AI slop hits new high as fake country artist goes to #1 on Billboard digital songs chart

AI slop has reached a new level of ascendancy, as a country song by an AI artist has hit number one on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart. Breaking Rust, an AI "band" that appeared on the internet in the middle of October based on its presence on Instagram, topped the chart last week with a song called Walk My Walk. …

[Guido Esperanto]

More to come

AI bands, managed by an AI manager, with all profits going to a venture capitalist holding the power on the LLM's

[DS999]

Re: More to come

Bands don't make money off their music these days, they make it off touring. Kind of hard for an AI band to go on tour.

The songwriters do get compensated well enough to make a living at it if their songs are popular, so I suppose whoever wrote the prompt that resulted in the lyrics will get paid. And sued, which is inevitable if AI songs aren't just a one off curiosity and go mainstream, and the writers of the songs that have been relegated to "training data" want a judge/jury to decide whether they deserve a share of the songwriting royalties.

[fb2k]

Re: More to come

two words: Milli Vanilli

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Re: More to come

Two more words: Taylor Swift.¹

I've long been of the opinion that Tay, as the kidz probably don't say any more, is either a hologram or an android.

Have you ever seen a photograph of her that is less than absolutely perfect? Even when her hair is mussed, it's perfectly mussed.

________________

¹ To all the Swifties, I'm joking. Not that it will prevent the downvotes. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: More to come

Why the qualifier that you're joking? Not saying she has no musical talent, but all her songs seem bland and perfect elevator music to me. The few times I've bothered paying attention to her lyrics... zzzzzz.

As to her looks, I've yet to see to a picture of her where she's not pulling an Instagram face. Looking natural seems beyond her capacity.

On top of that she comes off as pretty vindictive, frequently trash-talking people (usually, men). I am sure some of it is justified, but there's just a lot of it. Pity poor Kelce if they ever split up. Not that I wish for that to happen, but I predict that if it happens it will be the mother of all "musical inspiration" for good old Swift.

[Bluck Mutter]

if they break up, she will grift it into a $billion new album

if they break up, she will grift it into a $billion new album.

I call her Taylor Grift, cause that what she does.

Milks her cult for all she can get.

About as plastic an artist as you can get/I have ever seen (which covers 6 decades)... a product of some corporate focus group, bland as hell and yet her cult love her.

Bluck.

[Long John Silver]

Re: if they break up, she will grift it into a $billion new album

A testament to creative marketing.

[MachDiamond]

Re: if they break up, she will grift it into a $billion new album

"I call her Taylor Grift, cause that what she does."

I don't see it as grifting, but a highly managed corporate product. It's very fake, but it works. Record labels and professional managers are always on the look out for the next one they can mold to the current trend and write a backstory and narrative to wrap around them. It's using music to sell a product much more than an artist creating art.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: if they break up, she will grift it into a $billion new album

She is former Disney...what do you expect?

[Alan Brown]

Re: if they break up, she will grift it into a $billion new album

As was Brittney Spears (anyone under 30 is probably asking "!who?")

[DancesWithPoultry]

Re: if they break up, she will grift it into a $billion new album

> As was Brittney Spears (anyone under 30 is probably asking "!who?")

Didn't she write that guide to Laser Physics?

[Brave Coward]

Re: if they break up, she will grift it into a $billion new album

!who?

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Re: More to come

> Why the qualifier that you're joking? Not saying she has no musical talent, but all her songs seem bland and perfect elevator music to me.

Because my tongue was firmly in cheek.

My opinion is entirely independent of her music since I've (knowingly¹) heard exactly one of her songs,² and that only within the past six months, since she arrived to replace Lady Gaga in the eye of the media.³

I find her image and media presence to be remarkably well curated, which I suppose is a talent of sorts.

I've often speculated that the Taylor/Kanye kerfuffle at the EmptyV Video Music Awards was a master class in managed public relations, the creation of a media cause célèbre to heighten both profiles in public awareness. She certainly owes "Ye" a bundle for the free publicity.

__________________

¹ There's always the chance that I've heard a bit on the PA in the supermarket or while in the aisles of Home Despot.

² To which my reaction was "Oh, so that's what all the fuss is about." I rather expected a bit more.

³ I ceased listening to or paying the slightest attention to pop music the day I quit my last radio gig waaaaay back in 1980.

[Chz]

Re: More to come

The woman has an immense talent. It just isn't in songwriting.

There's "business" in Show Business for a reason. She's a businesswoman, and really quite good at it.

[MachDiamond]

Re: More to come

"Have you ever seen a photograph of her that is less than absolutely perfect? Even when her hair is mussed, it's perfectly mussed."

You have to see the photo contract that one must sign to take photos at an appearance. Cell phones aren't a worry as they don't have the optics to zoom way in and fans are kept at a distance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: More to come

TBF, my daughter and her friends had tickets to the Eras tour - were within touching distance of the stage and almost close enough to upskirt her if she wasn't wearing clothing that prevented that kind of photography - and she still looked absolutely perfect in the photos taken over almost 3 hours of stage performance. They were only using iPhones, but she is a stunningly photogenic young lady with immaculate make up.

[Brave Coward]

Re: More to come

'[...] but she is a stunningly photogenic young lady with immaculate make up.'

... or the AI-powered image-enhancement of their iPhones were quite good.

[rcxb]

Re: More to come

Have you ever seen a photograph of her that is less than absolutely perfect? Even when her hair is mussed, it's perfectly mussed.

Quick search:

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/27/2517FE2500000578-2927194-Shady_lady_Taylor_made_sure_to_protect_her_pale_skin_from_the_su-a-21_1422370805832.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/56/85/bf/5685bf94880c2c8b15128f01f3d50178.jpg

[Jedit]

"two words: Milli Vanilli"

That's not fair. As the great Dave Marsh pointed out when the band had their Grammy taken away: the two guys on stage may not have been singing, but someone was and they still deserved the award for their performance. And those session musicians were paid, unlike the artists whose work is stolen for the slop machine with neither credit nor payment.

[MachDiamond]

Re: More to come

"two words: Milli Vanilli"

That was still real people. They were just two 'hipper" looking people lip-syncing rather than the guys that did the actual singing. We have pretty much the same thing with auto-tune and other effects to get a poor to mediocre signer up to acceptable, provided they look good in a skimpy outfit.

[jvf]

another vote for Milli

You got it right the first time: "bro country" band .... singing soulless, cookie-cutter songs". Johnny Cash is rolling in his grave. Second time, not so much "painstakingly written, rehearsed, and recorded by actual humans with---- computers" if you are referring to the majority of 'music' on display for the last umpteen years. Pitch correction, time correction, etc.=stultifying blandness all around. Almost makes one long for the good old days of Milli Vanilli. Even jazz is getting watered down. There are some truly awful “jazz” singers infesting the airwaves these days.

[Alan Brown]

Re: another vote for Milli

"Johnny Cash is rolling in his grave"

No, Country had mostly gone that way long before he became famous. The popularity of Rock&Roll was due in large part to the bland genericism of extremely heavily sanitised post-WW2 country music

Prewar country music is a different matter entirely

(And yet, country artists regularly go gold or higher in the UK with virtually zero marketing. The fans may like "bland" but they actually pay for it too)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: another vote for Milli

And yet, country artists regularly go gold or higher in the UK with virtually zero marketing. The fans may like "bland" but they actually pay for it too

Country music is always awful, but at least in Nashville it's got its own setting. Transplanted to the rough areas of the UK, with some line dancing thrown in, and it's just awful backwoods geetar twangery, for our own Make Something Great Again contingent.

