One of my SF nightmares from Journey to Madness has already come true. I found out about this last night (11/12) on the Colbert show's "Cyborgasm" segment after a demo of a walking android not quite walking. It's an AI generated country singer named "Breaking Rust" singing a song it wrote, produced, and recorded named "Walk My Walk" and has hit number one on the country charts.
It's covered in ABC News, USA Today, and quite a few outlets including, of course, the entertainment rags.
I thought the robot song was even more lame, uninspired, and formulaic than most pop music, but I'm not a country or pop fan. Aparently it created some controversy.
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"Walk My AI Walk", a #1 AI Country Song
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(Score: 3, Funny) by looorg on Saturday November 22, @11:23AM (9 children)
I'm surprised that it's "country". I more or less assume it has already happened in "pop", it's just that nobody noticed since that music have now become so formulaic that it can be created and nobody can really tell the difference. But "country", that is a bit of a surprise. That said is there a woman, a dog and a pickup truck in the song? After all "country" have been stereotypical for years and years to.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22, @12:54PM
At least since the early 90s, in the songs on the top hits list, country is pop where you make sure the singer has a little twang in their voice and you add a steel guitar track. One might argue similarly that there are subtle differences between other genres and generic pop as well. The music industry as a whole is a formulaic mediocrity machine reinforced by AutoTune and Clear Channel algorithms.
IMHO, of course.
(Score: 5, Touché) by r1348 on Saturday November 22, @01:52PM (1 child)
For country music, AI is likely an improvement.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23, @12:55PM
There is a time and a place for a higher mod level. This is one of them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 22, @02:12PM (2 children)
> lame, uninspired, and formulaic than most pop music, but I'm not a country or pop fan
> music have now become so formulaic that it can be created and nobody can really tell the difference.
Highly produced and promoted pop music has always been formulaic, that's how the industry was, and still is built.
Back in the 1970s and earlier, the machines weren't up to the task of playing decent music, so the industry was built on compliant meatbags who cranked out the formula - but there were just enough "rebel" meatbags around the fringes to keep things a bit spicy. Sometimes that spice gets popular enough that it becomes a new formula...
Since sampling synthesizers and autotune have been around, it really doesn't take much practice or talent to "sound good" on a recording, so the percentage of formula cranking compliant meatbags has exploded. Through the 80's and 90's it was kind of a true-ism that the lead vocalist should "sound unique, or at least distinctive" in order to get promoted - that was the one remaining holdout of "anti-formula formula." That seems to have mostly faded in the past 20 years.
The broad population's musical taste (that broad population that contributes economic support to the industry, at least) - craves same-ness. The "top 40" familiar songs that they can relate to their friends about. Old people (self included) seem to settle on the music of their teens through early thirties as their perpetual definition of what they like. It's an exceedingly rare new artist that can do something "different" that's still familiar enough to fit in to the established tastes of anyone over 50.
One artist who "hit center" for me later in life is Heather Nova - little surprise there, she's almost exactly my age, so her music kind of weaves along the same popular styles as what I listened to through my life. Another is Tash Sultana, much younger, but plays the familiar instruments through modern gear (a lot of loopers) in appealing ways for us old farts. I don't even mind that she calls herself an it or whatever, it doesn't impact the music in any objectionable ways for me.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22, @10:43PM
> Highly produced and promoted pop music has always been formulaic, that's how the industry was, and still is built.
Reality begs to differ. The list is endless...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5JCrSXkJY [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJunCsrhJjg [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23, @07:58AM
https://suno.com/song/93288786-8d6a-4e6a-95fd-4e3ba1aca02c [suno.com]
[punk rock guitar riff intro]
[Verse 1]
I poured my heart into every line
Well I clicked generate lyrics. whatever! fine!
Posted it to discord, with hope in sight
But there's only silence, not even a bite
[Pre-Chorus]
Is it the rhythm, or is it the rhyme?
What's missing in my song this time?
[break]
[Chorus]
Why didn't anyone like my song?
I told you it's a banger, is there something wrong?
Posted 2 minutes ago, it's a work of art
Refreshed 8 times, yet not even a heart.
Why didn't anyone like my song?
Why didn't anyone like my song?
[break]
[Verse 2]
I've seen the others, they rise so fast
A thumb, 3 flames, but will it last?
I'm sittin' here waiting, feeling ignored
Just one time, I wanna be on Explore
[Pre-Chorus]
America is sleeping, maybe that's why?
I'll repost every 2 hours, it's worth a try.
[break]
[Chorus]
Why didn't anyone like my song?
