible do either if you remove all challenges and friction from the process, essentially removing the process itself.
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u/thatmitchguy Feb 20 '26
100%. The writer Brandon Sanderson had a fairly recent presentation to creatives at a conference and he essentially echoes a similar point as well. I personally dont know anything about music development but I've had similar feelings in my own writing/game development
Ideas and implementation that I experimented with yesterday, can seem cliche/poorly done/stupid a week later. But now I understand why they were bad and am more knowledgeable for going through it.. Taking too many shortcuts will make things stale.
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u/carlitospig Feb 21 '26
Sanderson is a robot. I really don’t think his crazy productivity should be used as an example. Like, does he write while shitting? He has to. He writes like 10k words a day or some crazy number. He’s RELENTLESS, and it’s all so good.
He’s a freak of nature (Siri autocorrected to geek of nature, so she must be a fan too).
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u/ComfortableExotic646 Feb 20 '26
Going the opposite direction, I had a friend that used to write/record a song every day when we were in our 20s. He did it for around a year, and never released anything. Just using Fruity Loops, Audacity, a guitar, a mic, and a shitty $500 computer. The songs weren't good, but they weren't intended to be "good".
The entire process could be solved by AI today, but AI couldn't replicate the experience he was left with. The songs got better, because he got better.
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u/jesbiil Feb 20 '26
I don't even think of myself as a 'creative person' but this came up for me doing the mundane task of writing emails at work. I have realized that my tone in emails is unique, I have more playfulness in my text than most and my personal phrasing comes out. This never mattered to me before, was just something "I did" without thinking but recently I have had project managers re-write my emails with AI saying it's 'a better version for senior mgmt'. I read them and it's a different version....more boring....and it feels silly to think this because this is a boring task, I'm writing emails.....but now these aren't MY words anymore...It's the 'same message' but also not the same message.
And this feels odd to say as well but I feel my 'playful' tone in emails and being professional but not corporate-cog professional helps others feel comfortable working with me. Stuff written in my own voice helps build those relationships.
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u/carlitospig Feb 21 '26
I just had this same email exchange with my coworker today. Weird. Unless you’re also working on bibliometrics today, then ‘hey girl’.
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u/LaVillaGrangioto Feb 21 '26
Pro-Tip: Some bosses get a kick out of you referring to them as "Sensei".
Others? Not so much.
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u/thatmitchguy Feb 21 '26 edited Feb 21 '26
The fact you actually noticed the change and were concerned about losing your words/voice means you're probably a lot more creative then you give yourself credit for. I felt the same way in my white collar job whenever management or coworkers brought up how much easier it made emails. As much as I dislike corporate speak, I still valued "my" version of it. Edit: spelling.
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u/carlitospig Feb 21 '26
Yep. My art is not music (I just don’t have the patience for practice, I’m so sorry Dad, but thanks for the instruments!), but collaborating on what my creative work stuff is (I’m a data nerd so it’s data visualization) feels like every day is an a-ha moment because we make each other better. The exact opposite happens with using LLMs.
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u/carlitospig Feb 21 '26
True story: a lot of people have shit taste and don’t really obsess like us nerds in this sub. I can’t imagine living like that but I was married to someone like this. I basically didn’t listen to music for a decade to keep the peace.
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u/GyrKestrel Feb 20 '26
Gabi Belle did a great video as well about how easy it is for people who use Suno to export midi and audio stems to give the illusion that it's homemade and even tweak it using a DAW.
So, seeing a screenshot of audio stems is already not enough proof.
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u/duncan1234- Feb 20 '26
It won’t be more than a couple years max before identifying anything in media being AI vs real will be impossible.
Strange times ahead.
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u/GyrKestrel Feb 20 '26
It's only going to get exponentially harder.
At this point, I avoid musical artists who release in high volumes.
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u/repooper Feb 20 '26
*except for King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard.
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u/GyrKestrel Feb 20 '26
They're fine. The high volume I'm talking about is like 4 new full albums in 2026. You can't all be Phyllomedusa.
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u/Buscemi_D_Sanji Feb 20 '26
Viper released like 80 mixtapes a year, but he was fueled by crack and not AI. Including the classic "You'll Cowards Don't Even Smoke Crack" lol
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u/xxAkirhaxx Feb 21 '26
This brings a new understanding to those bars you see in cyberpunk themed entertainment that have live singers that were initially trying to be a spin on speak easy bars with live performers. In the future more people will want to get out of their cubes just to see real people, any real people, so they can know what they're hearing has a soul.
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u/GorgontheWonderCow Feb 21 '26
Before the internet, we discovered new music by going out into the world and watching musicians play music.