I must confess though, my parents liked it, and whilst I'm mostly "clean", I do quite like a bit of Glenn Cambell.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: More to come

The only band Boney-m could become

[Like a badger]

Re: More to come

I'll not have anyone be-smirch the 70's greatness of Boney M, if you please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: More to come

Girl you know it's true...

...also Gorillaz went on tour.

There are also other acts that you would imagine to be boring live but still attracted massive audiences on tour...Yanni, Moby, Jan Hammer, Vangelis etc etc...great music...not much of a band for each of them...pretty much any synthesiser artist ever.

I think a lot of people that think AI music cannot be used for live events have probably never been to a live event. I used to go to a lot of concerts when I was younger...Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, KoRn...that sort of thing...I know a man of culture...Rammstein are pretty good live, but KoRn and Manson were generally shit. Especially KoRn...it's so fucking loud you can't make sense of it live...Manson concerts were just weird...I distinctly remember those concerts attracting a lot of nerds that would come dressed up in really cheap horror inspired costumes...I recall one particular dude...a speccy skinny dude...who turned up in a brown bath robe with a foam scythe and a plastic skull mask on claiming to be the grim reaper...he ended up getting dragged into the mosh pit and that is the last we saw of him...until we left...he was standing at the curb flagging a taxi...he was covered in beer he lost his brown robe and the head of his scythe and was standing there in just his underpants with half a skull mask, a black eye and a the remains of his foam stick...we went up to him to check he was ok...he said "man that was fucking awesome"...dude was revelling in it...relax, we know this guy was a few shillings short of a pound so we stood there with him as a group until he got a taxi...he was fine...he kept the act going right to the end...when he got in his taxi he said he'd spare us this time for sticking around. So we got a laugh and we cheated death...dude appeared at a couple of other events too...in equally shit costumes that looked like his mum had made them...dude was absolutely T-total as well...never touched a damned thing...he just wanted to wear rubbish costumes and be in the thick of the action. A legend really...he worked in IT, so it's entirely possible he is here, somewhere, on this very forum.

It's unusual at live events for the audience to stand still and place all their focus on the stage, like watching a movie...it's not until you get to near the end of the set that things start calming down a bit...there's a reason the slowest songs are played last...it's to stop the madness spilling out onto the street and to calm everyone down before they leave.

Blink 182 are famously awful at live events, but their fans still turn up en masse...because it's about the atmosphere and having fun rather than the quality of the music.

[Alan Brown]

Re: More to come

I'll see your Milli Vanilli and raise you with Stock Aitken Waterman along with the Bay City Rollers

[captain veg]

Re: More to come

The Bay City Rollers could actually play their instruments. The producer decided to record with session guys because the pasty Scottish youths had no studio experience, so it would have taken longer.

-A.

[Alan Brown]

Re: More to come

The Bay City Rollers could actually eventually play their instruments

There, fixed that for you.

At the start of their recording careers they could barely even tune their guitars (or sing)

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: More to come

That was a steep learning curve as from memory they had all of three songs of any value

OK, to be fair I checked on Discogs and apparently they had 14 albums although only 8 were in their initial active period while with Bell/Arista

[IGotOut]

Re: More to come

"they make it off touring."

Not really. Thanks to TicketBastard fucking everything up, it's actually really hard for a band to make money touring these days.

Ho back to buying CD's and merch, it's the best thing anyone can do.

https://www.musicradar.com/music-industry/the-vast-majority-of-independent-artists-cannot-even-afford-to-tour-new-survey-reveals

[abend0c4]

Re: More to come

The period of history in which artists could - with a following wind - make a living from their art seems to have been relatively short-lived. Thin pickings these days for writers and actors despite, or perhaps because of, an increasing volume of output - much of which is also carefully targeted at specific marketing niches.

And while art survived in the more distant past on the back, largely, of wealthy patrons, it's difficult to imagine today's broligarchs forking out for even a string quartet let alone a Sistine Chapel.

[Long John Silver]

Re: More to come

Patronage of talent via crowdfunding?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: More to come

It’s only true that artists had a relatively short period of making a living from RECORDED music. Before recorded music, the only way anyone could listen was to play instruments or listen to someone else play. There was only live music. People made livings, including playing large halls. Way back there were monarchical court bands but also nobles funded musicians and composers.

Today, classical musicians who get a gig with a major city’s symphony keep it for life and pull in huge salaries for first chairs, like $250k -$500k USD per year plus benefits, e.g., San Francisco Symphony.

This myth that musicians only had a short period of making money was started by Napster kids feeling guilty.

Recorded music has taken away live gigs, too, including weddings where DJs are paid well and restaurants that used to pay jazz musicians well enough for them to make a living.

The ripoff digital culture pushed highend earners down but absolutely obliterated the mid and low-levels. People earning $1 million a year knocked down to $100k a year. 10% of what they earned. Apply that across the board. people who earned $100k, earn $10k a year. People who earned $30k, which was survivable as a roommate, earn $3k-$15k as this didn’t compress totally.

So recorded music has taken revenue from both recorded AND live music.

How do I know? Because I’m a musician who toured and still earn microscopic royalties.

I keep and kept afloat with IT consulting, which pays very well in my niche.

The only place that still pays “well,” according to a friend who plays on the streets, is popular street spots in his big city. He plays Americana and tourists throw in cash, up to $1k per day but usually $200-$300.

[Alan Brown]

Re: More to come

Mozart spent most of his life living hand-to-mouth with things being tough enough when the family was based in London that he was quite literally playing in pubs at age 8 for rent money when not performing in the courtts of the nobles (who didn't pay very well at all unless you were superfamous - just like today, the Society Wealthy expected people to work for free in order to get "exposure")

[MachDiamond]

Re: More to come

"it's difficult to imagine today's broligarchs forking out for even a string quartet let alone a Sistine Chapel."

Not until they're are old and dying and suddenly discover that they won't be remembered for anything ten years down the road and 50% of their children are dead or in prison.

When I fantasize about winning a lottery, there's an orchestra that would have a very good day/year. There's at least two albums I'd want made by some artists that I'd be happy to be executive producer on.

Back in the day, it was fashionable to have an in-house string quartet for the entertaining season. Besides giving syphilis to each other, there wasn't as many things to do (no Playstation/TV). If you could afford a band of musicians, you must be wealthy.

[Alan Brown]

Re: More to come

"Not until they're are old and dying and suddenly discover that they won't be remembered for anything ten years down the road and 50% of their children are dead or in prison."

The usual motivation for "philanthropy" is tax dodging. It was always a popular way of diverting funds to the kids in ways that inheritence taxes couldn't touch.

[MachDiamond]

Re: More to come

"The usual motivation for "philanthropy" is tax dodging."

I'm sure that enters into it, but at a certain level of wealth, it doesn't have as much of a tax lowering effect. If the person has several deadbeat kids (and some "out of wedlock" spares here and there), they may not want to leave them the whole pot. Better to have their name on a building at their college or a foundation that funds medical research, etc. I can't remember the commercials I'd see while watching TV, but I can remember the foundations that contributed to public television shows. "Major funding for xxxxxx was provided by the Alford P Sloan Foundation". I have no idea who Alford P Sloan was, but I can hear the tag line in my head. There's also Carnegie libraries and other places I'm sure I come across all of the time. Paul Allen was interested in putting his name on projects before he passed away such as the Allen Space Telescope Array. Other than some cancel culture renamings, most college buildings will keep their beneficiaries name forever. I expect now that the donations come with no-renaming conditions that would require the college to repay the family/foundation if they rename the building, remove a statue/bust, etc.

