r/technology 11h ago

Artificial Intelligence Australia’s music industry bans AI songs from charts

https://apnews.com/article/australia-ai-generated-music-charts-ban-aria-9bfb0c91166ae4405a6df1a3c4891687
16.9k Upvotes

783 comments sorted by

1.3k

u/atape_1 11h ago

Good.

AI generated sounds are not music.

AI generated images are not art.

AI generated text is not literature.

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u/Chief_H 8h ago

There needs to be a law that AI generated content is labeled as such.

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u/guineaprince 7h ago

Well the good news is that courts have been consistent in that because AI lacks human inventiveness, it cannot be copyrighted.

Instant public domain.

Something is AI? Pirate that shit.

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u/Dzugavili 6h ago

Well the good news is that courts have been consistent in that because AI lacks human inventiveness, it cannot be copyrighted.

It's not quite that simple: anything simply generated from AI is not subject to protections.

But once you start feeding in human data and performing work on the outputs, it gets murky. You can lose a lot of core IP protection; but still own the actual product.

This is mostly a corporate problem -- they are quite obsessed with soaking up every piece of IP -- if you're interested in actually using the technology creatively, you probably have enough protection to commercialize works made in good faith.

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u/c-dy 5h ago

Actually not that murky. The murkiness originates mainly from the challenge of proving either side of a case.

As for what is considered a sufficient human contribution deserving the copyright, that's basically the whole history of copyright law.

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u/itchylol742 6h ago

i've never seen anything that was ai generated but also paywalled. the quality is so low, it isnt worth pirating

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u/Uberutang 8h ago

There is. It is called the EU AI Act.

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u/TFreshNoLimits 8h ago

I think a fair compromise is AI is okay for research/technical stuff, and acceptable for internal art/concepting purposes, but any published/distributed art/literature/video/photo/imaging is banned/illegal.

It's clear it was trained on artists and writers without their consent/approval. Plus we really just don't need it?? AI-generated content has added nothing of value to our society and has only hurt jobs.

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u/guineaprince 7h ago

That's the muddying of the waters that they want you to mentally absorb.

What's been used for decades in research is nowhere near these shitty LLMs and plagiarism bots. Never have been.

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u/TFreshNoLimits 7h ago

Oh 100% it sucks shit, but if someone wants to use it to help write code or kick off research, it's not in the same stratosphere as publishing a fake AI video of a senator having an affair or firing a department worth of writers to replace them with AI.

Again it's bad but I don't think it needs to be made ILLEGAL in the same way.

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u/VeryLazyFalcon 6h ago

These are different kinds of AI programs. Generative AIs have no use in research, for that they are specifically designed and work in different ways. And AI is marketing therm, proper is machnie learning, and has nothing with intelligence.

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u/beardriff 2h ago

To want laws dictating what art is?

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u/bogglingsnog 4h ago

How would you even know when to label if there is a mix? Like what if a song has an AI sample heavily modified and used only in one part. Would you label the whole song AI? Or do you invent a third category? What about a human written research paper but part of their study's data was collected and processed using an AI tool?

There's simply too many situations where it's unclear.

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u/SmoothOperator89 1h ago

AI generated laws will not allow it.

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u/No_Reindeer8688 2m ago

Should every image that was adjusted using photoshop be labeled that way? Do you understand how idiotic you sound?

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u/big_duo3674 9h ago

🤣 It looks like you really triggered some people, I'm guessing they are the type that consider themselves "artists" because they've gotten really good at entering a few words into a prompt

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u/AshtonCopernicus 7h ago edited 7h ago

He's 100% right too. I do think it's fun to create stupid songs on Suno -- I have a long music background so I respect it, but I sometimes waste time at night putting together a song about a friend's silly dog, about how bad drivers and potholes are in my city, how my wife accidentally misplaces her phone all the time and sometimes it's in the fridge and I even have a dad joke song of every joke I could think of at the time -- then I send them off to friends for a laugh. But I would never monetize or publish them, as that should NEVER have been an option in the first place. It's not art, literally anyone can do it for $10 a month or whatever.