I told you it's a banger, is there something wrong?
Posted 2 minutes ago, it's a work of art
Refreshed 8 times, yet not even a heart.
Why didn't anyone like my song?
Why didn't anyone like my song?
[instrumental interlude]
[Bridge]
Maybe it's a genre that people don't crave
Next time i'll be sure to try synthwave
I can't go to sleep until i get a reaction
Maybe if i like it myself it will get some traction
[drop]
[Chorus]
Why didn't anyone like my song?
I told you it's a banger, is there something wrong?
Posted 2 minutes ago, it's a work of art
Refreshed 8 times, yet not even a heart.
Why didn't anyone like my song?
Why didn't anyone like my song?
[big finish]
[Outro]
[spoken word] Why didn't anyone like my song?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Reziac on Sunday November 23, @02:30AM (1 child)
2018 saw the release of the Classic AI Country song, "You Can't Take My Door"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPs6wdM7S3U [youtube.com]
Never be another like it.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23, @07:32AM
Here's another "AI" song... Lots of CEOs singing "I Want Your AI"...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjepR9LWl-g [youtube.com]
Well actually yes and no... 😉
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23, @07:44AM
Not a surprise to me. Last year there was this: https://www.udio.com/songs/coixNX1gnJ1oWT8z2LQddk [udio.com]
There's a woman and a highway...
(do note the AI ignoring the "male vocalist" prompt 🤣 )
And lots of people/AIs extending it e.g. https://www.udio.com/songs/6TfsNT72U1QZNphKZayZUy [udio.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Saturday November 22, @02:12PM (3 children)
Sigh. Here we are again. So-called "AI"s do not and can can not "write" a song. It calculates statistically what you want to hear based on input, morphing and slopping bazillions of songs it has in its database in to something that may or may not resemble music.
TFA does not site a source, but this musical piece did not just pop in to existence. Somewhere someone instructed the machine to make it, feeding in parameters, and judging if the output is acceptable. Even if somewhere one of these clankers was set to automatically generate random music with no additional input, then what happened was it slopped a million turds in to existence and one floated up to the top.
It's like a bunch of cave men who have never seen a musical instrument before claiming the instrument is making the music itself. It is so stupid it is painful.
The sad thing is, music is supposed to be an expression of the HUMAN condition. No masheen can ever experience that.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 22, @02:18PM
>Somewhere someone instructed the machine to make it, feeding in parameters, and judging if the output is acceptable.
I took a computer generated music class in 1989. and that was our assignment: write a program to write music, play that music, and refine it until you're not too ashamed to present it to the class.
Mine was a limited random note selector roughly based on the patterns of David Bowie's TVC15, random enough that most people kinda liked the melody and still didn't recognize the inspirational source - but it was definitely there. We mostly used deterministic prngs to feed the structural algorithms we made up and tried different seeds until one "sounded good."
LLMs get their "inspiration" from a much wider pool, but the result is the same - somebody is writing the prompts, and judging the outputs until they've got something they think they might promote into popularity. That ability to navigate the promotional channels has always been the trick.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Saturday November 22, @04:19PM
Not sure why this is the first thing that came to mind [youtube.com] when I read this.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22, @05:07PM
"There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself." -- J. S. Bach
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Saturday November 22, @02:42PM (1 child)
Look at how the data is generated before determining that the "winner" has any influence.
Half the "charts" come from a single very private company producing people-meter stats of broadcast radio listening. Remember broadcast radio? Most don't, aside from it being a semi-illegal (if not properly licensed) background music source. Music data is not provided in absolute counts. You'll only be permitted to see pie charts of markets and relative growth rate trivia. I assure you the numbers are extremely low.
Think of how popular vinyl collecting is IRL. There's, like, tens, maybe a hundred people in my city. Then consider that however unpopular that is, LPs have been outselling CDs for half a decade. That tiny little fringe is the other half of where the charts come from. For the entire market. Now imagine the even smaller pool of people determining what is the top of the country sub genre charts. Ooof.
Then you get the absolute absurdity of dead media commenting about dead media:
Out of roughly 342,034,432 people in the USA, 341,901,792 people do not subscribe to, or frankly care about, USA Today. They are irrelevant since the turn of the century, roughly. The numbers are cratering fast enough to be hard to discuss. They've lost 30K subscribers in the last two years which is about a quarter the original total (LOL). This is one of the top papers in the country not the bottom.