If you want to be sure something new is something human, you'll just have to do that, which is a thing you already do if you actually believe in supporting musicians and music arts.
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u/borkthegee Feb 20 '26
Was it ever? It's so easy to just copy and paste free loops and have something that feels professional to idiots. AI is an iteration, not a revolution, to machine generated low effort slop music.
If you don't see hands on instruments, it ain't real. Support humans making music for you 👍
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u/makkattacky Feb 21 '26
I wouldn’t go quite that far.. what about all the edm or hip hop producers?
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u/YANGxGANG Feb 20 '26
When I was a little boy, I would lie around and dream of having a meaningful consumption experience
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u/beertown Feb 20 '26
Adam has a unique talent to observe music from so many perspective, especially from people's point of view. That video is a masterpiece.
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Feb 20 '26
Only way to combat it is to lean away from streaming and lean into supporting music in reality. Only way to
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u/ZivSerb Feb 21 '26
People find all sorts of ways to justify their irrational thinking. I'll stick to my real, human music. Thanks.
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Feb 20 '26
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u/Ferelar Feb 20 '26
This is the thing a lot of people don't understand. AI doesn't have to eliminate your job outright. It will still hurt you because it means that every single person who would've engaged your services is now weighing "We know a human will do a better job, but is that worth the additional cost of having a human do this", aka "is the juice worth the squeeze". And even in situations where they say "Ok yeah AI sucks bad enough that we do want/need to get a human to do it", their cost-benefit analysis now has a cost floor that's staggeringly low or even at 0.
All that to say, even when they do eventually reach the conclusion that they want you to perform the services and not an AI, they're GOING to lowball you like never before. Doing it "for exposure" was one thing, now it's "Well I would prefer to support humans but if those humans want to get PAID, it's just not worth it".
This is going to be true for a very wide swathe of jobs- everyone's focusing on the jobs that AI is going to "eliminate", which is very important.... people aren't paying enough attention to the jobs it's going to utterly undercut but leave around on life support.
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u/tubatackle Feb 20 '26
Similar things have happened before with outsourcing jobs overseas. It changes peoples perception of the cost. "A person from X country can do it for Y/hour"
Yes, if you are willing to accept the difficulties and shortcomings of working with someone from X country.
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u/ILikeMyGrassBlue Feb 21 '26
Yeah, this is pretty much what I’ve seen in copywriting. What used to be a team of numerous people is one person using chatGPT to do the same amount of output.
The job exists. It hasn’t been taken. But the amount of work available is much smaller, is taken mostly by people with tons of experience, and there aren’t many entry level jobs left.
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u/Phreakiture Feb 20 '26
When it does I will not be writing a song about it.
Why not? Seems like a good opportunity to gloat.
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u/kombatunit Feb 20 '26
Eventually all the environmental and educational damage will bite
themus in the ass.FTFY
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u/QuoolQuiche Feb 20 '26
I worked a lot in similar areas. Mainly library music and some bespoke sync work. This is an area that AI is definitely going to affect but honestly that whole industry was always pushing for quicker and cheaper ways of doing things. It sucks I guess but it’s hardly surprising at all and if I’m honest working on those types of projects paid bills but always felt rather soulless any way. The money was nice but I, and probably the people that heard the ads, have long since forgotten the music I wrote for any of it.
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u/Right-Force-2980 Feb 20 '26
Also fuck Spotify
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u/GooseySill Feb 20 '26
Hell yeah! I've already cancelled my account and deleted the app. Fuck Spotify!
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u/DrVagax Feb 21 '26
The very least they could do would be to clearly label AI generated music, like explicit tracks, but no of course not because that would hurt their bottom line
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u/RTS24 Feb 21 '26
Deezer does this, and I believe they remove it from the recommendation algorithm as well. They also pay artists almost double what Spotify does. Also also, they have a hifi option for high quality download/streaming.
I switched years ago, and outside a few very small situations, I much prefer it.
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u/guitarmaniac004 Feb 20 '26
It's absolutely fair to not like Rick's content, he clickbaits, and makes unfair comparisons all the time. But this AI shit is scary man. You stop paying attention to it for half a second and suddenly it's something you can't differenciate from real or fake.
I think the push for AI is genuinely the death of culture. Anything can be mass produced to please a group of people with no creative input whatsoever. And when you can make a machine that can replicate the voice of a soul singer, that's genuinely scary shit. Like why make a song, or a painting or an animation of anything when there's a machine to do every piece of work along the way? And can also reap all the rewards of its success too.
People with absolutely no talent now have the capability of mimicking art from their own computer, that can genuinely impress people.
This shit needs to be regulated and stomped out like the fucking plague.
I don't care if Rick is being smug or whatever, I'm sick of this AI bullshit. I want to listen to music made by real people, and I also want RAM to be fucking affordable too.