[Like a badger]

Re: More to come

Besides giving syphilis to each other, there wasn't as many things to do

With humour like that, you don't think you're on the wrong side of the Atlantic?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: More to come

> it's difficult to imagine today's broligarchs forking out for even a string quartet let alone a Sistine Chapel.

crypto-entrepreneur-justin-sun-eats-banana-art-he-bought-for-6m-dollars

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Re: More to come

Literally "conspicuous consumption."

It's more of a weird wealth flex than patronage.

Oh, and remember, it was the Catholic Church and Pope "Orange" Julius who ponied up for Michelangelo's paint job on the ceiling and then Popes Clement VII and Paul III who paid for The Last Judgment on the altar wall.¹

Not to mention "Il Braghettone's" handiwork.²

Let's just say patronage can be somewhat capricious.

__________________

¹ Wikipedia: Sistine Chapel

² Wikipedia: Daniele da Volterra

[Like a badger]

Re: More to come

Let's just say patronage can be somewhat capricious.

Certainly some similarities between the techbro and the mediaeval church, in terms of sanctimony, morality, opinions, and wealth creation models.

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: More to come

I would point out that what he ate was not the original banana so as the owner of the 'art' he could tape up another banana and sell it on

[Korev]

Re: More to come

> Ho back to buying CD's and merch, it's the best thing anyone can do.

I've taken to buying downloads[0] on Bandcamp Friday, I almost see it as a donation to the bands I like

[0] And then streaming the songs anyway as annoyingly it's easier than playing your own downloads on my smart speakers

[Kane]

Re: More to come

"And then streaming the songs anyway as annoyingly it's easier than playing your own downloads on my smart speakers"

I own a standalone MP3 player for this exact reason.

[tiggity]

Re: More to come

@Korev

I think the problem in that phrase is "smart speakers"

I have a cheaper solution - an amp connected to standard passive speakers (old speakers were not in use as partner wanted smaller speakers for our music set up, so got some bookshelf style speakers & the old (better! but she didn't like them being waist high!) speakers went to my work room, hence being "spares" to put to use for playing music from PC ).

Connect PC to that amp (I use headphone to 2 x phono connection, though it works via Bluetooth too* albeit sound not as good)

* amp supports Bluetooth, occasionally play music from my phone via Bluetooth (which obviously sounds worse than a line connection from PC but still listenable)

[MachDiamond]

Re: More to come

"Thanks to TicketBastard fucking everything up, it's actually really hard for a band to make money touring these days."

I've decided to not attend any TicketDisaster/LivePaytion events ever again. The made up fees are outrageous. When Rush tickets went on sale, I looked up getting one of the premium ones and about half of the total cost was fees and well into the $4,500 region. That taps me out with no room for a $50 shirt. I certainly couldn't afford two tickets. They were mostly sold-out the day after going on sale.

I started off as a roadie decades ago and most of the people I know from that time are gone or out of the industry so I don't get access like I used to. I still know working musicians that will give me a pass when they're in town in exchange for making some live photos. The smaller venues that do their own ticketing are much better value for money. They charge a fee for using a card, but it's face value if I buy at their box office with cash. Last year I went to see a band doing its last tour (they are in their 60's-70's) an overnight train ride away. I paid more, all in, but the smaller venue made it a better experience. I bought merch that wasn't too outrageously marked up (not that great of quality, though). The merch guy was busy from doors until close and the truck for that may have been bigger than for the band gear. Smaller venues don't take a big a piece of the merch as large ones, so it's good return for the artist.

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Re: More to come

'TicketBastard'... Nice one Centurion, like it, like it...

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: More to come

But if you've no band to pay, then it's all profit for the record company.

[Long John Silver]

Re: More to come

Present day record companies shall go the way of the dinosaurs. Cottage industries will assume the mantle of distribution.

[MachDiamond]

Re: More to come

"Present day record companies shall go the way of the dinosaurs. Cottage industries will assume the mantle of distribution."

There's still a place for the large companies, but they will have to change to meet the future so they aren't gong to be pushed out. There's still a need to have a chunk of money up front to record, advertise and distribute music. Blood sucking attorneys will be in the mix at stupid pay rates. Large record labels still have some sway with radio stations and online equivalents so if you are good, chances to get in front of an audience is better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: More to come

You reckon?

I'd have thought it more likely that the usual big tech companies will move in and hoover it all up, as they do with everything else!

[Alan Brown]

Re: More to come

"Present day record companies shall go the way of the dinosaurs"

Nope, they're advertising outfits that happen to sell music (and a dream) - that music MUST be disposable or their market dries up, with AI slop being the logical end game

Somewhere, an elevator is sobbing gently.

[MachDiamond]

Re: More to come

"But if you've no band to pay, then it's all profit for the record company."

It's a vicious feeding frenzy when all of the "ten percenters" start dividing up the money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: More to come

They will make it off music if it only costs a couple of thousand dollars to create and can be publicised through viral uptake.

[Alan Brown]

Re: More to come

"these days"

More like "ever" - most artists end their careers heavily in debt to the record company and even the ones you see living the high life usually only do that for a few years at most before it all comes crashing down

It's no secret that various producers have said over the years that if they could get rid of the band and have a computer perform everything, they'd do it. Stock-Aitken-Waterman got close to this in the 80s with their disposable faces over mostly forgettable generic tracks and autotune has been making caterwauling sound passable for 20 years or so, so an entirely artificial voice is likely to be an improvement

The dirty little secret of the music industry is that it's an industry - churning out masses of "generic pink slime" with the very occasional gem. That hasn't changed since the days of sheet music.

[BartyFartsLast]

Ouroboros

With reviews of their music and articles written about them by AI

[Snake]

Re: inevitable....

Schlock Mercenary reference!!

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2013-08-30

(if you can get the gestalt of the conversation)

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-01-26

Too late, Schlock *already* anticipated the AI "musician" scene almost 20 years before it actually happened.

[that one in the corner]

Re: inevitable....

Oh, thanks a bundle.

Now I've just read an entire Schlock Mercenary book in one go and am fighting the urge to continue into "Big Dumb Objects". That's Wednesday gone for a burton.

[Snake]

Re: Schlock

LOL.

Early Schlock is hilariously dysfunctional military, later Schlock (these books are "later") are semi-serious functional military - choose your preference.

[rcxb]

Re: More to come

AI bands, managed by an AI manager, with all profits going to a venture capitalist holding the power on the LLM's

There shouldn't be any profits. An AI can't hold a copyright.

Anything produced by an AI is public domain, and anyone can redistribute its works without limitations, for their own (small) profit if desired.

Pretty much only by lying, claiming to hold the copyright on the works, can someone profit off of AI produced music.

[Alan Brown]

Re: More to come

"Anything produced by an AI is public domain"

When it's derived from copyright material?

[Michael Hoffmann]

Why should we be surprised that consumers lap it up?

The article already mentions that country music has been a pool of slop of, I'll charitably call them "redneck themes" for decades.

But popular music has been industrialiased crap for the entire century so far.I'm not even going to mention names because rabid fans (even here, I suspect!) might murder me.

This video from 8 years ago explains what autotune, dynamic compression and lowest common denominator "design" of music have produced. The jump to LLMs was minuscule.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII

[fb2k]

mainstream music has always been shitty, luckily every genre has its own "alternative" sub-genres full of creative artists with their own unique styles

That video of your is completely oblivious of that fact.