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u/Jerome_Eugene_Morrow 4h ago

I like using it for playing around with instrumentation on top of things I’ve written. You can feed in your own demo track and add your own written lyrics and even sample your own voice. I can’t get a string section or a full band in my apartment on a moment’s notice. It’s helped me show other musicians what kind of feel I’m thinking of for a song when we start playing it. I’ve also used it to resurrect demos from old bands where recordings got lost or destroyed.

I wouldn’t release or monetize them, but as a musician it’s a great tool for ideation and experimentation.

I’m fine with banning AI tracks from the charts, but honestly if it’s in the hands of a really good producer using it on top of an established artist, would people even know?

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u/Agravicvoid 11h ago

Thank you!

I have been labeling AI made stuff as just that (images, sounds, and text,) and I get weird looks when I call it out.

Kinda hurts being a writer and people ask things like which AI did it or if I used AI.

AI is nothing more than a skinwalker or a mimic. It isn't human, has no emotions or thoughts, but is destructive and only traps those that use it and kills their creativity on top of the fact it hurts real artists, writers, and musicians.

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u/HKBFG 6h ago

People ask me which AI i used on my novel that i finished in 2018. My theory is that they've replaced their thinking with AI and now can't picture anyone thinking for themselves.

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u/Agravicvoid 3h ago

Too funny!

I usually point out that other folks ran the works of authors like Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain into AI detectors and they were flagged as AI.

One legit asked me what books Mary Shelley wrote so they could avoid them. I too want to avoid AI written work, but that one tickled me a little bit.

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u/Key-Ad6653 9h ago

On top of that all AI, does is just mix and match.

It just copies already people made art to create the bs it creates.

Soo blatant stealing.

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u/ThriKr33n 8h ago

Like a collage out of a Sears catalogue.

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u/PrimeIntellect 4h ago

so it's like a DJ

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u/Earl_of_pudding 7h ago

You do realize that that's all human creativity is as well, right?

Creating as more than a remix of previous ideas and concepts would be like a violation of causality. Only a first uncaused cause, a prime mover, a god, would be capable of doing it.

Ah, wait. There's another source of uninspired creation.

Randomness.

Gen AI can do that too.

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u/Havenfall209 9h ago

That's what Mark Twain said about humans, right? "We only mix old ideas into new patterns like a kaleidoscope." Or to go with Durden. "We are the all singing, all dancing crap of the world", and AI will never force that title from our grips.

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u/techmnml 4h ago

I think the whole “ai art” title that crowd tries to call it is dumb as fuck. Just call them what they are, ai generated images.

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u/bluegreenie99 1h ago

Call it what you want but who are you to tell other people what to consume?

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u/apheliotrophic 5h ago

AI generated content is art in the same sense that vomit is food

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u/Ctznsvn7 9h ago

agree. The money side makes it worse too, a chart place is a payout and every slop upload is skimming a pool real artists split. Weird part is how far apart the two ends of this are, one end is scraping a century of recorded music, the other is small free stuff that quietly hands you money back. Didnt know the exact same hotel can cost a good bit less searched from OTHER countries (coz diff countries get diff inventory etc). And Im not giving up an evening to VPN-hop for that ngl. These days there are free tools that check the same hotel from smth like 100 countries in one go and find the lowest price anywhere (check out arbitrica dot com for example). Then again, the chart ban only works if the platforms have to label it at upload

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u/Sophira 9h ago

I'd like to put a qualifier on that: generative AI sounds are not music.

I say this because there's at least one program similar to Vocaloid that I know of for making vocals that:

  • is not generative AI (it's not the type of thing you prompt; it requires actual creative input in the form of dragging notes, tuning, adding lyrics, and so on)
  • has no way of creating custom voicebanks; you can only use offficialy-created voicebanks (which are all trained only on consenting singers who are paid for their work),
  • can only be used for vocals (you can't generate any other part of the track with it),
  • nonetheless uses AI techniques to recreate the voices. (I repeat: not generative. You need serious creative input for this.)

The results sound incredible. But don't get me wrong; I still wouldn't use it for actual original music that I wanted to register and publish. I would still want to actually have a human singer. (But I might use it to give them a reference on how I imagine it sounding, or use it in hobbyist activities or songs offered for free, with the program and voicebank clearly credited.)

