I got caught by Spotify a week or so ago. I like Bossa Nova music, and was listening while I was cooking dinner. A cover of a pop song came on, and it was fun, and then another, and I thought...wait a minute. I looked up the artist and it was someone from Sweden? I'm pretty sure it was AI generated, so I went back to some older albums. One of the awful effects of slop is that you can't trust a new artist not to be a bot! Guarding against slop is exhausting, and it either pushes you back into your "known artist" bubble, or you just give up. There should be some way to toggle a "no AI" or "human only" choice on these platforms that I'M PAYING FOR. So many bad results from this new "art form."
Same thing happened to my husband, he was really digging this new band he heard and looked into them. They were from Sweden and had a ton of music in a short period of time and they had some wacky name that made no sense. He felt so betrayed and fooled! Time to stop paying for these platforms and listen to real DJs who curate real artists on the RADIO. SUPPORT LISTENER SUPPORTED RADIO. Left of the dial.
If you enjoyed it until you learned it was AI-generated, then the revelation did not change the sound. It changed the moral story wrapped around the sound. The real issue is disclosure, curation, and platforms flooding the zone with cheap filler. “I was betrayed” is doing a lot of melodramatic work there.
One of the issues that I struggle with is - Out of the millions of AI-generated songs that are apparently created every week, what if I come across one that I genuinely like? Of the millions of slop songs that are created every week, inevitably a few will sound good. Should I feel an obligation to ignore it?
What if AI can eventually create an AI-Beatles album that is legitimately good and sounds like something The Beatles might have done had they continued to record? Should I ignore it?
Any form of art, be it music, a painting, or dance....is about entering into communion with higher consciousness if it really does its job...otherwise it's junk food for the heart, mind, and spirit. While I don't have a clear answer for your question, I feel that the state of mind and the source of whatever art should reflect this higher consciousness. Only then would it make sense at a deeper level....this is my intuitive read on your question...
Yes. I was listening to music on youtube when a song came on in an R&B sound. I looked at the image of the singer- too perfect, publish date 2026. I deleted it.
I'm not sure if I fully agree with this, at least on the subject of music. Certainly mainstream music has pretty much stayed the same since the 90s, but music that inhabits the top of the charts, driven by the marketing departments at the major labels, has always been deliberately dull and banal, catering to as broad an audience as possible. But underground music, driven by small labels, run by obsessives, has always been interesting. And I would argue that's as true today as it was back in, say, the late 70s. If you are willing to dig, there is plenty of exciting, innovative, challenging music available right now on platforms like Bandcamp, YouTube, Soundcloud, Mixcloud and so on. In fact, its probably true to say that there's more available now than ever in history, much of it created and distributed by the artists themselves. But basically I agree with your article, thank you for posting it!
I agree with this. When I point to stagnation in music, I always add that innovative music is still out there—just harder to find. There's a lot of creativity in indie/alt scenes. In many ways, that's the key point behind this article.
That makes sense and could have come out a bit more in the text maybe. Movies stagnating, but a lot of creativity in 'TV' shows on the streamers over the last 20 years. News media struggling but ... Substack, podcasts etc. Keen to hear more about these alternative/parallel institutions.
I see it as the best of times, the worst of times.
On the one paw, now is a terrible time to be a musician if you are looking for the Hookers-n-Blow lifestyle. On the other paw, if you simply want to get your music out there, it has never been easier and with fewer financial and other gatekeepers than the present. Of course, that also means that every other toolio with a microphone and a laptop can get their music out there as well, and you have to compete for attention with 56.795 1/2 other caterwauling toolios looking for a slice a that pie.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. Even if we were to agree that "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac was the greatest artistic statement that is, was or ever shall be, 1977 and the economics to support that ecosystem ain't coming back.
Yep. Self-publishing both removed the gatekeeping and allowed for different ideas to reach people, but it also opened the floodgates for slop.
Heck, there are hundreds of games released on steam every day. And marketing became even more important as a way to not be burried in slop. And thus as the demand for marketing increased, it also increased in price, which tends to take away the budget from the creative process. Around 50% of the budget of AAA game is just marketing.
"music that inhabits the top of the charts, driven by the marketing departments at the major labels, has always been deliberately dull and banal" True today, but wasn't always so. The Beatles and Stones had dozens of Top 10 hits. Even Dylan had several.
I would certainly agree with Greg. Yes, some of it was designed to appeal to the wide as possible audience, but let’s face it, the idea of the widest possible audience was pretty narrow back in the old analog recording days. And before that? You had to actually go somewhere to hear any kind of music at all!
Unless you go further back in time. Then you could go into the sitting room (middle class people in the 19th century could likely afford this) and make your own music on the family's piano or play other people's music using sheet music. If, as Ted indicates, we need a resistance, it can be spread through a renewal of in-person art/music experiences. My kids (Millennials) love going to museums and going to listen to live acoustic folk and blues nowadays. I think that they and the Gen Zs may be the leaders of leaving the device behind and reacquainting themselves with In Real Life. I look forward to this revolution!
