So first off, let me set this straight.
I actually like GenAI music. It offers me a way to er… “create” tracks that resonate with a particular moment in my life. It’s more personal and relevant than anything most artists produce. But that’s where it ends - I don’t want to hear GenAI mass market slop. Heck, I don’t want to hear MOST folk’s AI Generated stuff. That’s for them. The music I generate is for me.
Moving on from that - I primarily use Spotify currently for music discovery, and up until a few months ago it’s been the most reliable way to find new Artists that might interest me. Their algorithm, while not perfect, generally hooked me up with artists that were in the ballpark of what I like and were REAL.
Today, about half of my “Release Radar” is AI generated slop. Some of it is published under their own names and labels which is fine, but others are transparently attempting to dupe listeners by imitating or outright impersonating known bands. However, even in the “nice” case of well labeled and non-impersonating AI tunes, it’s significantly getting in the way of finding new stuff.
I think I’m done with Spotify, recent statements from the CEO has me thinking that they don’t consider this to be a problem. They aren’t looking to fix this issue, and aren’t even pretending to.
But the problem is, none of the other music streaming services are in a better situation. None have sought to deal with the artist impersonation problem or general labeling of AI generated music.
I feel like I have to go back to CD’s and word-of-mouth like back in the “old days” - at least if I’m to be sure that the music was actually made by a human. But how long would it be before we start getting CD’s with AI generated music on them? My hope is that the fad is too “low effort” to bother with pressing vinyl or burning CD’s.
How are you discovering new (human) music in this rapidly changing landscape?
I suggest you check out the feeds on Bandcamp. I find a lot of great new music that way. If you like comedy, lots of comedy shows have musical guests. Late Stage Live for example has great musical guests that may be new to you.
Generally speaking, corpos like Spotify are more interested in paying Joe Rogan than helping you find quality music.
feeds on Bandcamp.
I have a Bandcamp account, but weren’t they acquired and sorta lost their souls as well? I’ll go check it out again and see what’s there!
For discovery, check out https://rateyourmusic.com/! You can rate music and then use automated suggestions, or better yet, go on albums you like and check out profiles of people that made reviews that resonate with you for other stuff they like. It’s old-school, based on humans! You can look into charts by genres as well.
Instead of collecting a physical music library, you can consider DRM-free digital as well. You can buy albums in such formats at Bandcamp, Qobuz, 7digital. Of course you can sail the high seas as well once in a while. Personally I’m proud to support artists, but I have much less scruples concerning copyright over music made by musicians that have passed away.
Bandcamp, Qobuz, 7digital
Yup, I do that where possible now. Usually only for albums though.
I also buy a lot of band merch these days and try to go when they play locally.
I only take to the high seas in the event I can’t find a particular hifi release or something equally niche and eBay is no help.
CD’s have a nostalgia appeal to it for me, and since I’m finally financially stable I’ve been wanting to get back into collecting physical media. It’s just hard because not many new bands bother with physical media at all anymore. At least outside of limited run releases.
As an aside, I don’t get the resurgence of tape players at all! Tape being lower fidelity coupled with the shorter lifespan was something I thought people disliked.
I’m curious what kind of music you listen to that the platforms keep recommending AI-generated music. I don’t think I’ve ever been recommended AI music (yet) on spotify or youtube.
But to answer your question, sometimes I search a specific genre I want on youtube music and check out the community playlists. I listen to them until I hear something good, then I check out the artist from there.
I wondered the same thing actually.
After some googling I saw two trends emerge so far that impacted me.
- A general proliferation of lower-effort Electronic music (particularly Lo-Fi and *wave genres) that are harder to distinguish from their human-made counterparts.
- A wave of metalcore impersonation with AI just a couple weeks ago.
The metalcore one hit me hard as I just got into the genre and don’t yet have enough familiarity to find the generated stuff uncanny.
Basically that’s why it’s music discovery that’s impacted - not listening to already established bands.
As an example of this, one of my favorite bands is VAST (Jon Crosby) but he’s pretty inactive and doesn’t report songs that have been mistakenly added to his artist profile. I know this artist so well that I can tell within seconds if it’s actually him or not. So this AI problem is much more manageable for bands I already know and love.
Discovering new music however, has become a terrible experience full of disappointment and confusion.