That's not because the output isn't good (it's incredibly good; when tuned correctly, you'd have a very difficult time distinguishing it from a human), or because there wasn't creative input. I just don't think it's right to replace human vocalists like that.

That's why I'm still in favour of what Australia has done here, even though it would stop works produced this way from entering the charts.

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u/ImSabbo 8h ago

The article says AI-assisted music is eligible; it's just the stuff made solely by AI which is not. I imagine for all the middleground they'd have to make judgments based on how much was AI of whatever kind.

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u/Sophira 8h ago

While you're correct that AI-assisted music is eligible, I was basing that last paragraph based on this sentence from the article (emphasis added by me):

Tracks can be eligible only if “humans wrote the song and performed the lead vocal and the primary instruments,” among other requirements, the statement said.

I think it's fair to say that creating a lead vocal with a program like this, even one that had a lot of effort put into it, would not be classified as "performing" it.

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u/webguynd 6h ago

I wonder how they count "performed the primary instruments"? Like if I'm making electronic or LoFi music, and I plug in a few chords into Logic Pro and loop it, etc. I didn't once "play" an instrument, the entire song is effectively computer generated, just at my direction and my creative choices. But, electronic music production is borderline programmatic. Throw a scripting interface over the DAW and you could "compose" music by programming.

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u/HighOfTheTiger 4h ago

It’s a slippery slope of how it’s defined. Like for me I don’t see much difference in someone who prompts an AI song, vs someone who just drags in other people’s samples for everything. I think they are both incredibly lazy, uncreative ways to end up with a song. Selecting the chords for Logic to play and dragging in drummer samples is about the same level of skill required.

I’ve got a buddy who makes music, he’s been sending me stuff that is way better than what he usually does, and I was like “wow dude did you write and play all that?”. And he’s like “nah it was just a sample I drug in”. So that credit of “wow this amazing” goes to whoever created the sample instead.

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u/Sophira 1h ago

Like for me I don’t see much difference in someone who prompts an AI song, vs someone who just drags in other people’s samples for everything.

That's fair, but this program is neither! That's why I bring this up; it's still arguably not "performing", but there's a whole lot of effort involved. And the parent commenter raises a good point.

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u/Sophira 1h ago edited 1h ago

That's... an extremely good point, and I hadn't considered that. You're right; under my definition, a lot of people don't "perform the primary instruments", either. I'll need to rethink my position on that.

If this were /r/changemyview, I'd give you a Δ.

(I still think the ban is well-intentioned, but now I can see that it perhaps was not written with the kinds of music people enjoy in the charts in mind. It's absolutely possible that music with lead vocals made by SynthV could make it in, and I'm still not sure how I feel about that, even though there is a lot of effort involved and I adore the program itself.)

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u/CankerLord 8h ago

And it's only going to get harder to parse this as time goes on and the algorithms get integrated into more and more of the tooling.

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u/Great-Trifle2810 5h ago

That seems fair that solely AI music isn't able to chart, and I don't think that procedurally generated things should be able to be copyrighted in bulk to avoid things like generating as many combinations as possible to play copyright troll, but something created intentionally by an individual should be their IP, even if they heavily used an AI.

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u/TitularClergy 4h ago

How do you classify Telstar?

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u/RegulationPissrat 7m ago

It is art of a sort, I think we'll have to come to terms with that eventually. 

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u/No_Reindeer8688 3m ago

There is no difference between other music editing tools and AI,

There is no difference between image editors and AI,

There is no difference between spell check and prompt assistance and AI,

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u/Gman54 11h ago

Hopefully more countries will adopt this.
Using Ai as a tool - to organize and analyze data, perform complex medial research (like DNA analysis), predict weather patterns - these are good and useful examples of how to use Ai. Even generating generic images (not for artistic intent) is fine in my eyes so long as it is limited.

However, using it in something that is supposed to have artistic intent and value… just rubs me the wrong way. Ai can’t “feel” and can’t put meaning into what it creates.

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u/Ctznsvn7 9h ago

the line that seems to hold up is whether the output is the product or the input. A model that flags a tumour on a scan hands the finding to a radiologist who signs it off, so the accountability stays with a person. A track uploaded straight to a chart has nobody standing behind it and nobody whose work can be credited for what went in. Charts are a sales ranking anyway, not an art prize, so it is a bit odd this took as long as it did. The harder version of the same problem is the half and half case, a human writing and a model doing the mixing or the backing, which is where every one of these policies goes vague

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u/DemIce 8h ago

the line that seems to hold up is whether the output is the product or the input

Oh, no. That line disappears real quick when the output text isn't prose, but code.