"If your willing to dig" thats the big issue! No ones willing to do that, people used to physically go to stores and dig through bins to buy discs, now even searching online and downloading a file is too much effort! It's this attitude of having to be spoon fed everything by some corporate "service" that's wrecking everything. Yes maybe streaming is convenient but just like AI if you rely on it to much your brain starts to atrophy.
If you dont want corporate slop than stop listening to corporate streaming services!
Remember the joy of discovering a band as you flicked through the LPs simply because it had great cover art? You took it to the counter and asked to have a listen. Sometimes it wasn't what you like, but when it was, boy did that make you feel like an old school archaeologist finding hidden treasure.
I was one of those obsessives who started a small indie record label back in 1979. It was not much of a commercial success (in fact it essentially ran out of money after about 10 years), but I used it to look for and release some of the most challenging music I could find. This was of course before platforms, before the internet and before even email, but we (myself and two friends/partners) used what we had available: small xeroxed fanzines, college radio stations, flyers distributed locally by hand, retail outlets that could be visited and that would take records on consignment, and after a few of the early releases sold well, wholesale distributors geared to the indie market.
However, we were riding a broad cultural/political movement that is scarcely happening today. I'm hearing stirrings of some very radical music, primarily in the metal underground right now, but whether or not it can grow in the present suffocating environment is open to question.
My husband recently shared his take that the art form that matters right now isn't music or sculpture or film or painting, it's body modification, and once I started seeing it I couldn't unsee it. A lot of people of every age and very political persuasion are making big, big statements about what they think life is all about for everyone to see, and the canvas is their skin, their muscles, and their bones. Think about how many DIFFERENT versions of gender-affirming cosmetic surgery there are in circulation right now, for cis and trans people alike. Think about how many times someone's tattoo has been in the news just in the past year. Think about the fact that looksmaxxing was just in a sketch on SNL this past weekend. For whatever reason this is what the current artistic moment is all about.
So interesting! Decades ago my friends and I predicted that soon there would be body modifications like tails, can’t be long now? Life Is Art can manifest in so many ways - watch Secret Mall Apartment for one expression of it (that has nothing to do with body modification, but building/infrastructure modification as art.).
I challenge you to think of one artistic movement of the past three centuries that contemporary critics wouldn't have characterized in a similar way :) Is it even art if nobody thinks it's a sign of the deep pathology that pervades modern culture?
I'm a veterinarian so I use pathology in a very specific medical sense, not as a general term to indicate disorder or degeneracy as it might be used colloquially. I regard cosmetic surgery that distorts to a point where the patient barely resembles something human as an indicator of a deep and abiding psychological disorder. It is troubling as a species that people now regard faces that have not had AI filters applied as something ugly and frightening to the point where they are prepared to undergo major surgery to look that way, and extremely so. I agree that new art movements are and have been regarded as degenerate and dangerous and often unworthy. Often that very art has propelled our culture forward, but just as often the "new" disappears as fast as its novelty value declines. I do believe, however, we have reached an era where the whole world has "jumped the shark" so to speak, in just about all things. There will be a great reset, how that happens, who's to know?
If you limit yourself to mainly American or European music, then you are depriving yourself of some truly inspirational music. Look to Cape Verde, Angola, Congo, South Africa, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Benin, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Honduras, Panama. You may not understand all the lyrics but the music is vital and polyrhythmic. If you are looking for artist recommendations please ask.
- The real heroes of the creative world will be (have been) forced into operating as a resistance movement.
- The actual artists will now form (always formed) a counterculture.
- The only sustaining work will (has) come from the indie world, not the established order.
- Those who care about culture absolutely must (needed to) support this alt rebellion and indie vibe.
What’s really different?? What am I missing here Ted? I’m 75; I’ve watched a lot of tech that was going to destroy art and creativity, but didn’t. Only added to the innovation of those listed above.
This video has been making the rounds. Apparently Beato covered this group and others. Despite its uniqueness relative to everything else, microtonal guitar, 5/4 time and great execution, microtonal guitars mixed with rock is not new. It’s just being noticed and the theatrical presentation is part of the show. The American Festival of Microtonal music was performing microtonal guitar for over 30 years.
Microtonal guitars and alternative tunings. Guitar tunings include 12-Tone Ultra Plus, 19-tone equal temperament, 31-tone equal temperament, 24-tone Just Intonation, 62-tone Just Intonation, 64-tone Just Intonation, Harmonic Series Just Intonation, 13-limit Just Intonation, Fretless guitar, Turkish Makam tunings, Pythagorean tuning, Meantone temperament, Well-temperament, 5-limit Just Intonation, 128 mean tone tuning, Adjustable microtonal frets (any custom. Indian Raga thousands of years old with complex time signatures 7, 11 beats,14 beats, 28 beats etc... and they can all be subdivided into intricate subdivisions. Then move to Bulgarian traditional music with a 15/16 or 13/16. I'm not saying the performance is bad. Obviously, they have good skills. The world absorbed western music in all its forms but pop music didn’t very much. There are very complex forms of music with complex time signatures and tunings that barely made into western music. Sure Beatles put a sitar in their music, jazz players collaborated with Indian artists but never with the depth that was part of traditional folk music around the world.