For every Katy Perry, there's a Florence Welch. For every Justin Bieber, there's a Michael Kiwanuka. For every Imagine Dragons, there's an Everything Everything.

People are lazy, listen to shitty mainstream music and complain that everything is shitty. It's not. There has never been a greater amount of AWESOME new music being released than just now. You just have to search for it.

[Tron]

Ah, music snobbery.

As much as I hate AI, I'm looking forward to seeing musos conned by AI Indie bands.

[JLV]

Yup, it's just that top 40 pop stations have pretty much always sucked. Unless by happenstance we happen to be going through an exceedingly rare period when something un-poppy is flavor of the month.

Then you have the tendency, as people get older, that they romanticize what they heard when they were 18-25. That's such a well known phenomenon that commercial buildings like stores will pipe in music keyed to their customer demographics's ages.

They now remember only the cool songs. But all the warmed up crap that was actually playing on the radio back then? Gone and forgotten, for the most part.

Hence, "back in the days, we had much better music".

One genre that doesn't seem to be seeing much renewal is Classic Rock. Where are the new Bob Segers, ZZ Top, Steely Dan, Yes, Zeppelin, Blue Oyster Cult and so on? Most of that has been subsumed into alternative rock but that genre doesn't seem as widely listened to as classic rock bands were in the 80s. Metal has become very niche too, it seems, unlike hard rock.

[DoctorPaul]

There's always what is termed Symphonic Rock which is my particular thing, very big in Europe especially Finland where there's a church where the whole Mass is celebrated with heavy metal music. Brilliant live music scene as well, been to some wonderful gigs in Holland and Belgium with great local venues and tickets about 20 quid.

Check out the likes of Nightwish, Delain, Edenbridge, Within Temptation, Visions of Atlantis, Beyond the Black, After Forever, Elysion, Nemesea, Evanescence and for a good laugh Battle Beast.

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Within Temptation's Faster popped up on streaming and introduced them to me. It has instant appeal but gets boring quickly. (But how often do you end up hating the single that causes you to buy the album?)

I've never really succeed in getting into their other work, though. I'm running YouTube's suggestions now.

[SVD_NL]

The main problem with top 40 pop stations is the lack of variety. I generally don't mind most pop music, but it lacks the depth that makes me want to listen to the same song 4 times in a day.

I think metal isn't very niche these days? it can be a bit fragmented because of how many subgenres they come up with, but metal festivals and metal concerts are still very popular. I never really hear in on the radio though, i think a big part of that is that tracks are often too long for radio stations. It may be a bit "risky" to play metal, and they're scared of losing listeners (or not having anough time to blabber or run commercials). Recently Sleep Token was gaining some traction (progressive mix of metal/r&b with jazz and gospel influences, among other things), and BBC radio 1 was playing them... sort of. They butchered the song by making a radio edit and removing everything that made it special.

[Doctor Syntax]

"The main problem with top 40 pop stations is the lack of variety."

It ties with DJ drivel.

[Like a badger]

It ties with DJ drivel.

Who's he? I suppose he'll start to bleed into the mainstream press shortly before being arrested for abusing women.

[Scene it all]

Some years ago you couldn't escape k. d. lang's "Constant Craving". I even heard it playing in a grocery store once. Subliminal advertising to make you buy that package of crisps?

[JLV]

You know, the funny thing is the lack of variety extends to non-pop stations. Our local Classic Rock one plays all the oldies but goodies.

Rush, Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, ZZ Top, Eagles.

Guess what? That means Tom Sawyer, Wish you were here, Stairway to heaven, Sharp dressed man and Hotel California. Or the band's second or third most popular songs at best.

OK, maybe I am making it up a bit with Stairway to heaven and Hotel California since those are well known to be so extremely overplayed. Immigrant song and Life in the fast lane then.

But the gist remains that from bands having a dozen or so albums, they can only be bothered to rotate 3 or 4 songs.

People don't actually like variety that much on the radio, that's what radio people seem to know. I read a book claiming that with Outkast's, Hey Ya! they knew they had a hit. All their pre-AI software and focus groups told them so, it was off the charts in metrics. But it kept on tanking on the radio. So they deliberately sandwiched it between the same very well known (pop) songs over and over again, until it became more familiar, took off and became a massive hit.

No, it don't matter if you like Outkast or not, the point is people in general didn't until they were Pavloved over their distaste for novel songs.

[MachDiamond]

"People don't actually like variety that much on the radio"

People do, but the market is larger for the very mediocre so every outlet is going to aim for that and it squeezes out the Sunday night experimental DJ that introduced audiences to artists and music that was uniquely new. Most of that stuff never caught on, but it was interesting. Radio stations in the US are syndicated and very formulaic. One program director in Chicago plans the playlists for all of the major markets where the company has stations and DJ's read scripted segways they record one day for the rest of the week. No local flavor, no morning show with the band that's playing in town tonight. No local bands with an EP and no label affiliation.

[Like a badger]

One program director in Chicago plans the playlists for all of the major markets where the company has stations and DJ's read scripted segways they record one day for the rest of the week. No local flavor, no morning show with the band that's playing in town tonight. No local bands with an EP and no label affiliation.

Sounds like the horrible, dull, formulaic commercial radio networks we have in the UK, where most of the stations are owned by either Global or Bauer, and production appears to take place with one script and one exceptionally boring playlist, from a converted multistorey carpark in some urban dinge-hole.

[Alan Brown]

It's been this way across most countries since the late 1980s. It's vastly cheaper to pipe audio around the country and setup local advertsing breakouts than it is to pay an hourly rate for the announcers

If it's not syndicated programming, then it's the robot radio I mentioned in another posting, quite often both (live morning show using the robot as a jukebox, rest of day up to 8pm using the robot and prerecroded breaks, then piped in from outside with only the robot's advertising reels remaining active. No humans are in the building from 6pm-5am)

A lot of those robots are powered by Commoore 64s BTW - and some of them are STILL in use, although MP3s and rapid hard drive capacity growth pretty much made them completely redundant by 2010

[MachDiamond]

A lot of those robots are powered by Commoore 64s BTW - and some of them are STILL in use, although MP3s and rapid hard drive capacity growth pretty much made them completely redundant by 2010"

I met a guy that had a robot radio station and it ran on a Mac. There are name-brand DJ's that syndicate out segways that are generic enough to be used in many places. This "station" is on the internet, not airwaves and plays 50's, 60's and 70's music where I expect the licensing is inexpensive. Local syndicated news is automatically downloaded and slotted in. Ads are automatic as well with logs generated to show exactly when they were aired. The guy is retired so this is something of a hobby job but turns pretty easy money. He had also received an Emmy award for tech work he had done which is pretty cool.

[Alan Brown]

"People don't actually like variety that much on the radio"

It's not that. My mother was a listen song survey particpant for many years and although she had the radio on all the time, she never klnew what any song was unless I hummed it

Radio for most people is background filler noise. The last thing you want when playing background noise is to have something unfamiliar pop up that makes you stop & pay attention. It disrupts whatever you were thinking about at the time.

