So, When are You MFrs Ready to Give Up?

[Aelred]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe social media services these days might even let you choose from copyright/royalty free songs for your posts.

I'm pretty sure that's right.

Musicians, even amateur hobby-players like me, tend to think in terms of music and songs etc. Naturally.

People posting videos online not wanting to deal with all the grief of "legacy" music protections, just wanting to post their video or thumbnail for their stream or whatever and make it a bit "better" with some muzak (better term folks?) may have different motives. They are not looking to rip anyone off or create a hit song or break into the music scene.

For me, it may be an excuse to spend a (relative) fortune buying recording gear, a Bass or Baritone, drums or a good machine then spend ages trying to come up with something that doesn't sound like anything ever recorded (how do I know every song ever? I don't). But that's a lot of effort if I just want to post a small thing online with some background Muzak without grief.

Convenience rules, most times.

Once it was all digitized and owned by a few corporations, mostly what we get for entertainment are repeats, reboots, remakes, covers and legal actions defending IP. The media is the message and all that. And once people weren't buying physical media, that part of the game changed as well.

 

[signalpath]

Ted Gioia in conversation with Rick Beato on the AI threat to music is well worth your time even if you only give it 10 minutes or so. Gioia’s reading of the threat shows it’s smart to follow the money to see where this is going.

 

[laxu]

Ted Gioia in conversation with Rick Beato on the AI threat to music is well worth your time even if you only give it 10 minutes or so. Gioia’s reading of the threat shows it’s smart to follow the money to see where this is going.

This is a really good discussion. I ended up watching the whole thing and totally agree with almost everything Ted Gioia says.

What Ted talks here is something me and some friends were discussing only a few years after Spotify came out. We started seeing these mystery artists trend on the platform, and like Ted says, we also assumed it's because Spotify avoids paying royalties by spamming these songs. They have probably gotten better at hiding them but still do it. It's got nothing to do with AI, they just made a ton of songs that then add padding to e.g genre radios. The next step is to just have AI make unique songs - again circumventing one expense, making those songs.

I think there's one thing Ted misses when he talks about "tech people" who run e.g social media platforms. I've been working as a software developer for about 17 years now, in quite a few companies, or as consultant for various clients. The one universal thing is that software developers are creatives too. In every one of these companies, usually you can find that maybe like 2-3 out of 5 programmers plays some musical instrument, or maybe does some form of visual art as a hobby.

These guys are not the problem, and they are also the ones who don't believe they are programming themselves out of business. AI will become just a tool for guys like me, rather than something that writes all the software that runs the world.

The problem is the people at the top. These are the executives who are willing to do anything if it makes them more money. These are the folks who would fire all staff, and keep an intern typing AI prompts if they could. These are for the most part not tech people, but business people who tend to see their employees as numbers on a cost sheet. They can't seem to think much beyond the fiscal year, and aren't driven by long-term success of a company, but will happily gut all the things that made it good. They then move on to destroy another company by showing how they improved profitability at the previous company.

You can follow Elon Musk destroying Tesla right now for example, just like he destroyed Twitter.

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

Cobbler, town cryer, dinosaur…musician.

I’m glad I’m old turning 60 next week.

 

[laxu]

Cobbler, town cryer, dinosaur…musician.

I’m glad I’m old turning 60 next week.

In that case, happy (early) birthday!

 

[Aelred]

The problem is the people at the top. These are the executives who are willing to do anything if it makes them more money.

They will do anything that will get them their BONUS, not neccessarily the company making money anymore. It's very strange, IMHO, to have corporatism tied to non-profit concerns. Designed to fail or what!

When I bagan in IT 4 decades ago, there were a lot more music and mathematics majors in software (both related to each other and also to programming).

Not so much in these days of Certification, at least where I am. I can recall Microsoft courses where the instructor would tell you what the answer was in the course and what to do in the real world, which was very different. Many years ago now, a friend of mine was the Instructor on the NetGun course. When he applied for a job that required a NetGun certificate, he was told he was not qualified.

Lots of people with IT certificates checking boxes and attending meetings. Not very creative, methinks.

The systems I work on are often falling apart, but all the Managerial boxes are ticked so they get their bonus, whether the company sinks or not. There are many examples of executives or consultants ruining a company then moving to another (with a masive payout), rinse and repeat.

 

[Whizzinby]

This is a really good discussion. I ended up watching the whole thing and totally agree with almost everything Ted Gioia says.

What Ted talks here is something me and some friends were discussing only a few years after Spotify came out. We started seeing these mystery artists trend on the platform, and like Ted says, we also assumed it's because Spotify avoids paying royalties by spamming these songs. They have probably gotten better at hiding them but still do it. It's got nothing to do with AI, they just made a ton of songs that then add padding to e.g genre radios. The next step is to just have AI make unique songs - again circumventing one expense, making those songs.

I hadn’t really given that a lot of thought, but it makes sense. If they can sneak in even just 2-3 songs an hour that could save them 10-15% in royalties, and what exec would ever not want to gradually increase that percentage?

 

[la szum]

Profits over people??? When has this ever been done before?? So new. So refreshing.