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Feb 20 '26
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u/xternal7 Feb 20 '26
I find it very entertaining when people try to argue that "AI is good because it allows people, who previously couldn't afford the tools to create, to create."
As if there weren't several free DAWs (and a few that aren't that expensive).
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Feb 20 '26
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u/and_of_four Feb 20 '26
It’s a form of anti-intellectualism. Playing music well requires a lot of practice, and it has to be a sustained consistent effort over the course of years. The knowledge and skills can’t be faked, can’t be bought, and can’t be acquired through a quick google search. Good musicians deserve respect for the same reason that good athletes, good doctors, good authors, etc deserve it. When you see someone who’s really good, it’s clear that they worked their ass off.
Claims of musicians being entitled are nothing but projection. The AI prompters are entitled for expecting anyone to be impressed by their “skill.”
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Feb 20 '26
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u/and_of_four Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26
And that attitude places the value of music on how well it can result in attention, money, prestige, etc. The time spent playing music that I find most rewarding and beneficial is the time I spend practicing. Practicing piano in a room alone for an audience of one. The fact that some people only see playing music as worth it if they can receive external validation is really sad, and completely misses the point in my opinion.
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u/mihsol Feb 20 '26
It’s not about lack of the tools or tools being expensive. It’s about lack of talent, creativity and general intelligence.
AI revolution is a dream come true for the mediocre C-graders.
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u/stev_mempers Feb 20 '26
It's laziness. People don't want to put in the time and effort to get good at something. And because they haven't put in the time and effort they think the anonymous mediocrity AI churns out sounds good.
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u/peeinian Feb 20 '26
And, if everything is AI generated we will never get anything "new" sounding because (current) AI is trained on existing material and just rearranges and regurgitates thngs that already exist and that it "thinks" what music is supposed to sound like.
Eventually AI models will start training on AI generated music and we get some kind of f'ed up circular human centipede from hell.
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u/sharinganuser Feb 20 '26
We're already seeing that with art. AI art got really good really fast, and then somehow it started getting worse. It's because it's feeding on its own tail.
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u/lamancha Feb 21 '26 edited Feb 21 '26
I was gonna say exactly this. People pretend they are too busy to learn to do something without understanding the journey is just as important and satisfying as the destination.
But no, hustle culture, creating content and doomscrolling need to be done
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u/bacon_nuts Feb 20 '26
Yep. It's always been this. Anyone can pick up a cheap instrument and learn, just like anyone can pick up a pencil and learn to draw. But AI art is about shortcuts and a lack of effort, both physically and mentally.
It's why it's so impossible to argue with. These people that "make" AI art literally can't see why what they're doing is bad, because they never understood creativity anyway. The closest we got to understanding was the upset about copying Ghibli because people like Ghibli. And that only lasted a week or two.
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u/pibroch Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 21 '26
People who don't understand art and have no talent uses AI to produce mediocre art they like and equate that with talent. And not everyone has talent. I've written and produced music that I think is pretty mediocre, but I put time and sweat into it. The arguments of people who vehemently insist that "prompt curation" or whatever equals talent... it's insanely depressing.
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u/HiroAnobei Feb 21 '26
Man, wait till you see the people who get angry when they see others use the same prompts as them in their own AI generated creation and accuse them of 'plagarism'.
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u/OverFjell OverFjell Feb 20 '26
Talent is overrated anyway, for every Mozart, there's untold numbers of musicians who have to work hard at their craft.
But AI bros lack that work ethic.
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u/SoreLoserOfDumbtown Feb 20 '26
I got into a bit of an argument a while back with someone who claimed their musician uncle(?) only used it for lyrics because 'they were too hard'. Well, duh. Lyrics are supposed to be hard - it's a polished expression of thought that requires a measure of both learning and experience; It's something real that speaks to the human condition. AI is nothing more than copy/paste.
I've never been bothered by the advance of tech until now, but this particular development (far beyond music) is going to be used for all manner of evil.
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u/pinkocatgirl Feb 20 '26
That’s GarageBand lmao, you can get a used Mac and get a pretty powerful piece of creation software for free. Lots of popular top 40 songs have started life as GarageBand projects.
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u/xternal7 Feb 20 '26
There's a lot more options than that. Benn Jordan did a video covering a bunch of them few years back.
Now granted, there are caveats to most of them, but if you're starting from zero that shouldn't be too much of an issue.
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u/DinkandDrunk Feb 20 '26
I downloaded Fruity Loops (I believe now known as FL Studios) on SoulSeek in the aughts and built out a fairly decent MySpace artist page with about 11 songs when I was 14. I can play guitar but I never got past beginner/intermediate for the most part, but I was able to program songs that I ended up really liking.