Even the WSJ (Thats the wall street journal) only prints 473K copies and they are the absolute overwhelming top of the industry by far (competitors are on a somewhat exponential graph). My local birdcage liner has a roughly 2% subscription rate in my "metropolitan statistical area" aka a 98% non-subscription rate. Dead media fluffing dead media is simply not interesting or relevant.
The next problem you have is viral AI generated legacy "journalism":
OK lets say, however unlikely, the story is true (spoiler, its not...) and the top of the country charts is "Walk my Walk". OK lets check a primary source. https://www.billboard.com/charts/country-songs/ [billboard.com]
Hmm. If you try that you will be in for a surprise... OK fine I am a lazy bastard I'll admit to that. I'll use Billboard's search feature on their website to find the musician. Guess what does not exist?
Then look up the wikipedia for how Billboard determines what is at the top of the chart "Billboard has not explicitly defined how it determines which songs qualify for the country chart and which ones do not, only that "a few factors are determined (...) first and foremost is musical composition" and that a song must "embrace enough elements of today's country music" to qualify." So some guy is told what to promote (along with, I'm sure, the "usual" motivations), then promotes it. OK then, if thats how you want to define whats important.
So, if the story were true, which it seems it is not, then it still wouldn't matter because instead of AI hallucination slop it would be corporate slop.
There is some faith in humanity that civilization has utterly rejected this entire genre top to bottom when you look at the numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25, @12:59PM
Alright let's see if this checks out.
https://www.billboard.com/charts/country-songs/ [billboard.com]
Who's on top this week.
1. I Got Better - Morgan Wallen
2. What I Want - Morgan Wallen Featuring Tate McRae
3. I'm The Problem - Morgan Wallen
4. Choosin' Texas - Ella Langley
5. Just In Case - Morgan Wallen
OMG! CALL THE FRONT PAGE NEWS! ONE ARTIST HAS FOUR OF THE TOP FIVE COUNTRY SONGS THIS WEEK! NEWS! NEWS! NEWS!
Same artist also has:
11. 20 Cigarettes - Morgan Wallen
30. I Ain't Coming Back - Morgan Wallen Featuring Post Malone
Perhaps it is just a very shallow pool.
Who knows?
Tune in next week to see the "Top country music" ratings! It's sure to be a hit.
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Vocal Minority on Saturday November 22, @03:08PM (1 child)
...this appears to be complete BS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGremoYVMPc [youtube.com] (Rick Beato - the claim is that the chart this is on is easily gamed by spending ~3K on digital downloads)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22, @03:23PM
I don't see it as too much BS because I don't see it being much different than, for example, Sarah Palin using PAC money to buy up her books to try to get on the NYT Bestseller list.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Captival on Saturday November 22, @04:08PM
I've been experimenting myself, it can do great things. There's a whole spectrum between pure AI music and pure human, and the tools let you handle the lyrics, beat, instruments, or note by note sequencing.
Here, check out one of my songs, check out this new 'oldie': https://youtu.be/6ZRG4jKqu6c [youtu.be]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday November 22, @05:48PM
I guess it won't be long , given the amount of data collected on us , before we see individually targeted ads sent to us , crafted with knowledge of each of our individual psychologies. What approach works best with each individual.
I think things look bright for ad agencies, likely very small concerns of a creative type and his generative AI, and his errand boy to pay personal visits to personally handshake with clients.
However nothing here for musicians or actors. That will be all generative AI .
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22, @06:33PM
Billy The Big-Mouth Bass
(Score: 4, Interesting) by istartedi on Saturday November 22, @06:38PM
Listening in the background as I type out my 1st impression. It sounds like Nathanial Rateliff and the Night Sweats (S.O.B) meet Lil' Nas X (Old Town Road), which isn't surprising since AI just takes human stuff and mashes it up sort of. It's not bad enough to be taken as straight-up parody of either artist. There's a joke country song out there composed of nothing but variations on the phrase "cold beer". Modern country was notoriously formulaic already. AI can't make it much worse.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by oregonjohn on Saturday November 22, @06:49PM
My nephew does this at Thanksgiving. Just some quiet acoustic guitar in the background, sometimes emerging into a sing-along but not often. No applause, no bows; just a nice background bringing harmony into the gathering.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23, @07:52AM (1 child)
Wonder what God thinks about such stuff... 😉
https://suno.com/playlist/bd1b67fb-dd9c-499a-acc7-7e4321e66e2b [suno.com]
https://suno.com/playlist/19555fda-26ad-4f14-82de-52b02b5bcdf0 [suno.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25, @01:23PM
Some of the songs on sumo.com are very good