Yes. I mention the group in my article today called Motorcycle Rock Star. It asks questions relating to how much our appreciation of the music is related to its visual component, so ubiquitous now.
Sure. Many people are trying desperately to characterize this as genius/deep .. oh it's "MICROTONALS"/It's -Blah Blah Blah. What Garbage. What Desperation to be seen. What a Scam.
There was a group (cant remember the name) back in the 90's ,early 2000's. Some of the 1st to do some Cosplay & Creepy mask Identities. Kinda lame Music Wimp Metal , but I figured they were an aging group of guys who got together and wondered -"What do we do?" Were too old. So they donned the masks. And fooled enough people to achieve semi stardom ,tier 3? I saw them on an interview without the makeup. Sure enough ,they were way beyond the acceptable age of KOOL. But they fooled em'.
I address this very topic in my article today, Motorcycle Rock Star. Yet costumes have been used by bands that were presenting actual good music. But you're right, sometimes costumes are used as a mask, in all respects. I do have to say, my students really dig the Angine group. In fact, it's through them that I found out about it.
The musical circles I dabble in have, by and large, abandoned the online world for lower stakes, in person presence. One of the most recognized professionals in the circle (name omitted because I'm quoting without permission, but you *have* heard and sung along to her songs), told us that the old days of the Nashville/LA songwriter are done. She said, "If I were trying to make it as a young songwriter these days, I'd just self-release a bunch of material on thumb drives and CDS, kit out a minimal minivan and go town to town, playing shows and selling merch out of the back of my van." Going back to the artistic connection where people connect with people, via their artistic expressions.
Ted Chiang (another thoughtful and eloquent Ted!) has written about what's lost when the "art" we consume is AI generated, and I not only think he's spot on, I think a critical mass of young folks are beginning to recognize the problems and embrace what you describe as an "indie movement." There will always be a mass market for the mass marketed by AI, but I do think there's hope for art in the spaces in between.
"If I were trying to make it as a young songwriter these days, I'd just self-release a bunch of material on thumb drives and CDS, kit out a minimal minivan and go town to town, playing shows and selling merch out of the back of my van."
I know musicians who are doing just this. In the past, the word "troubadour," although it originally had a more specific meaning, has been applied to such people.
I have learned that achieving fortune and fame and mass-market appeal are as much a matter of luck as anything else. There are great singers, songwriters, and musicians of all ages playing at open mics, small venues, and on independent online videos. The commercial market is now so dominated by "the industry" that I expect it to become irrelevant, if it hasn't already.
There are some gypsy cats that do exactly that--drive around to little villages in Europe with a van that has a fold-down stage extension, and do a pop up concert anywhere that looks good.
"self-release a bunch of material on thumb drives and CDS, kit out a minimal minivan and go town to town, playing shows and selling merch out of the back of my van." That's a plan to maybe have a lot of fun...and go bankrupt...quickly without a Trust Fund or such other good fortune. That's really bad advice...but maybe there's a song in it. Don't blame large corporations...music is being scorched at the grassroots level. An "unholy alliance" between performance space and alcohol sales no longer works, unless you enjoy performing in front of alcoholics. The cool kids are out back, smoking weed, if anything, and they don't wanna come inside to hear dad bands, which glut the markets like cheap low cost semi-conductors and drive quality...into kitted out minimal minivans...which end up down by the river. But wait! It's actually much worse than that......;)
Yep it doesn’t appear to be improving. I’m tired and defeated after singing this song since ‘81 as I saw the unions letting go of the reins. Bored dinner companions with it, their eyes rolling, until just the other day a song writer friend said, “man, I thought you’d turned bitter but you were so right” was my Pyrrhic victory. The arts are a playground that’s so much fun to romp around in we’d do it for free. You can still make money with music. Can you make it to Medicare? The guardrails that made it possible in my era have been disintegrating. Unemployment numbers will be double digits in a year or two. Maybe then, the rules that were in place that supported human made art decades ago will have the teeth to stop the money fueled search, rearrangement and theft of human artistic genius.
There is a new esthetic, derived from an old one but with a new twist. It’s perhaps not in the context of typical arts and culture as we tend to think of the subject. The pursuit is now global, very much “underground” and unnoticed by but a few. It’s an esthetic of landscape and nature centered on the landscape changing process of ecological restoration (literally including underground aspects!). Practitioners of ecological restoration are motivated not only by the scientific aspects of doing such restoration, but also by the diversity and beauty in nature. They are involved with educating the public, especially the young. There is an accompanying vision of a positive future, which involves people and communities, arts, craft and music. This vision also includes the beauty of clean and healthy waters and soil, with a working agricultural landscape. The restoration vision happens without AI or an oligarchy. It’s tied to renewal of human spirit and awakening.
Good to know this. All arts began by imitating nature, and whatever we do now is just an extension of that. Even a kleenex box or a doormat has leaf designs. Nature cannot be outgrown.
"Ars Gratia Artis" was always more of an aspiration than a reality for MGM- even in their peak years they were turning out as many duds as they were hits. But Amazon, which owns them now, only cares about the latter...