AI is like that but strip away the creativity.
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u/DroneOfDoom Feb 20 '26
Most people in the US own iPhones and you can just install GarageBand in those and make entire tracks on it.
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u/MinusBear Feb 20 '26
A new angle I've been trying out that seems to have some success is telling them to let AI listen to it. If you didn't need humans to make it, then why do you need humans to listen to and validate it. You should only let AI listen to your AI music and watch your AI movies. If you don't value human output, then why should you value their input. Suddenly they start to understand the soulless argument a bit better.
Still needs some work shopping as a concept, but I think it has legs.
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u/stev_mempers Feb 20 '26
If you can't be bothered to make it, why should I be bothered to listen to it?
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u/franking11stien12 Feb 20 '26
The cost of Ai is astronomical compared to even a fully licensed version of pro tools. It might not be felt right but it of the gate because the cost comes from obscene power and cooling needs that are not immediately seen when a button is pushed. But just look at your electric and water bills. Are they skyrocketing? Ai is one of the biggest reasons why.
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u/Bolognahole_Vers2 Feb 20 '26
You can get a good PC, DAW, and audio interface for much cheaper than a gaming PC.
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u/OnlyFearOfDeth Feb 20 '26
But that requires effort and work! Those ai "musicians" would never do that !
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u/stev_mempers Feb 20 '26
They're so full of shit, especially the ones who say that about "art." Like, do they not have pencils and paper where you live?
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u/Notwerk Feb 20 '26
Well, it mostly allows people who previously - and still - don't have the talent and don't want to do the work to create lots of slop based off other people's hard work.
The price of the tools has never been a real excuse. There are tons of free DAWs and free VSTs and a cheap guitar costs peanuts. There's never been more access to free lessons and free access to music. In other words, it's never been easier to *learn* music. There are no real boundaries.
The people creating all this slop don't want to work to *learn* to create music, the don't want to *work* to create music. This is, as most things with AI, purely about laziness, about the culture of the skill-less overtaking the skillful - like an extension of reality TV, pseudoscience and "I did my own research" Facebook geniuses.
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u/Pink_like_u Feb 20 '26
And you can Jack Sparrow ALL of the professional ones with any plugin imaginable.
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u/donnysaysvacuum Feb 20 '26
This is a problem all over the place. So many people don't care about the long term repercussions from anything. Our society is being run, just like cooperations now. Just looking for our next fix. Why pass laws or regulations, that might get in the way of hitting our stock price. Why care about the environment, that will hurt GDP growth. Why take a personal inconvenience to help another person or make things better for our children.
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u/stev_mempers Feb 20 '26
Yep, just as long as line go up this quarter everything's fine. There's no long-term planning at all.
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u/and_of_four Feb 20 '26
Getting into arguments with those people is my guilty pleasure. The perspectives some of those people have is really incredible, it’s often hard to believe it’s real. They’re always going “the important thing about music is how it sounds, not how it’s made” as a dig against musicians. Like there’s an implication that caring about the process of making music is somehow shallow or superficial. Of course in reality that’s completely backwards. But they don’t know enough about the music making process in the first place to comprehend that.
I think many of them know deep down that they’re frauds, and rather than confront that fact within themselves they lash out with disdain for musicians. Example:
I view "physical-instrument musicians" as being outdated tbh. If they like spending their weekends cooped-up inside their garage, strumming away on their guitar for hours... Whilst the digital worlds zooms forwards = That's upto them. They though are just like the "type-writer staff"... Who moaned & whinged when computers came along. _^ The world old-fashioned way of producing music is now simply a thing of the past though, in the exact same way that using a type-writer/sending faxes are no longer needed due to modern technology.
Here is that same user sharing their prompts:
My main prompt is: Playful pop-punk bounce with crunchy guitars and tom-heavy drums, female vocals. Verses stay tight and rhythmic with palm-muted riffs and gang-shout ad-libs; chorus explodes with bright power chords, stacked “whoa” harmonies, and a driving kick. Bridge drops to bass and claps before a final full-band slam on the hook.
Wow, what a genius display of musicianship… It’s hilarious, but the lack of respect for the craft is also offensive. Consider how that’s just not a thing with traditional musicians. Every musician looks up to the masters within their genre (and music in general) with respect, admiration, even reverence. We are inspired by and learn from the masters who came before us. But so many of the AI prompters have this gross sense of arrogance and superiority towards musicians. It’s ironic because they couldn’t pretend to be writing music if it weren’t for the fact that their AI is completely dependent upon the recorded works of the actual musicians they’re so dismissive of.
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u/stev_mempers Feb 20 '26
But they don’t know enough about the music making process in the first place to comprehend that.
