Spotify Says It's Working With Labels On 'Responsible' AI Music Tools 17
Spotify has officially partnered with major record labels to create a "responsible AI" initiative aimed at developing generative music tools that supposedly benefit both artists and fans. While Spotify promises choice, transparency, and fair compensation, the vague announcement has many skeptics wondering if "responsible AI" is just another remix of old industry power plays set to a new algorithmic beat. The Verge reports: Spotify didn't detail any specific products in the works but said it was building a "state-of-the-art generative AI research lab and product team focused on developing technologies that reflect our principles and create breakthrough experiences for fans and artists." Most of the press release is dedicated to vagaries and laying out the principles that will guide Spotify's generative AI projects: [partnerships with record labels, distributors, and music publishers; choice in participation; fair compensation and new revenue; and artist-fan connection.]
How comforting (Score:5, Insightful)
Haha... responsible AI? Almost as funny as "ethical AI".
Easy to see 100% a covering over of a problem (Score:2)
Posting for reference the old delay, delay, delay then half-admit a small transgression, deny it harmed anyone.
Then when pressed a year or more later, admit a slightly larger transgression,
Then a year or more later when pressed, admit an even larger transgression,
and repeat....
https://www.cnn.com/interactiv... [cnn.com]
Insurance companies will eventually wake up and exclude from general liability coverage systemic skirting of the law.
Financial auditors will eventually wake up and exclude corporations who take repeate
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In my view, "responsible" would be for the producers to faithfully categorize their AI uses: sheet, instruments, vocals, post-process. AI music is fine if the users can choose or exclude it. However: 1) this probably only works with the bigger labels that have a corporate structure and can implement policies (garage bands probably won't care, and scammers will lie); 2) it somehow goes against Spotify business model of "as much quantity as possible, quality optional".
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"We're not going to do anything about the AI deluge, we're just going to wave our hands and declare ourselves 'responsible'. (In the sense of describing our greatness, not in the sense of 'accountable'.)"
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Current AI has no reasoning facility, it is just serving up a mix-up of content that has been collected around the topics queried for. As such responsibility cannot be applied as responsibility requires reason and there is no way to reason with current AI. It can present what it finds, but it does not understand it.
Who needs artists (Score:3)
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Labels can just cut out those pesky artists and their insane requests to get paid. Who do they even think they are!
I'd imagine labels will suddenly get behind 'artists' once they realise that 90% of music consumption can be AI dross and nobody is going to care. Just think of all the savings across the world's restaurants and shops if you can have background music that is AI good enough, and not have to pay royalties to the music labels.
And at this point I'm not sure there's a problem. Most pop music is pretty rubbish. On the other hand, there is an absolute wealth of great indie bands now in every genre you can imagine,
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"Most pop music is pretty rubbish." is a thought that every generation has had. People thought that about Elvis, the Beatles, etc., at various times. Now, I'm in my 50's and while I don't care for most contemporary pop music, I won't fall into the trap of thinking that it's *all* or even overwhelmingly rubbish.
I am very cynical when it comes to corporations, so I'm going to come down on to the side of the music industry embracing AI to make more profits (either by increasing sales or reducing costs by payin
Trust us. (Score:3)
Go on, pull the other one! (Score:2)
Queue J. Jonah Jameson laughing...
https://youtu.be/lhckuhUxcgA?s... [youtu.be]
We don't need AI generated music (Score:4, Insightful)
We have lots of musicians who do the job perfectly.
We need AI tools to help us do things we currently can't do.
Hopefully, AI music will be a short-lived fad, and people will realize that music requires musicians
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There's sadly a segment of people so dumb and easily amused that they actually enjoy listening to or watching the stuff, and they have money to be taken. The recent success of whatever that shitty 70s soft-rock AI band was called, shows that you just need the right people promoting the crap and they'll gobble it up.
The monetization path is identical to that of the social media dreck that existed before AI. Individual uploaders can achieve monetary gains with the right promo, but the biggest winner is of cou
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Coldplay fans?
A believable, honest statement from Spotify. (Score:2)
Spotify didn't detail any specific products in the works but said it was building a "state-of-the-art generative AI research lab and product team focused on developing technologies that reflect our principles and create breakthrough experiences for fans and artists."
It is quite refreshing to see a corporation release an honest statement instead of just half-truths or outright lies to placate the public.
Since everything they have ever done for fans is try to tell them what they like in music, and they've consistently tried to avoid paying artists anything meaningful, their AI project will surely reflect those principles. It is fairly clear that they will train their AI on everyone's channel, and come up with as much AI-generated music that they can force down your throa