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.
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.
"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!
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.
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.).
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.
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.
They should label it. Like they label foods: "made with gentech". "Made with AI". I wonder the critique in these pages is always directed at the low end of mass production. Mass production switches from human created slop to AI created slop . Agreed.But imagine that AI may produce also "high end" culture. As with the game of GO. Or with alpha fold in micro chemistry. Why should this not also happen in art? I am sure, it is already happening.
Did you hear about Disney's suits finally realizing that all Sora did for them was let creeps damage their crown jewels by making endless fake "live action" sex videos featuring Disney characters?
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.
"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......;)
- 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.
As I read this, tears well in my widened, disbelieving eyes and sweat starts to pool in my pores as Hell's heat ramps up. T.S. Eliot's lament comes to mind: "Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
I wrote about this: "We are handing a glowing, candy-colored infinity to a Paleolithic brain. The slop is candy laced with arsenic and the gap between what we can make and what we can steward is widening into an impassable abyss.
Infinite Jest imagined entertainment so captivating it killed you by delight. Silicon Valley just calls that “retention” and ARR.
Growth unchecked is the ideology of cancer and humanity’s prognosis is increasingly dire."
"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.
Great article! 'Flood the zone' - in particular - has been super bumming me out. It takes time to make great art. Editing time after, soaking time before, and living time all throughout, to have and process the experiences that feed it. If AI is continually churning out volume while we're having a think, we may be in an unwinnable race. Where do I sign up for this resistance of which you speak?
As usual, the buck rules. I pay for none of these music services. I seldom use Chin-azon and as you say, A/i will retard everything further than it already was. Perhaps A/i is fake also.
With variations, evolutions, mutations etc, the mass, hit machine machine has been in place for a long time; as you know. We have always needed to search out the authentic and excellent. Technology just 100x the crap but the search continues. But a new counter culture would be great. Thus of us around for the 60's are getting old or worse.
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.
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.
"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!
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.
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.).
People are getting little horn nubs already. I feel like tails can't be far behind.
Humans should in general emulate cats.
"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
Ah, truly they are a breath of fresh air and an inspiration!
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.
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.
They should label it. Like they label foods: "made with gentech". "Made with AI". I wonder the critique in these pages is always directed at the low end of mass production. Mass production switches from human created slop to AI created slop . Agreed.But imagine that AI may produce also "high end" culture. As with the game of GO. Or with alpha fold in micro chemistry. Why should this not also happen in art? I am sure, it is already happening.
Did you hear about Disney's suits finally realizing that all Sora did for them was let creeps damage their crown jewels by making endless fake "live action" sex videos featuring Disney characters?
It was more the fact that OpenAI was losing money hand and foot over Sora which was the reason for its demise.
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.
"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......;)
i’m in, when do we start?
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.
As I read this, tears well in my widened, disbelieving eyes and sweat starts to pool in my pores as Hell's heat ramps up. T.S. Eliot's lament comes to mind: "Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
I wrote about this: "We are handing a glowing, candy-colored infinity to a Paleolithic brain. The slop is candy laced with arsenic and the gap between what we can make and what we can steward is widening into an impassable abyss.
Infinite Jest imagined entertainment so captivating it killed you by delight. Silicon Valley just calls that “retention” and ARR.
Growth unchecked is the ideology of cancer and humanity’s prognosis is increasingly dire."
More: https://www.whitenoise.email/p/dont-eat-the-slop
"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.
Great article! 'Flood the zone' - in particular - has been super bumming me out. It takes time to make great art. Editing time after, soaking time before, and living time all throughout, to have and process the experiences that feed it. If AI is continually churning out volume while we're having a think, we may be in an unwinnable race. Where do I sign up for this resistance of which you speak?
As usual, the buck rules. I pay for none of these music services. I seldom use Chin-azon and as you say, A/i will retard everything further than it already was. Perhaps A/i is fake also.
With variations, evolutions, mutations etc, the mass, hit machine machine has been in place for a long time; as you know. We have always needed to search out the authentic and excellent. Technology just 100x the crap but the search continues. But a new counter culture would be great. Thus of us around for the 60's are getting old or worse.