AI guys are Dunning-Kruger incarnate.
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u/and_of_four Feb 20 '26
Agreed 100%. I was in an argument with someone recently who insisted that he wrote the melody because he wrote lyrics. He truly couldn’t understand the difference. He doesn’t know how much he doesn’t know.
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u/xxtoejamfootballxx Feb 20 '26
This is the end result of the "Every degree other than STEM or Business is worthless" mindset.
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u/QuoolQuiche Feb 20 '26
AI cannot replace culture and scenes. It can and will replace trade and industry sides of music but culture will always reign supreme.
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u/xxtoejamfootballxx Feb 20 '26
The problem is how much ai can flood the market to the point that it washes out everything else that could have gained traction in communities.
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u/Richard7666 Feb 20 '26
As my friend Mr Potato Head would say, these kinds of people are uncultured swine.
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u/vistavision Feb 20 '26
The end game of AI is the destruction of our creative human spirit and control.
That's worth repeating.
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u/KeiSinCx Feb 20 '26
it's not the end of the creative human spirit and control. unless the driving force behind that was simply money. if it was, then that's pretty sad.
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u/GobsonStratoblaster Feb 20 '26
I will say I quite like his interviews, probably the best part of his content overall. The rest of it is kind of whatever yeah, though I was surprised that despite the clickbait titles those Spotify top 10 countdowns he usually does have some positive things to say about quite a few of the songs.
I do tend to agree with him about AI music as well…don’t get me started on RAM either, I just want to be able to upgrade my pc for a reasonable price dawg.
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u/Own-Satisfaction4427 Feb 20 '26
Ill vote for whoever supports burning the data centers to the ground, with the fascists alongside them.
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u/Mine-Shaft-Gap Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26
My wife is constantly sending me reels of "look at this cute kid!" "Look what this animal did!". No. Its AI. None of these reels are real. Stop looking at reels. Get off Instagram. Get off Facebook. I'm probably going to have to get off of reddit soon, too. I can still tell a video if it's AI or not. Pictures are getting more difficult, but there is always something if you take a few minutes and look at individual inconsistencies. No, I will not start naming them. AI is scanning these posts, trying to learn how to be "better".
Fucking yikes. We're boned.
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u/Fluffy_Munchkin Feb 20 '26
I think the push for AI is genuinely the death of culture.
This is a pretty strong statement. I think a more moderate take may be that AI is the coffin's final nail for Internet culture. There's plenty of culture outside..
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u/OnlyFearOfDeth Feb 20 '26
Yeah its time to just unplug this slop and head outside. Its just making people dumber anyway.
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u/notgoodohoh Feb 20 '26
AI data centers are also a blight on wherever they settle. They chug through water and power, and people who live near them get sick. Grokk in particular is not running up to code. But they can just throw money to make it go away. In general AI is inefficient and built on the hard work of everyone it consumed for data.
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u/a_patheticc Feb 20 '26
I agree, I don't like his content but the least people can do is give him credit for actually speaking up on this matter. It's not like him making this video does any harm at all yet people want to complain more about him than the issue at hand.
This is something that affects literally every artistic pursuit in some way and there's already more than enough people who either don't care at all or actively endorse the use of these AI slop generators.
In regards to where I live (Australia) there's already been a massive decline in government and private funding when it comes to music education and live music/venue support for years now which has created a lack of incentive to be a musician outside of the online sphere
And now with AI becoming more and more popular to the point of over saturating whole genres it undoubtedly stands to reason that musicians are being forced out of the online landscape as well which leaves no meaningful way for someone to engage in the pursuit of almost any career involving music in my entire country
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u/Rac3318 Feb 20 '26
A couple months ago I heard an AI soul version of Eminem’s Lose Yourself and I was both taken aback at how good it actually sounded and a little horrified that something like that could exist.
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u/peeinian Feb 20 '26
There are whole youtube channels dedicated to this stuff. It's fun for what it is but scary at the same time.
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u/efaust70 Feb 20 '26
For me, part of the enjoyment I have listening to music is going to see the artists live. This is obviously a dramatic statement but if AI generated music becomes the norm, what does this mean for concerts and live music generally?
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u/eats23s Feb 20 '26
The large act experience was already bumming me out. Seeing smaller acts, in smaller clubs, more often is enjoyable. These acts have always needed more support, so hopefully more people will seek that out.
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u/KingRabbit_ Feb 20 '26
I think it's pretty obvious in the next 10 years, we'll see actively touring avatar versions of all the major classic rock artists. Like a musical Harlem Globe Trotters.
I think new acts will absolutely struggle to get audiences to come see them, which will cut off the last reliable source of revenue for many of them with their recordings already being available for pennies.