It's been a long time since I've heard a song that calls to me through an emotional connection. A song, brilliantly written, whose words make me want to hum the tune and sing the lyrics. I can't believe that RAP music has become the art form that people consider it today. The same is true of TV sitcoms. That's why I can allow weeks to go by before I turn my TV on. I think that television and pop music today, are part of the reason that our young adults have been dummed down. They are fed low IQ entertainment. Even high school graduates lack the ability to put together a cohesive sentence. Universities have said that a large percentage of freshman students lack the vocabulary and writing skills necessary. They need remedial training, which the post secondary schools are forced to provide.
I don’t pretend to be an artist, but I care about art. I have a sticker on the back window of my car: Art Saves Lives. I want the life-saving quality and capacity to be available to those who need it. So please lay out how to create the parallel dimensions where artists, real artists, can not only survive, but thrive.
Ah, the bread crumbs. Try this: go to Bandcamp and put in a word as a search term. Any word. See what comes up. Experiment. You will find stuff you never knew existed. Some of it may even be good.
As i know artists depended on patrons since ancient times. And patron supported it because it was a sign of status. While nowadays art has become a comodity. You can clearly see it when people call every image "art". Like "book cover art" even though it is just some random things slapped on the cover.
Yes, artists need patrons, not “customers.” But the task of finding and supporting artists has become more difficult because of the sheer volume of faux art. That’s why I’m hoping to see some new ways for artists to connect to their patrons. Ted’s Substack is one way, but there need to be more.
A friend and I both finished writing novels recently, and it's telling that neither of us even considered shopping them to a traditional publisher. Instead we're looking at serializing them online with a link to buy the whole book to read ahead.
Professionally, the company I work for requires our partners to disclose AI generated material in their works. Some of our competitors poo-poo this, but the customers are essentially unanimous in their praise for it. Similary, a site I frequent has added a tag for AI generated material that let me put a hard filter to omit all of it.
When I started reading you essay I had two thoughts
1. There were certain things in visual art and politics that were really backward looking towards the classical world. There's a very abrupt break in 1915. By 1918 that was over. I got that idea from looking at old art magazines 1890s-1920s.
2. We might not have a name for this cultural era until 30 years after it's over and the closer we are to defining this cultural era the more contested it will be.
However, when you characterized this time as the age of AI slop I knew you were onto something there. I think you're correct. Your points remind me of Lanier Larson's You are Not a Gadget which came out 15 years ago.
Hipster was defined as mainstreaming the counterculture. At least that's been something going on since the avant garde was a thing or like you said with the music industry looking for trailblazers.
With this paradigm from the platform owners the avant garde will be completely siloed from the mainstream just generating slop.
Right now what I can imagine people doing is moving to media and places that can't be digitized.
A much better solution would be laws.
Thanks for this essay. Now I'm thinking what we can do about this.
The book you reference is by Jaron Lanier, who BTW is also a musician. As far as laws... I'm not sure I'd put my faith in that, as preferences of the marketplace seem to be more powerful, and influential, in changing behaviors of companies.
Yes the first chapter of Lanier's book talks about how he created MIDI. As to laws if governments have the juice to make people use government IDs to visit websites and they can make laws saying you have to hire a real human lawyer to represent you they can do lots of things.
The way things are now have to do with governments allowing it. But it's not something I'm really interested in debating we have different views on that whatever works.
Flood the Zone seems to be our military aesthetic, too. Drop lotsa bombs, create 2-minute explosion videos the president watches so he keeps ordering more bombing runs. Not original, and not effective, apparently.
In protest, I dug out a yard sign we had up during the Iraq excursion of 2003 that reads Another Family For Peace.
The organization sponsoring the sign has a dead website after all these years, but could this concept be a counter to FTZ: family-by-family peace work?
I read that families are doing just that in places like rural Minnesota --grassroots neighborhood patrols by citizens to protect their immigrant neighbors from ICE.
I got caught by Spotify a week or so ago. I like Bossa Nova music, and was listening while I was cooking dinner. A cover of a pop song came on, and it was fun, and then another, and I thought...wait a minute. I looked up the artist and it was someone from Sweden? I'm pretty sure it was AI generated, so I went back to some older albums. One of the awful effects of slop is that you can't trust a new artist not to be a bot! Guarding against slop is exhausting, and it either pushes you back into your "known artist" bubble, or you just give up. There should be some way to toggle a "no AI" or "human only" choice on these platforms that I'M PAYING FOR. So many bad results from this new "art form."
Same thing happened to my husband, he was really digging this new band he heard and looked into them. They were from Sweden and had a ton of music in a short period of time and they had some wacky name that made no sense. He felt so betrayed and fooled! Time to stop paying for these platforms and listen to real DJs who curate real artists on the RADIO. SUPPORT LISTENER SUPPORTED RADIO. Left of the dial.
If you enjoyed it until you learned it was AI-generated, then the revelation did not change the sound. It changed the moral story wrapped around the sound. The real issue is disclosure, curation, and platforms flooding the zone with cheap filler. “I was betrayed” is doing a lot of melodramatic work there.