From the station's point of view, what they're selling is listener ears (to advertisers) and what the advertisers want is people paying attention to the adverts

It doesn't help that advertisers are notoriously conservative. Back in the 1980s when a new radio station popped up in my small town, surveys consistently showed that it had 60-70% of the entire listener mnarket vs the 3 government stations within local earshot (2 commercial, 1 more or less like BBC4) but advertisers thought the music choices were so radical that they were afraid to give their business to the station (those that did, fouind it paid off well). Within 4 years the station foundered, was bought out and immediately adopted AOR format. It lost half its listeners but gained triple the advertising and 40 years later it's STILL playing AOR

Aven with AOR format one of the reasons they were able to survive was moving to "robot radio" - a bank of 20 or so machines loaded with prerecorded tapes (initially reel to reel, later video8) under computer control witrh separate reels for announcer and commercial spots. This limited the playlist to what would fit on thiose tapes (about 1400 tracks, including things like "radio edit" versions of major hits (The Doors "Light my Fire" slashed from 7 minutes to 2:52) and the "A rotate" for new songs was about every 4 hours whilst older tracks would be played 3-4 times/week.

The same station also sped up playback of everything by 5% - enough to sound brighter without the pitch noticably changing, but also enough to squeeze in an extra 30 second commercial spot per hour

This concept of "rotates" (frequency of repeats for any given tranche of tracks) has arguably badly damaged industry creatiivity, along with payola (which continued long after the scandal, just in different guises) and the insistence on songs being hard limited to 3:30 (preferably 3:00) . It's all generic pink slime stacked on generic pink slime and the miracle is that we get a few memorable tracks per year out of the process

[MachDiamond]

"The same station also sped up playback of everything by 5% - enough to sound brighter without the pitch noticably changing, but also enough to squeeze in an extra 30 second commercial spot per hour"

They could also use the Equivalent of an Eventide Time Squeeze to adjust the pitch back down. It's all software these days, but TV stations used to use hardware to make movies fit in a certain time slot by speeding up or slowing down sections of the movie between commercials so the breaks were at some logical place. The offshoot is the Eventide Harmonizer. Those were used a lot to create a second track offset by a certain interval to "thicken up" a singer's voice and add harmonies.

[Alan Brown]

"But the gist remains that from bands having a dozen or so albums, they can only be bothered to rotate 3 or 4 songs."

And those songs are usually butchered down to sub 3 minute lengths regardless of the original length

Light my Fire is the obvious example but every track mentioned above has "radio edit" versions which lose a lot in comparison to the original

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Yes Zeppelin - sounds like an awesome tribute band that plays very very very long songs

[Alan Brown]

Dread Zeppilin is here to satisfy that hunger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64WZtlEqIls

A Raggae Led Zep tribute band with an Elvis impersonator as lead singer. Yes that makes for a pretty interesting listening experience

[MadocOwain]

I enjoy Hayseed Dixie, a Hillbilly Tribute to AC/DC

[MachDiamond]

"A Raggae Led Zep tribute band with an Elvis impersonator as lead singer. "

Dread Zepplin is awesome. Much better than a tribute band that's trying to exactly match the album version of a song. A fun one is "Nine Inch Richards" spoof on Nine Inch Nails' "Closer to God" done to a country beat and with some "country" lyrics. NSFW, btw.

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Rodeohead, Radiohead sings rendered in a C&W style.

[KayJ]

There was a lot _more_ music reaching the UK top 40 during the late 80s-early 90s period (before Cher and T-Pain began the apocalypse) than at any point before or since, so for those of us of a certain age we do have an unusual time of pop to look back on that stands out from the usual nostalgia cycle. 90% of it was crap same as it ever was, but there was more to choose from.

[Alan Brown]

What gets me is the number os 18-30yos who prefer listening to music of the 60s-90s

in the 1980s that would be equivalent to listening to music from before/during the second world war. Even a preferred diet of 50s rock'n'roll would have been considered odd in that period (Yes, I know about Sha Na Na, btut they wewre a 50s tribute band)

It really does seem that the tighter the industry grasps its copyrights the more they're driving consumers away to older more adventurous music - and whilst I know 90% of everything is forgetttable crap and timer makes a great filter, it like contemporary music has been subjected to the same enshittification processes that most other commercial activities have suffered over the last 25 years (one can argue it spread from the music industry to business in general)

The world is sorely in need of a new Beat invasion or Punk revolution

[tiggity]

@JLV

.. well, JLV, it's a tad difficult for a new band to compete with e.g. Led Zep as each was superb in their role: Though I thought your list was odd, as covered quite a lot of genres (Yes would definitely be prog in their classic days (readers opinions will vary from not giving a toss, to reckoning 90125 was a good album to thinking that 90125 was when Yes ceased to be worth listening to) )

.. And there are many "tribute" / cover bands that perform "classic" rock tracks so new "rock" bands have to compete with that not a recommendation just noting they exist . Quite likely many a rock fan person with limited budget & free time would go the "no risk" route of a covers band rather than some "unknown" new band they may dislike... In an ideal world, people would research "new" bands playing near them (be it on bandcamp* or wherever) & decide if worth a gamble on seeing them live, but most people CBA so a playing safe option is likely.

As with everything in music a lot of luck also needed, over the years, seen friends (& later kids of friends / relatives) form bands that were good but never had any commercial success (though ait can be argued that a lot of big successful names in music are not very good, so quite likely a failed / unknown band will be musically better than a "success" but will never be a "success")

* bandcamp definitely worth a go for investigating bands who you see are gigging near you (e.g. I often check out bands playing at Rock City (& other Nottm venues) on bandcamp if I am unfamiliar with their music to see if worth a ticket)

[Aladdin Sane]

An absolute hero has put all the Now That's What I Call Music! albums into a Spotify playlist. Being a glutton for punishment, I've plowed my way through it. Popular music certainly gets far more homogenised the further through the list you go.

[Dan 55]

We've had a good couple of years of AI slop playlists on Spotify and YouTube for people who don't care what music they're listening too as well so it was just a matter of time before an AI slop band reached number 1.

[StewartWhite]

Obligatory Blues Brothers Reference

Q: "What kind of music do you usually have here?”

A: "We got both kinds, country and western."

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Country Music

"To say the various songs are similar would be an understatement: They're practically identical down to their bland, hollow lyrics. "

How is this different from normal Country music & musicians?

Icon - That's me looking for my hire car keys, that only has one local radio station that I can find*, that's playing country every time I drive it.

*The entertainment system UI is not very intuitive, the physical controls are at the rear of the center console by my elbow & as I only have for a few days & short commutes I am not investing the time to find out.

[Michael Hoffmann]

Re: Country Music

Could be worse: you could have been tuned into some "Christian" station. Enough to turn any sane, rational person into a Satanist.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Country Music

Are you allowed to turn those off? Or do you get struck by heavenly lightning?

[JLV]

Re: Country Music

Anyone remember that, in the original Sim City, you'd always get Godzilla rampaging a more or less short time later - but not right away - when you demolished a church?

[Ken Shabby]

Re: Country Music

What happens if you tune into the “Satanist” station?

[Korev]

Re: Country Music

> What happens if you tune into the “Satanist” station?

Then you get to hear this, so not all bad news

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Country Music

Korev,

I'm "disappointed" that wasn't Rick Astley. What is the world coming to...

[Korev]

Re: Country Music

Never gonna give you up

Never gonna let you down

Oh, sorry

[MachDiamond]

Re: Country Music

"I'm "disappointed" that wasn't Rick Astley. What is the world coming to..."

Just hit the RickRoll scan button.