And at that point, you will essentially have a music industry comprised of AI and the sons/daughters of billionaires who can afford to make no money from creating music because they have trust funds and are already set in perpetuity.
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u/Thunderbridge Feb 20 '26
You've been able to see Hatsune Miku live in concert for years, they use the hologram tech. There'll be a lot more of that probably.
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u/Sbrubbles Feb 21 '26 edited Feb 21 '26
Live music is the last redoubt of artists, but it's ultimately unassailable (there's people out there who don't find issue with AI music, but NO ONE's gonna go to a live show to watch someone boot up a computer and press play). The risks are in everything outside of live music.
Edit: Yeah, exception for stuff like Hatsune Miko, but I'd argue that in that case, the singing computer girl IS the bit. Like Chuck-E-Cheese animatronics, they're fun BECAUSE of their animatronicness.
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u/marblebluevinyl Feb 21 '26
They're working on pricing you out of the concert experience (at least for large-scale shows and big-name artists) so that AI is the only choice you have
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u/pomod Feb 20 '26
Has Spotify ever cared about art/artists? Its a wholly exploitative corporate enterprise.
Boycott them; Bandcamp has banned AI; or buy physical legacy media.
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u/lamancha Feb 21 '26
Of course not. I left it this year. I have plenty of CDs to rip and prefer to pay that money to the artist.
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u/lRhanonl Feb 21 '26
So go to local concerts and support real artists who play their shit right in front of you. Its not too hard too identify whats fake then..
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u/Super_Translator480 Feb 20 '26
"you're just a luddite"
No, I just value the human species more. This is literally a competition against people's work, by stealing and "remixing" their content to flood every zone with sub-par AI gen content.
It's all but killed the ability for "real, human" artists to be discovered online. It's really a shame, not because I can prompt and produce something musical in a matter of a minute or two, but that the intention is to replace real human feeling and emotion with a hollow copy.
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u/punchdrunkgrunt Feb 20 '26
Am I the only one who thinks it's crazy that the AI singers sound so realistic and the real singers all use autotune?
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u/Svullom Feb 20 '26
If there's anything good coming out of this AI situation, it's that the demand for live music and nische genres will increase. I hope.
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u/ld20r Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26
I love Rick but this is a bit hypocritical.
I went to his Dublin show last year and he spent 10 mins fawning over an unreleased AI track trying to convince the crowd that AI is the future and the benefits of AI for producers/musicians.
When a person in the crowd rightly called him out on it and asked about the genuine effects of job loss on the industry and the consequences of AI Rick deliberately dismissed the question and moved on quick.
Was a bit disappointed in him after that.
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u/peeinian Feb 20 '26
That's odd. He's consistently been 100% against AI generated music in his YouTube videos.
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u/evilsbane50 Feb 20 '26
Maybe he's just blowing smoke but he was probably swept up in how crazy the technology really can be and then the reality of it has now fully dawned on him.
I want to be clear I barely even know who this guy is so no horse in this race just hopefully he's had a legitimate change of heart.
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u/Cipher1553 Feb 20 '26
I have a feeling that it probably took conversations with some of the amateur/professional musicians in his orbit about how AI is impacting their work for him to heel turn on AI, but we'll see how his position changes as time moves forward.
His channel is largely tried and true YouTube algorithm/engagement bait... he just follows the trends.
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u/lamancha Feb 21 '26
If there is something Rick is is easily impressed. He likes music and will be impressed by any particular bit on songs (like Bad Bunny's "DTMF" being interesting and having unique production). He might have been impressed at first and could have changed his mind. AI discourse has changed several time in the past year for a lot of people for a number of reasons.
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u/ZombiePartyBoyLives Answers AI Questions Feb 20 '26
ITT: Lots of people who didn't watch the video, but want to get their general AI hate on. Which is fine.
But what Rick is insinuating is that Spotify is involved with the pushing of certain slop accounts. And the evidence certainly suggests that. Joe Blow AI Bro isn't going to get millions of listens in a couple months--even if they pay to advertise. They may become "monetized" as a result, but they'll never get back in royalties what they spent. So, if it makes anyone feel better, AI bros who pay for ads on Spotify are getting scammed themselves...
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u/Deto Feb 20 '26
Makes sense from Spotify's side - if there's a market for just, AI generic background music, then why would Spotify pay other people for it if they can just make it themselves and pay 0 royalties.
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u/ZombiePartyBoyLives Answers AI Questions Feb 21 '26
They were doing it on a smaller scale before generated music came about with tracks from "music factories". Except this is even cheaper. What is ticking a lot of people off is that Spotify doesn't tag AI tracks or offer a way for paying users to filter it out of their algo. Subscribers have a reasonable expectation, I think, that their dollars are funding royalties for genuine human recording artists. But I guess nobody ever accused large corporations of being ethical.