The story around music and artists matters a lot, and it's something the slop slingers cannot account for.
You mention that your husband liked the AI songs.
One of the issues that I struggle with is - Out of the millions of AI-generated songs that are apparently created every week, what if I come across one that I genuinely like? Of the millions of slop songs that are created every week, inevitably a few will sound good. Should I feel an obligation to ignore it?
What if AI can eventually create an AI-Beatles album that is legitimately good and sounds like something The Beatles might have done had they continued to record? Should I ignore it?
Any form of art, be it music, a painting, or dance....is about entering into communion with higher consciousness if it really does its job...otherwise it's junk food for the heart, mind, and spirit. While I don't have a clear answer for your question, I feel that the state of mind and the source of whatever art should reflect this higher consciousness. Only then would it make sense at a deeper level....this is my intuitive read on your question...
Yes
Yes, you should ignore it because it was created based on the stolen art of real human beings who toiled to create that work.
By CDs. Rip them. Build and curate your own music service and unhook from Slopify.
That’s one of the reasons I listen to classical.
You do realize that AI can generate classical music, too? A clear example is Google’s Bach Doodle, which lets you enter a melody and hear it harmonized in Bach’s style: https://doodles.google/doodle/celebrating-johann-sebastian-bach/ . For a more polished soundtrack-classical example, AIVA generates music in 250+ styles and publishes tracks that are AI-generated and then arranged by humans: https://www.aiva.ai/ . One example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03xMIcYiB80
Argggg. Of course it can.
The Bach doodle thing starts off ok but it doesn’t know how to develop a theme. It just stays in the same place.
Yes. I was listening to music on youtube when a song came on in an R&B sound. I looked at the image of the singer- too perfect, publish date 2026. I deleted it.
I'm not sure if I fully agree with this, at least on the subject of music. Certainly mainstream music has pretty much stayed the same since the 90s, but music that inhabits the top of the charts, driven by the marketing departments at the major labels, has always been deliberately dull and banal, catering to as broad an audience as possible. But underground music, driven by small labels, run by obsessives, has always been interesting. And I would argue that's as true today as it was back in, say, the late 70s. If you are willing to dig, there is plenty of exciting, innovative, challenging music available right now on platforms like Bandcamp, YouTube, Soundcloud, Mixcloud and so on. In fact, its probably true to say that there's more available now than ever in history, much of it created and distributed by the artists themselves. But basically I agree with your article, thank you for posting it!
I agree with this. When I point to stagnation in music, I always add that innovative music is still out there—just harder to find. There's a lot of creativity in indie/alt scenes. In many ways, that's the key point behind this article.
That makes sense and could have come out a bit more in the text maybe. Movies stagnating, but a lot of creativity in 'TV' shows on the streamers over the last 20 years. News media struggling but ... Substack, podcasts etc. Keen to hear more about these alternative/parallel institutions.
Ted, have you had a look at Subvert?
I see it as the best of times, the worst of times.
On the one paw, now is a terrible time to be a musician if you are looking for the Hookers-n-Blow lifestyle. On the other paw, if you simply want to get your music out there, it has never been easier and with fewer financial and other gatekeepers than the present. Of course, that also means that every other toolio with a microphone and a laptop can get their music out there as well, and you have to compete for attention with 56.795 1/2 other caterwauling toolios looking for a slice a that pie.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. Even if we were to agree that "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac was the greatest artistic statement that is, was or ever shall be, 1977 and the economics to support that ecosystem ain't coming back.
Yep. Self-publishing both removed the gatekeeping and allowed for different ideas to reach people, but it also opened the floodgates for slop.
Heck, there are hundreds of games released on steam every day. And marketing became even more important as a way to not be burried in slop. And thus as the demand for marketing increased, it also increased in price, which tends to take away the budget from the creative process. Around 50% of the budget of AAA game is just marketing.
What's an AAA game?
Big budget games. Like "call of duty", "borderlands 4", etc.
Thanks.
"music that inhabits the top of the charts, driven by the marketing departments at the major labels, has always been deliberately dull and banal" True today, but wasn't always so. The Beatles and Stones had dozens of Top 10 hits. Even Dylan had several.
I would certainly agree with Greg. Yes, some of it was designed to appeal to the wide as possible audience, but let’s face it, the idea of the widest possible audience was pretty narrow back in the old analog recording days. And before that? You had to actually go somewhere to hear any kind of music at all!
Unless you go further back in time. Then you could go into the sitting room (middle class people in the 19th century could likely afford this) and make your own music on the family's piano or play other people's music using sheet music. If, as Ted indicates, we need a resistance, it can be spread through a renewal of in-person art/music experiences. My kids (Millennials) love going to museums and going to listen to live acoustic folk and blues nowadays. I think that they and the Gen Zs may be the leaders of leaving the device behind and reacquainting themselves with In Real Life. I look forward to this revolution!
Or people made it themselves at home, which might be the lesson for today
Yes, I have started to listen to more old popular music that I ignored back in the day.