[JLV]

Re: Country Music

Not all country is crap. At the local pub, I chanced upon a good one using Shazam, Devil Makes Three. Their eponymous debut album in 2002 is pretty awesome and latest one, Spirits, in 2025 is pretty good as well. Style is more bluegrass - 2 guitarists/banjos and a double bass. And they are refreshingly non-country in their lyrics, sometimes reminding me of the Grateful Dead, for example in "Hard Times" on Spirits. Fair bit of social criticism, often about poverty, often subversive. Meanwhile "The Plank" seems like the love child of gangster rap lyrics with old sea shanties.

Sample lyrics, but they range widely and are usually quite clever ...

> But in a moment of clarity, I found еverybody staring

> Like therе's something wrong with me

> But it ain't no sin to think your skin

> Is covered up in bugs

> Oh my god, I love doing drugs

Not typically a big country fan myself, but these guys + gal are good. Icon cuz that's a frequent theme of theirs.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Country Music

"Style is more bluegrass - 2 guitarists/banjos and a double bass."

Setting, two people in a canoe

Bob: "Paddle faster, I hear banjos!"

[Alan Brown]

Re: Country Music

Hank Williams Sr: Lived the sex'n'drugs'n'roll lifestyle before rock'n'roll existed, died of a heroin overdose in the back of a car on the way to a concert

There are a LOT of country songs with quite explicit themes and lyrics before ~1948 when a massive clampdown and sanitisation happened (Nashvillisation). That's what drove teenagers into the arms of Rock'n'roll, which in turn was heavily sanitised before the end of the 1950s and took the Beatles to break it out again

Ironically the new country (Nashville) sound then competed with rock'n'roll all the way up to the 1980s. Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash are examples of the traditionalist backlash that happened - "country outlaws" - but ended up being sanitised and packaged too. Meantime quite a bit snuck back into country music that will NEVER get radio airplay. For all the fuss about explicit lyrics in rap/rock'n'roll, country has that and more without an eyebrow being raised.

The images of squeaky clean pre WW2 music are a product of the Hayes Code limiting what we hear from that period via films - essentially a state/religious clampdown on all media driven by Moral Panic and the same right wing politics we're seeing today (The same period as Reefer Madness came out - that's a product of the same mindset), The music industry was vastly less hamstrung by restrictions and much more vibrant than the blandness seen in films, although radio stations were frequently extremely conservative about what they allowed to be broadcast

[MachDiamond]

Re: Country Music

"*The entertainment system UI is not very intuitive, the physical controls are at the rear of the center console by my elbow & as I only have for a few days & short commutes I am not investing the time to find out."

For me, I'd spend the time to sort out how to hook up the iPod and put it on shuffle. Played continuously, I think it would take better than a week straight to listen to everything that's on it now. The only other thing I might want is a local news station to get weather and traffic reports. That is if there is a radio in the car.

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: Country Music

Through a variety of means (all legal in the country I was in at the time) my music collection is now good for 125 days if I played it without shuffle. This is now on a big USB stick which my car audio system is able to see and play from...who needs 'rinse and repeat' radio stations

[tony72]

When an AI band can make it to number one on a Billboard chart [...] it's an insult to the human artists who rank lower.

Most music that's released is slop, that's the reality. Derivative, unimaginative, forgettable drivel, 99% of it. Up until now, it's been human generated slop, but it's really no surprise to find that AI generated slop is quickly reaching par with the other kind. And the AI generated stuff only gets better from here, so if you're a mediocre musician, this is your sign that you're about to get found out. I don't think it's an insult to the human artists; what's happening, or about to happen, is simply a re-valuing of human-generated slop - it's much harder to pretend that generic crap is anything special when AI can generate better with but a few clicks.

[I ain't Spartacus]

I only have one review on Amazon with downvotes. Quite a lot of them too. Was a singer's second album - clearly suffering from second album syndrome - i.e. too much time touring to write the next one. And her 2 songs that she wrote solo are very good. But as the number of co-writers goes up, the quality of the songs diminishes. I imagine all the ones with 4 writers weren't written by her at all, but she was a big enough star to demand a co-credit and the record company's writing team just banged out some filler for the album.

[Jedit]

"second album syndrome - i.e. too much time touring"

Second Album Syndrome actually happens because bands don't as a rule release their first album on the day they form. The first album is able to cherrypick the very best songs they wrote in the period between, which is often years. Leftfield, for example, formed in 1989 but didn't release Leftism until 1995. Once the band is public, there is pressure to release a second album to capitalise. That album either has to pick second string songs from the existing material or use new material that is less polished.

[Sandtitz]

First they came for the Country Music

And I did not speak out.

[the Jim bloke]

Re: First they came for the Country Music

People complain when the garbage DOESNT get taken away..

[Scotthva5]

If you're unfamiliar with 'Bro Country'

Here's a lovely parody complete with AI voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CORANvT8l9A

[the Jim bloke]

A mindless and repetitive task where error checking has never been an issue

Writing and performing country music

- At last, a legitimate use for AI

also applies for Rap, which is just country music without the country, or the music..

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: A mindless and repetitive task where error checking has never been an issue

Or the writing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Total crapola

That first song & video (linked under "They're") is nauseating crap. It reminds me of some cookie-cutter jazz and blues I hazarded upon once on YT that gave me seasickness. Such unimaginative, repetitive, predictable and stereotypical elevator muzak gives me that gag reflex of retch through the spinning vertigo of sensory vacuosity -- something's missing to make this concoction metabolically acceptable to the ear and stuff in-between imho.

It's like this oddball genAI TV ad for Fondation Cœur et Recherche I saw yesterday that gave me existential arrhythmia ... 32 seconds uncannily worse than a full-length horror flick!

[Brave Coward]

Breaking Rust

Breaking Rust shouldn't be rated A, not even AI.

A mere C++ at most.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Breaking Rust

Beast666 must be a big fan as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Breaking Rust

We should tell AI to FO.

Sorry, FeO

[Omnipresent]

Not the only one... but

There is also a top selling AI r&b artist, and a AI actress. More than a few AI influencers at this point. What makes the country one so good is because these are frumpers that got catfished.

At least half the music on xm radio and pandora and such is AI. I remember when mad max fury road came out and everyone was gushing about the sound track because social told them to. It was AI, by a half assed methed up euro kid using AI (who got a grammy and millions). Just how much of your real world has been made and fed to you by AI at this point? and for how many years? It's all a lie. The world is a lie. Everything is a lie. Trust NOONE.

[Jedit]

"a half assed methed up euro kid using AI"

Tom Holkenborg (aka Junkie XL) was 47 years old and had been in the business for over 25 years when he did the Fury Road score in 2015 - before AI as we know it even existed. He's also an associate professor of music at a prominent art institute in the Netherlands who regularly works with the likes of Hans Zimmer and Johnny Marr.

You're not required to like his music, but before you start ranting and making personal attacks you should try to actually have a fact in your possession.

[Omnipresent]

Re: "a half assed methed up euro kid using AI"

^^^I had to stop and go look it up, but I did have my historical account mixed up (happens when you get older), David Guetta was the name I was thinking of. Happy now?

[Omnipresent]

Re: "a half assed methed up euro kid using AI"

...and related, in the course of looking for the name I came across a new thread on an audio software site that is releasing an AI agent to control their audio software to make the music for them. It's going to be quite popular. We are up to our noses in ai slop, and people cannot help themselves. Only a matter of (a very short) time.

[segfault188]

AI generated music can sound good, but block it anyway

There are loads of AI generated bands on Spotify. To avoid Breaking Rust's songs being suggested to me, I have now searched for them in the Spotify app and selected 'Don't play this artist'.