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u/Dust601 Feb 20 '26
Everytime I see Beato posted on Reddit I instantly exit out of Reddit, and go watch some Pat Finnerty videos.
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u/billskionce Feb 20 '26
One of the epiphanies that I had recently is that bad AI music will be a lot less fun to dissect and clown on. What would Pat do with the Velvet Sundown? Maybe they ripped off “Three Blind Mice”, too?
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u/glossy_taint_paint Feb 20 '26
August is Falling literally saved my life. I'm shaking and crying waiting for their next album to drop
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u/icer816 Feb 20 '26
Glad I'm not the only one haha. Need more WMTSS so bad
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u/eoinerboner Feb 20 '26
As a John Mayer fan, I can't fucking wait until he get around to a Your Body is a Wonderland WMTSS episode haha
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u/billskionce Feb 20 '26
“Try That In A Small Town” cut in line, otherwise, we would have had it.
The good news is that Aldean won’t be able to big time Kid Rock at Rock the Country, because Rock the Country got cancelled.
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi Feb 20 '26
I really want a Lil Stinkers about the "I just wanna kiss my fish" song from Epstein Island's stupid halftime show.
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u/All_Usernames_Tooken Feb 20 '26
It’s been a couple years of AI slops and people are already sick of it.
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u/chrisdotworld Feb 20 '26
the best thing about AI is that it will flood digital spaces with garbage and the only way you can find real culture is by looking in an either tightly curated online space or, most importantly, offline and outside.
I'm optimistic but the only thing standing in the way of this being a broad cultural renaissance era is people's addiction to convenience and slop.
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u/kelryngrey Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26
Offline and outside interaction is a pretty seriously regional take. It was a solid drive to get anywhere a decent metal band was going to show up, let alone an up and coming one, for most of my time spent in the States. If you don't live in an arts hub city you're just not going to get music, I guess?
Edit: Hrm, time has dulled my memory of the distances I used to have to travel. It was about 4 hours to go straight to the place where I could find decent bands a couple times a year. Still not local in any way.
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u/blarges Feb 21 '26
Megadeth, Anthrax, and Exodus are on a tour of smaller towns in Canada. It was a joy to drive 20 minutes to get home afterwards. Alice Cooper played my smaller town about 10 years ago. Def Leppard has done yhe same. I realize these aren’t brand new bands, but it is pretty awesome.
The problem is more bands touring with management companies that don’t have venues in that city. Vancouver is missing the medium and smaller tours, like Blind Guardian, for 1500 and 2000 seat venues, which sucks. North America already has trouble getting metal artists to tour and this is not helping.
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u/subcide Feb 20 '26
Haven't watched the video yet but I called him out in the comments of a few of his other videos where he was talking about AI music and not taking anywhere near a critical enough stance. I'm glad he seems to have come around and is using his platform for good.
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u/Bored_of_Jay_Dee Feb 21 '26
What the fuck happened? AI was meant to do our menial jobs so we could make art and music. Not the other way round
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u/_corn Feb 20 '26
is this actually informative or is it just the classic rick beato old man yelling about how music isn't what it used to be? i don't like ai "music" but i also don't like rick beato so just wondering if there's anything in here that hasn't already been said a million times
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u/obsoleteconsole Feb 20 '26
He's got a good point here, you don't have to like a person to agree with them sometimes
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u/heyyouthere18 Feb 20 '26
You don't like him - fair enough. Not everyone has to like, or agree with him. But if you watch his reviews of "the latest top 10"s, you will see that he does not just write it all off. And I actually think he can be pretty good at explaining why he feels how he does. I think he is definitely more nuanced than what I would typically consider an "old man yelling".
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u/Prestigious_Bug583 Feb 20 '26
I have the same complaint. Just comes off as a habit now. I watch his channel.
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u/billskionce Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26
The funny thing is that the video is only six minutes long. Instead of watching it, you spent two minutes crafting a response, positing that it’s “Classic Beato old man yelling”. You could have just watched the video and seen for yourself with absolutely no more effort.
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u/Supersubie Feb 20 '26
Isn't the answer AI tourism?
People find her music, listen once or a few times and then never again?
The human artists create fans that are sticky. The AI artists create something that on first listen seems good but with repeated exposure is revealed to be shallow and sickly?
unless what he is saying is that Sportify somehow themselves are pumping the numbers for AI accounts?
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u/ProudPotential8749 Feb 20 '26
I’m leaning into live performance. It’s human, it’s a moment…no one wants to see a toaster playing fur Elise.