"If your willing to dig" thats the big issue! No ones willing to do that, people used to physically go to stores and dig through bins to buy discs, now even searching online and downloading a file is too much effort! It's this attitude of having to be spoon fed everything by some corporate "service" that's wrecking everything. Yes maybe streaming is convenient but just like AI if you rely on it to much your brain starts to atrophy.
If you dont want corporate slop than stop listening to corporate streaming services!
Remember the joy of discovering a band as you flicked through the LPs simply because it had great cover art? You took it to the counter and asked to have a listen. Sometimes it wasn't what you like, but when it was, boy did that make you feel like an old school archaeologist finding hidden treasure.
I was one of those obsessives who started a small indie record label back in 1979. It was not much of a commercial success (in fact it essentially ran out of money after about 10 years), but I used it to look for and release some of the most challenging music I could find. This was of course before platforms, before the internet and before even email, but we (myself and two friends/partners) used what we had available: small xeroxed fanzines, college radio stations, flyers distributed locally by hand, retail outlets that could be visited and that would take records on consignment, and after a few of the early releases sold well, wholesale distributors geared to the indie market.
However, we were riding a broad cultural/political movement that is scarcely happening today. I'm hearing stirrings of some very radical music, primarily in the metal underground right now, but whether or not it can grow in the present suffocating environment is open to question.
My husband recently shared his take that the art form that matters right now isn't music or sculpture or film or painting, it's body modification, and once I started seeing it I couldn't unsee it. A lot of people of every age and very political persuasion are making big, big statements about what they think life is all about for everyone to see, and the canvas is their skin, their muscles, and their bones. Think about how many DIFFERENT versions of gender-affirming cosmetic surgery there are in circulation right now, for cis and trans people alike. Think about how many times someone's tattoo has been in the news just in the past year. Think about the fact that looksmaxxing was just in a sketch on SNL this past weekend. For whatever reason this is what the current artistic moment is all about.
This may be true. I see it everywhere. But as a relatively older person, it strikes me as creepy!
Body modification really took off in a big way in 1989 with the publication of V. Vale's "Modern Primitives" book.
So interesting! Decades ago my friends and I predicted that soon there would be body modifications like tails, can’t be long now? Life Is Art can manifest in so many ways - watch Secret Mall Apartment for one expression of it (that has nothing to do with body modification, but building/infrastructure modification as art.).
People are getting little horn nubs already. I feel like tails can't be far behind.
Humans should in general emulate cats.
Agreed, but compared to a cat a human can only ever look like a desperate try hard :))
It's not so much an artistic movement as a sign of the deep pathology that pervades modern culture.
I challenge you to think of one artistic movement of the past three centuries that contemporary critics wouldn't have characterized in a similar way :) Is it even art if nobody thinks it's a sign of the deep pathology that pervades modern culture?
I'm a veterinarian so I use pathology in a very specific medical sense, not as a general term to indicate disorder or degeneracy as it might be used colloquially. I regard cosmetic surgery that distorts to a point where the patient barely resembles something human as an indicator of a deep and abiding psychological disorder. It is troubling as a species that people now regard faces that have not had AI filters applied as something ugly and frightening to the point where they are prepared to undergo major surgery to look that way, and extremely so. I agree that new art movements are and have been regarded as degenerate and dangerous and often unworthy. Often that very art has propelled our culture forward, but just as often the "new" disappears as fast as its novelty value declines. I do believe, however, we have reached an era where the whole world has "jumped the shark" so to speak, in just about all things. There will be a great reset, how that happens, who's to know?
If you limit yourself to mainly American or European music, then you are depriving yourself of some truly inspirational music. Look to Cape Verde, Angola, Congo, South Africa, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Benin, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Honduras, Panama. You may not understand all the lyrics but the music is vital and polyrhythmic. If you are looking for artist recommendations please ask.
So true. Used to love NPR’s Afropop Worldwide show.
Has it not always been the case that:
- The real heroes of the creative world will be (have been) forced into operating as a resistance movement.
- The actual artists will now form (always formed) a counterculture.
- The only sustaining work will (has) come from the indie world, not the established order.
- Those who care about culture absolutely must (needed to) support this alt rebellion and indie vibe.
What’s really different?? What am I missing here Ted? I’m 75; I’ve watched a lot of tech that was going to destroy art and creativity, but didn’t. Only added to the innovation of those listed above.
"The only sustaining work will come from the indie world, not the established order."
Example of music from a group (Angine de Poitrine) in Quebec:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ssi-9wS1so
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angine_de_Poitrine
This video has been making the rounds. Apparently Beato covered this group and others. Despite its uniqueness relative to everything else, microtonal guitar, 5/4 time and great execution, microtonal guitars mixed with rock is not new. It’s just being noticed and the theatrical presentation is part of the show. The American Festival of Microtonal music was performing microtonal guitar for over 30 years.