In recent months, Spotify has suggested rock music (based on what I normally listen to) which is clearly or likely AI generated. It often sounds really authentic, but there are various indicators that it's not a real band, including:

- the band's biography just talks about the genre of the music, with no names of band members or where they met or where they are based

- clearly AI-generated photos of a flawless looking singer in front of an unreal background

- no tour/gig information (although a new band might not have toured yet)

- a large number of singles generated in a short time

If I suspect music is AI generated then I block the band in Spotify as above. I'm conflicted about this as I really like some of the music but I don't want to support non-human 'bands'.

[Darkedge]

Spotify

is controlled by the major labels and is no friend of ANY artist except the top 0.1%. This is probably pushed by them as it makes more money for them and means less to pay actual artists. They have been shovelling anything that has basically zero cost in royalties to them at their audience for a while, this is just the highest profile one so far.

If you like music buy it, preferably direct but bandcamp Fridays is a good option. Oh and quit using Spotify it is killing music (much more than home taping ever did!)

[segfault188]

Re: Spotify

It's certainly a downside of Spotify that they pay a pittance to artists. There is a donate button so anyone who wants to send money directly to the artist can do so.

Personally, most of the bands I listen to are ones I'd never have discovered if not for the Spotify algorithm (or similar on another service) that suggests music I might like. In which case they wouldn't even have got that pittance from Spotify or a possible donation if I like them enough.

[Omnipresent]

Re: Spotify

If you listen to spotify, like actually listen to the songs, you will hear hundreds of years of OTHER songs in the tracks. It's mostly all just ai slop at this point by made up artist. AI is just shoving content down our throats until something sticks.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Max Headroom...

has got it made. Just has to choose a genre.

Presumably something modern fast paced disco ?

Cannot quite see his whinning on with some tedious folk ballad† making the charts although some over the top gospel might.

It wasn't the best of times. It wasn't the worst of times...—but presently it will be.

_{† more in Kryten's line I should think. Add Marvin ... Three Tenors move over. :)}

[KittenHuffer]

Re: Max Headroom...

Already been done!

[ecofeco]

Re: Max Headroom...

Beat me to it.

Done by decades.

[werdsmith]

Re: Max Headroom...

Max Headroom was the inverse of this though, Matt Frewer was a human actor pretending to be AI. The Art of Noise were a real band.

As opposed to AI pretending to be a real band.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Actual humans with talent"

You can't really have both these statements sat together:

'...every Breaking Rust song sounds identical - same beat, same tempo, same instrumentation: They're the sort of hyper-generic songs one could only get by feeding a prompt into an AI trained on every bro country song ever recorded and asking it to spit out something that would appeal to the lowest common denominator of music fan, something it appears to have done with success'.

and

'... spitting out songs that sound practically identical to those painstakingly written, rehearsed, and recorded by actual humans with talent'.

If the AI tracks are banal and generic then they are not competing against artists with talent - they are competing with people producing mediocre generic slop themselves.

Separately, AI has the potential to help people who have artistic ideas but not the associated skill to express them - my hope is that in due course it democratises art.

[Long John Silver]

Re: "Actual humans with talent"

It boils down to an ability to construct 'creative' AI prompts.

[Zack Mollusc]

Re: "Actual humans with talent"

You can have those statements both be true if the actual humans with talent are painstakingly writing, rehearsing and recording songs that will be commercially successful, ie appealing to the lowest common denominator by being hyper-generic slop.

[the Jim bloke]

Re: "Actual humans with talent"

I find the concept of "democratise art" weird.. cognitive dissonance in fact.

Its being brought up with the idea that art is special, exceptional, something that speaks to the soul, or reveals hidden understandings of human nature etc etc..

Then you get the mass market of pretty pictures and sounds, is a landscape or a birdsong art ?

and there are the things that have individual significance without any external value - your 5 year old childs handprints in paint and stuck on the fridge.. mass produced tourist crap only valuable due to the circumstances you associate with it.

I am a contrarian at heart, and the one thing I do believe is that almost every one else is wrong. Even the ones that agree with me.

So, my personal position, and you are totally free to ignore it,

... Democratic XOR art.

[cd]

btdt

Television is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything.

Fred Allen

[disgruntled yank]

Templates

Steve Goodman's song "You Never Even Called Me by My Name", as recorded by David Allen Coe, suggests how much of country and western music is paint-by-the-numbers. And Goodman's upbringing on the north side of Chicago might for some call into question the down-home authenticity of his c&w tunes. But I wouldn't switch channels if one of his songs came on.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Templates

Country music is just lyin' on the floor with a bottle ot Jack Daniels, and those big salty, lonely tears rollin' down your cheeks, and trying to turn all that misery and heartache into cold, hard cash.

Quote from Otis Lee Crenshaw (via BBC2 and Youtube)

[Long John Silver]

A challenge

"For the first time ever, Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, has used the power of AI to compose the final two movements of Schubert’s Symphony No. 8, the ‘Unfinished’, which has remained incomplete for 197 years."

https://www.thestrad.com/news/schubert-symphony-no-8-completed-using-ai/8592.article

A deeper challenge would be AI completion of Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. Presumably, an AI model would require 'training' on all Bruckner's symphonic and other orchestral works, plus familiarity with similar works by Bruckner's contemporaries.

From long before 'AI', I had a vague belief that creative works offer insight regarding the creator's cognition. That applies across the board. Their 'mark' is upon all their work. Given that a creative act must draw upon the creator's experience of life, his memory and acquired skills, the process need not be deemed mysterious, or in any way transcendental. It entails exploring/constructing correlations among gobbets of memory. Thereby, a work becomes a 'fingerprint' of its author.

When an 'Old Master' painting is alleged a forgery or a misattribution, 'experts' dwell on known provenance, the artist's chosen subject, his style (or 'school'), and overall visual plausibility. Often these criteria are insufficient to clinch the matter. Forensic examination of brushstrokes, paint constituents, and so forth, can disprove alleged provenance, but say nothing about the merit of the painting as a work of art. In essence, these exercises are motivated by attribution of monetary worth to an artefact, not to aesthetic valuation.

There seems no reason why current 'AIs' cannot be prompted into creative endeavours of equal artistic, or greater, worth, than human counterparts (alive or dead). This, on an understanding that 'AIs', by the nature of their construction and 'training', cannot emulate self-motivation, whatever that may be. At present, prompting is a necessary precondition for 'original' perceptions drawn from a static set of data.

When 'AIs' are enabled to fully integrate within their base set of 'memories' their responses to prompts, one might talk about 'developing', or 'maturing', creative sensibilities, leading to some 'AIs' becoming creative 'personalities' in their own right.

Meanwhile, much clap-trap about valuing 'creative' individuals in the context of popular entertainment will begin to fall upon deaf ears. An accumulation of huge businesses will be slimmed-down drastically, that is, those not doomed to the fate of dinosaurs.

[goblinski]

Still doesn't hold a candle to "Je t'aime le lundi", so - hush

[handle handle]

This far into the comments, and nobody's mentioned beer? B.E.E.R. Here a little ditty releases by a former NBA center (Portland Trailblazer at one time).

https://youtu.be/Hu3JWy7Yo9M?si=MAgHZFSZJcwfGvOJ

Some of us did grow up on gravel roads. As teenagers we rebelled listening to AC/DC. Led Zep, Black Sabbath, the Kinks, ... but that don't mean we can't enjoy simple, fun music once in a while, too.