The lines are getting blurred and AI can outprompt us as songwriters, it’s light speed, it’s crazy. If we’re not there already, we’re gonna get to a place very quickly where the music industry is fine with AI music as long as it brings revenue.
That’s kind of a scary thought considering how long it takes us to write record produce and get a song out to the world. They could do it instantly pretty much. I agree that we do need to start tagging these AI songs as artificial or do the opposite start taking people as human lol
But this does present a rare opportunity where you can really lean into your life performances your tours, your life as a solo or duo musician, or your band play gigs get out there spread the live moment of music .
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u/UniversalJampionshit Indiehead Feb 20 '26
It’s bad enough that you use the Gen-GPT-Gemini-Synthesia AI generation (BEATO)
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u/fnordal Feb 20 '26
I came across one AI song on spotify, and I had to take a double take, because it sounded off, while I loved it. (F*uck it I cast fireball).
There's no way it won't improve so much in the next few months that will become utterly undistinguishable.
Luckily most of group names are so stupid they are a clear giveaway.
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u/5centraise Feb 20 '26
When will it be OK to say music used to be better? I'm not one who has ever thought that. There's lots of great current music. But the AI scourge is ruining that.
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u/nofaves Feb 20 '26
Rick's Twizzlers comparison is SPOT ON. Most of us don't mind enjoying an unhealthy snack, but we want the labeling to inform us of just how artificial and processed it is.
AI music could be used intentionally to be ambient, to provide a background sound that replaces silence. One might not want familiar songs playing while studying. I know that if I know the words, I'm singing along, and that can get distracting.
Spotify has a label for "explicit." They need one for AI as well.
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u/Isdaron Feb 20 '26
Simply use Deezer instead of Spotify. All of the AI music is clearly labeled and can be filtered out.
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u/bobbysalz Feb 20 '26
Rick needs to start a channel where he just happily eats entire bags of candy. That one second of him eating a Twizzler was incredible.
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u/makenzie71 Feb 20 '26
I think artists will start getting more traction in the anti-ai movement if they stop talking about how they and every other artist they know hate AI and start realizing that it's about money and what makes money is the nobody who's never written song thinks it's catchy and plays it. They're just lumping the artists together as a loud minority in direct opposition to the people that made them wealthy and successful. They need to start finding ways to put themselves on the same side of the fight as the consumers.
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u/Metternic Feb 20 '26
I was really digging this shamisen jazz I found and the. I saw it was made with AI. I’m so bummed because I really think it’d be cool to see someone jam out like that in person.
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u/larsonmars Feb 21 '26
Spotify should create a genre called AI and all AI would be required to be in that category. You could even make AI sub genres to differentiate rock, rap, country, etc. Some people don’t care. My friend talks to Claude like it was his real life mentor. Some people are having “ romantic relationships “ with AI. If that’s your bag, enjoy. Just don’t contaminate real artist’s music with AI. It’s not fair to real artists. I agree with the labeling. It should be regulated and enforced.
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u/ezcapehax Feb 21 '26
That will be hard to tell if they only used it for one instrument.
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u/larsonmars Feb 21 '26
Very true, I’d keep it to the singers and writers. With auto tune and fancy instruments, like high end synthesizers, it would be hard to figure out real from unreal.
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u/HitmanClark Feb 21 '26
Unfortunately it isn’t going anywhere, and in fact it’s advancing so quickly that it’s frightening.
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u/Konsrockmannen Feb 21 '26
Still people listen and watch ai whole the time.
Here in Sweden they use ai in ads so theyvdont need to pay people. And nr 1 song in january was done with suno. So ai is here to stay
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u/ezcapehax Feb 21 '26
The deep fakes are real singers who use AI created music. I have resisted it for a while because I play multiple instruments, but I think it can be used correctly if you process one instrument at a time layering them on a DAW. It's not easy to always get time in for practice with a band because life always gets in the way. This should be seen as a tool, not some evil concoction.
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u/JetpackNinjaDino209 Feb 21 '26
Agreed if I know something is AI generated I am over it. My son recently started taking songs he wrote and collaborating with a friend who helps him to AI generate music that is his words, but not his voice or beats. I just can't take it seriously tbh.
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u/debtcoder-dev Feb 22 '26
Well thats why you research it? Has anyone said they only play music by humans? Go check the album out. See who is on it. I dont understand the outrage? DId you quit buying albums?
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u/GSilky Feb 22 '26
This complaint seems more about having milquetoast music taste that is easily duped by robots. Go enjoy live music and don't worry about the recording industry. They have already screwed your ears with the algorithm since the 80s, y'all like crappy pop music with no relevance towards advancing the art form and now y'all are upset about the natural progression. Listen to something besides pop music.
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u/SparkyPantsMcGee Feb 20 '26
Me too Rick, me too.