Microtonal guitars and alternative tunings. Guitar tunings include 12-Tone Ultra Plus, 19-tone equal temperament, 31-tone equal temperament, 24-tone Just Intonation, 62-tone Just Intonation, 64-tone Just Intonation, Harmonic Series Just Intonation, 13-limit Just Intonation, Fretless guitar, Turkish Makam tunings, Pythagorean tuning, Meantone temperament, Well-temperament, 5-limit Just Intonation, 128 mean tone tuning, Adjustable microtonal frets (any custom. Indian Raga thousands of years old with complex time signatures 7, 11 beats,14 beats, 28 beats etc... and they can all be subdivided into intricate subdivisions. Then move to Bulgarian traditional music with a 15/16 or 13/16. I'm not saying the performance is bad. Obviously, they have good skills. The world absorbed western music in all its forms but pop music didn’t very much. There are very complex forms of music with complex time signatures and tunings that barely made into western music. Sure Beatles put a sitar in their music, jazz players collaborated with Indian artists but never with the depth that was part of traditional folk music around the world.
Yes. I mention the group in my article today called Motorcycle Rock Star. It asks questions relating to how much our appreciation of the music is related to its visual component, so ubiquitous now.
Ah, truly they are a breath of fresh air and an inspiration!
Sure. Many people are trying desperately to characterize this as genius/deep .. oh it's "MICROTONALS"/It's -Blah Blah Blah. What Garbage. What Desperation to be seen. What a Scam.
There was a group (cant remember the name) back in the 90's ,early 2000's. Some of the 1st to do some Cosplay & Creepy mask Identities. Kinda lame Music Wimp Metal , but I figured they were an aging group of guys who got together and wondered -"What do we do?" Were too old. So they donned the masks. And fooled enough people to achieve semi stardom ,tier 3? I saw them on an interview without the makeup. Sure enough ,they were way beyond the acceptable age of KOOL. But they fooled em'.
I address this very topic in my article today, Motorcycle Rock Star. Yet costumes have been used by bands that were presenting actual good music. But you're right, sometimes costumes are used as a mask, in all respects. I do have to say, my students really dig the Angine group. In fact, it's through them that I found out about it.
The musical circles I dabble in have, by and large, abandoned the online world for lower stakes, in person presence. One of the most recognized professionals in the circle (name omitted because I'm quoting without permission, but you *have* heard and sung along to her songs), told us that the old days of the Nashville/LA songwriter are done. She said, "If I were trying to make it as a young songwriter these days, I'd just self-release a bunch of material on thumb drives and CDS, kit out a minimal minivan and go town to town, playing shows and selling merch out of the back of my van." Going back to the artistic connection where people connect with people, via their artistic expressions.
Ted Chiang (another thoughtful and eloquent Ted!) has written about what's lost when the "art" we consume is AI generated, and I not only think he's spot on, I think a critical mass of young folks are beginning to recognize the problems and embrace what you describe as an "indie movement." There will always be a mass market for the mass marketed by AI, but I do think there's hope for art in the spaces in between.
"If I were trying to make it as a young songwriter these days, I'd just self-release a bunch of material on thumb drives and CDS, kit out a minimal minivan and go town to town, playing shows and selling merch out of the back of my van."
I know musicians who are doing just this. In the past, the word "troubadour," although it originally had a more specific meaning, has been applied to such people.
I have learned that achieving fortune and fame and mass-market appeal are as much a matter of luck as anything else. There are great singers, songwriters, and musicians of all ages playing at open mics, small venues, and on independent online videos. The commercial market is now so dominated by "the industry" that I expect it to become irrelevant, if it hasn't already.
There are some gypsy cats that do exactly that--drive around to little villages in Europe with a van that has a fold-down stage extension, and do a pop up concert anywhere that looks good.
"self-release a bunch of material on thumb drives and CDS, kit out a minimal minivan and go town to town, playing shows and selling merch out of the back of my van." That's a plan to maybe have a lot of fun...and go bankrupt...quickly without a Trust Fund or such other good fortune. That's really bad advice...but maybe there's a song in it. Don't blame large corporations...music is being scorched at the grassroots level. An "unholy alliance" between performance space and alcohol sales no longer works, unless you enjoy performing in front of alcoholics. The cool kids are out back, smoking weed, if anything, and they don't wanna come inside to hear dad bands, which glut the markets like cheap low cost semi-conductors and drive quality...into kitted out minimal minivans...which end up down by the river. But wait! It's actually much worse than that......;)
Yep it doesn’t appear to be improving. I’m tired and defeated after singing this song since ‘81 as I saw the unions letting go of the reins. Bored dinner companions with it, their eyes rolling, until just the other day a song writer friend said, “man, I thought you’d turned bitter but you were so right” was my Pyrrhic victory. The arts are a playground that’s so much fun to romp around in we’d do it for free. You can still make money with music. Can you make it to Medicare? The guardrails that made it possible in my era have been disintegrating. Unemployment numbers will be double digits in a year or two. Maybe then, the rules that were in place that supported human made art decades ago will have the teeth to stop the money fueled search, rearrangement and theft of human artistic genius.