[JWLong]

"Weird Al" Yankovic

He said it best.......

"This song only has six words"

And remember folks...,.

"Don't eat the Yellow Snow"

[Scene it all]

Lots of AI Slop on YouTube as well, with generic images taken from free libraries, rather obvious narration pasted together from news stories, and a voice that mispronounces some of the words and subtitles that put the wrong word in. I notice that on the Chinese social media platform xiaohongshu (known as "Redbook" to Westerners) AI-generated content is sometimes flagged as such.

[spold]

Not too difficult to generate....

"My dog died, my cousin left me....."

[wub]

Re: Not too difficult to generate....

Play it backward and you get your dog back, your girl back and your truck back!!

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Not too difficult to generate....

"My dog died, my cousin left me....."

Back in the day, newly moved to Canada, the Ex Mrs Oncoming Scorn insisted on the clock radio being tuned to the local radio station.

I woke up to a song EXACTLY like that once.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Not too difficult to generate....

The Billy Connoly "Country & Western Super Song"

[Mitoo Bobsworth]

George wasn't out by much...

"The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator."

George Orwell, '1984'

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: George wasn't out by much...

And then a film with a Eurythmics sound track tacked on cos the distributor had a band to plug and the movie was a bit depressing and might not appeal to the kids if you don't stick some of that pop music on it

[Uh, Mike]

Ha ha

If you want, "art," why are you looking at Billboard hits?

Just another example of AI producing the same product for less money.

[DoctorNine]

The small matter of taste...

It has always been my opinion that those who cannot tell the difference, between formulaic pablum (by simple hacks or AI in this case) and true masters of the art of music, are entitled to swill as much of it as they desire, without my objection or commentary. Art feeds the soul. Thus, those who choose such a diet will inevitably reap the just rewards of their choices. Bon appétit.

[Blackjack]

Ehem.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/11/real-humans-dont-stream-drake-songs-23-hours-a-day-rapper-suing-spotify-says/

AI bots listening to AI sloop,artists inflating their popularity and revenue using bots...

Can't wait for the darn chatbot AI bubble to pop already.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

While Saga Lore AI is, by the standards of country music, quite good

[Wang Cores]

Hard to argue there's aesthetic value, when one guy can deepfake Luke Bryant's voice and effectively cover his career in one song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CORANvT8l9A

[JoeCool]

When the revolution came, bro country "artists" were the first up against the wall.

Couldn't happen to a nicer genre.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake AI bands, promoted by fake AI 'influencers', supported by an industrialised music industry, and pushed without choice by streamers and radio.

Why doesn't Spotify have an 'exclude AI music' option? because they don't want you to avoid it they want that extra profitable slop poured in your ears to normalise it then prioritise it.

Time to start to look for a new music service, tbh other than convienience Spotify is a terrible service.

I see Deezer has the option..

[Peter Ford]

I thought most Country Music generation was one of the first use-cases for AI - analysis of the genre would suggest that this has been going on (with a few notable exceptions) for about 30 years.

Stock, Aitken and Waterman had a formula but at least they managed to make the voices sound different.

[JimmyPage]

On the plus side

no need to feel bad about pirating this crap.

Which I wouldn't

If it was any good.

[ICL1900-G3]

Unbeatable country music

Hank Wangford... Joggin' with Jesus.

[martinusher]

What were humans trained on?

People don't spontaneously create stuff, they learn how others do it and then use and adapt what they've learned to create their own material. So its a bit weird complaining that training a computer on cultural material is wrong while exposing humans to the same material -- training them -- is just fine.

Very little of what's created is truly original. I know this from music, not contemporary pop music which really is highly derivative but music created over the last few hundred years. Much of this material was entirely forgettable, it served a purpose and disappeared, with only a relatively small amount surviving (which even that could be called "examples of a genre" rather than being truly original). Its just the way it is; the difference is that we've got a huge industry to feed, an industry that expects payment and is prepared to recycle legal arguments endlessly just as it recycles music styles.

BTW -- I think you'll find that a lot of streamed music is automatically generated. It just doesn't make the headlines (themselves of dubious provenance these days) because its just generic cover versions of old standards. (Avoids paying out to artists etc.)

[headrush]

I have to admit that I'm pleasantly surprised by spotify. I spend 12 hours a night at work and listening to their playlists keeps me occupied and away from any radio pap. The best part is that when a playlist finishes, the music keeps coming in a similar vein. I've thus been introduced to many songs I never knew existed. This is mostly 60s,70s and early 80s BTW.

Also regarding live music, I once had the privilege of hearing a ukulele band playing Anarchy in the UK and I think I cried with laughter all the way through. I was very drunk.

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

That will likely have been "The Pukes", punk covers on Ukes is their thing.

Adrian Edmondson, (ex Comic Strip, Young Ones, etc) had a similar outfit doing punk songs in a folk style, The Bad Shepherds.

[Androgynous Cow Herd]

"Live from Nashville!"

I worked on Music Row. It has always been a factory town.

Song writing houses with pet writers churning out 8-12 songs A DAY. Pet studio players cranking through demos off of number charts. get the tapes to the various A&R folks via label pitch people. Day in- day out. The occasional "Big name" interjecting themselves into the Songwriting credits via the "A third for a word" formula to give a song a certain provenance. A&R people sifting through the deluge for the next artist product/ 2 hit wonder to monetize. The lottery is - IF you have the songwriter or publisher credit for the next manufactured "Big Act" the royalty Mailbox Money can set you up quite nicely for just 1-2 songs. God Bless Walt Disney and that whole "Life of the Copyright holder + 75 years" thing.

Country Music (and Blues, and a lot of Rock) is VERY formulaic. A perfect genre for Generative AI.

This is just about the same as replacing auto workers with robots. I would be surprised to find out this AI "Artist" DOESN'T actually originate from the IT department of one of the publishers or clearing houses...

This sort of thing is why it is the Music BUSINESS.

(and, lest I get misunderstood - I still hate the idea, but I also hate Hat-Pop country when it is produced by warm blooded meatsacks. )

[MachDiamond]

Re: "Live from Nashville!"

"Pet studio players cranking through demos off of number charts."

Those studio musicians have been some of the most amazing players. Stax and Motown had house bands. The Immediate Family, Cutting Crew and Booker T & the MG's are all over the place but would rarely get credit in the past.

Rick Beato's interviews have some of these guys and the stories they tell give a big insight into the music world. I re-watched a couple of talks Rick had with Steve Lukather last night. "Luke" has played on many famous songs. I think it was "Beat It" by Michael Jackson where Eddie Van Halen played an uncredited solo since he was signed to a different label. Not that it was a good idea to say no to Quincy Jones. He called, you came running and damn the lawyers.

[genmayhem]

there's a quote...

You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is? Wrong direction.

I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.

[the Jim bloke]

Thank you for that,

only one upvote to give.

[Dan 55]

For the record, it was self-promotion

Seems they paid $3000 for those 3000 digital downloads mentioned in the article in said Billboard Country Digital Song Sales chart and get to number 1 in that chart, and a lot of media coverage.

[MachDiamond]

Re: For the record, it was self-promotion

"Seems they paid $3000 for those 3000 digital downloads mentioned in the article in said Billboard Country Digital Song Sales chart and get to number 1 in that chart, and a lot of media coverage."

That's cheap. If a famous recording studio rents for $1,000/hr, all of the money saved from not having real players in a real studio would pay for even more fake downloads and still be a massive bargain as a way to game the system.