There is a new esthetic, derived from an old one but with a new twist. It’s perhaps not in the context of typical arts and culture as we tend to think of the subject. The pursuit is now global, very much “underground” and unnoticed by but a few. It’s an esthetic of landscape and nature centered on the landscape changing process of ecological restoration (literally including underground aspects!). Practitioners of ecological restoration are motivated not only by the scientific aspects of doing such restoration, but also by the diversity and beauty in nature. They are involved with educating the public, especially the young. There is an accompanying vision of a positive future, which involves people and communities, arts, craft and music. This vision also includes the beauty of clean and healthy waters and soil, with a working agricultural landscape. The restoration vision happens without AI or an oligarchy. It’s tied to renewal of human spirit and awakening.
Good to know this. All arts began by imitating nature, and whatever we do now is just an extension of that. Even a kleenex box or a doormat has leaf designs. Nature cannot be outgrown.
i’m in, when do we start?
"Ars Gratia Artis" was always more of an aspiration than a reality for MGM- even in their peak years they were turning out as many duds as they were hits. But Amazon, which owns them now, only cares about the latter...
It's been a long time since I've heard a song that calls to me through an emotional connection. A song, brilliantly written, whose words make me want to hum the tune and sing the lyrics. I can't believe that RAP music has become the art form that people consider it today. The same is true of TV sitcoms. That's why I can allow weeks to go by before I turn my TV on. I think that television and pop music today, are part of the reason that our young adults have been dummed down. They are fed low IQ entertainment. Even high school graduates lack the ability to put together a cohesive sentence. Universities have said that a large percentage of freshman students lack the vocabulary and writing skills necessary. They need remedial training, which the post secondary schools are forced to provide.
What did you think of Rich Men North of Richmond?
I don’t pretend to be an artist, but I care about art. I have a sticker on the back window of my car: Art Saves Lives. I want the life-saving quality and capacity to be available to those who need it. So please lay out how to create the parallel dimensions where artists, real artists, can not only survive, but thrive.
The parallel dimensions already exist, but as with any parallel dimension, they must be discovered on your own. Worth the effort though!
I recognize the need for individual initiative. What I’m looking for is a few bread crumbs to help me find my way through the forest.
Ah, the bread crumbs. Try this: go to Bandcamp and put in a word as a search term. Any word. See what comes up. Experiment. You will find stuff you never knew existed. Some of it may even be good.
Okay. Great idea. I’m on Bandcamp, but did not know how to use it in such a creative way. Thanks!
As i know artists depended on patrons since ancient times. And patron supported it because it was a sign of status. While nowadays art has become a comodity. You can clearly see it when people call every image "art". Like "book cover art" even though it is just some random things slapped on the cover.
Yes, artists need patrons, not “customers.” But the task of finding and supporting artists has become more difficult because of the sheer volume of faux art. That’s why I’m hoping to see some new ways for artists to connect to their patrons. Ted’s Substack is one way, but there need to be more.
A friend and I both finished writing novels recently, and it's telling that neither of us even considered shopping them to a traditional publisher. Instead we're looking at serializing them online with a link to buy the whole book to read ahead.
Professionally, the company I work for requires our partners to disclose AI generated material in their works. Some of our competitors poo-poo this, but the customers are essentially unanimous in their praise for it. Similary, a site I frequent has added a tag for AI generated material that let me put a hard filter to omit all of it.
When I started reading you essay I had two thoughts
1. There were certain things in visual art and politics that were really backward looking towards the classical world. There's a very abrupt break in 1915. By 1918 that was over. I got that idea from looking at old art magazines 1890s-1920s.
2. We might not have a name for this cultural era until 30 years after it's over and the closer we are to defining this cultural era the more contested it will be.
However, when you characterized this time as the age of AI slop I knew you were onto something there. I think you're correct. Your points remind me of Lanier Larson's You are Not a Gadget which came out 15 years ago.
Hipster was defined as mainstreaming the counterculture. At least that's been something going on since the avant garde was a thing or like you said with the music industry looking for trailblazers.
With this paradigm from the platform owners the avant garde will be completely siloed from the mainstream just generating slop.
Right now what I can imagine people doing is moving to media and places that can't be digitized.
A much better solution would be laws.
Thanks for this essay. Now I'm thinking what we can do about this.
The book you reference is by Jaron Lanier, who BTW is also a musician. As far as laws... I'm not sure I'd put my faith in that, as preferences of the marketplace seem to be more powerful, and influential, in changing behaviors of companies.
Yes the first chapter of Lanier's book talks about how he created MIDI. As to laws if governments have the juice to make people use government IDs to visit websites and they can make laws saying you have to hire a real human lawyer to represent you they can do lots of things.
The way things are now have to do with governments allowing it. But it's not something I'm really interested in debating we have different views on that whatever works.
Flood the Zone seems to be our military aesthetic, too. Drop lotsa bombs, create 2-minute explosion videos the president watches so he keeps ordering more bombing runs. Not original, and not effective, apparently.
In protest, I dug out a yard sign we had up during the Iraq excursion of 2003 that reads Another Family For Peace.
The organization sponsoring the sign has a dead website after all these years, but could this concept be a counter to FTZ: family-by-family peace work?
I read that families are doing just that in places like rural Minnesota --grassroots neighborhood patrols by citizens to protect their immigrant neighbors from ICE.