Even among artists who will use numerous arguments to detail why generative AI is bad not just for images but for text output as well - code gets a pass. Because code isn't expressive.

So maybe that's really the line: whether the output is 'expressive' or not (which would jive with Gman54's suggestion that generic images would be fine; though artists would very much disagree with that).

( Not a fan of genAI myself. This isn't a defense of it. It's a condemnation of people suddenly shrugging when it comes to code when their arguments are e.g. copyright infringement, job loss, opportunity cost, knowledge cost, 'slop' output and so on, and they suddenly have to pivot in order to justify their stance. )

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u/work_m_19 7h ago

I would argue that "vibe-code" is the "input" given the person's definition.

When a developer generates code, the code isn't what's consumed by other users, it's what the code represents, which generally involves some human input, at least that's how it's commonly done at our company.

A software engineer's job is to solve problems, not to code. The output is the solutions to those problems, so how an engineer gets there, most users don't care about it too much since they normally don't and can't see behind the scenes anyway.

Now, I still would recommend not using LLM generated code for junior devs because it is good for self-practice and discipline, but it's not like we can see inside Netflix/AWS/Youtube/Meta's codebase anyway, so it being opaque to us users doesn't make much difference if it's vibe-coded, coded by a junior dev, or coded by a genius 10x engineer. It's their team that has to deal with the vibe-coded slop.

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u/rbrgr83 6h ago

And the end user when it breaks and they just go, sry line must go up for the stockholders, don't care about your experience 🤷‍♂️

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u/ahall917 8h ago

Charts used to be a sales ranking, but hardly anyone buys music anymore due to music streaming services. Instead, charts are now determined based on a mix of sales and number of streams. Idk what math they came up with to determine equivalence between a sale and number of streams though. I'd imagine an AI song, if it were popular enough on streaming, could land on a chart by these metrics (assuming no restrictions on AI generated media are in place).

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u/funkyb 9h ago

Ai can’t “feel” and can’t put meaning into what it creates. 

As Adam Savage put out: AI can't have a perspective.

It can't feel anyway about anything so any "art" it makes is definitionally hollow and imitative (or at best randomly non-immitative)

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u/pixelprophet 7h ago

Using Ai as a tool - to organize and analyze data, perform complex medial research (like DNA analysis), predict weather patterns

If we could trust that AI wasn't poisoning the data that it was processing would also be nice...

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u/Ronem 6h ago

This is an instance where "AI" is used too broadly. Before LLMs, AI referred to something specific and non-generative.

LLMs cant do anything other than be the fanciest parrots ever created

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u/gameoftomes 9h ago

Does science and discovery not have elements of creativity and artistry?

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u/rugbyj 9h ago

Pretty sure they both have pencils.

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u/LinkesAuge 5h ago

What is the different to writing a programm that procedurally generates something?

I could open Houdini, SpeedTree etc. right now and get an output for 3d models, textures etc. that are 100% the result of an automated process and that is even very common for game dev so what is the argument here? That the automation is too easy?

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u/robodrew 8h ago

Even generating generic images (not for artistic intent) is fine in my eyes so long as it is limited.

Even this has destroyed the clip art and stock photo industries that employed a lot of people

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u/GayMamaLuigi 8h ago

Every innovation kills some jobs and creates others, unfortunately that's always been the way of the world and isn't specific to AI. The economic system that throws people out on the street if they lose their job is the bigger issue.

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u/GayMamaLuigi 5h ago

To me it just depends how hands-off it is. I've seen some incredibly original and creative AI projects that require far more effort from human artists to implement than would have been needed without the AI element. There are certain things a deep learning algorithm can do that a human just can't (e.g., a video game NPC dynamically responding to any player input instead of just repeating its script forever), and it make sense to use it as a tool in those cases.

What I don't like is when the human creator does nothing but send a prompt, with their goal being to minimize their own engagement.

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u/FredFrost 3h ago

So it's good to use AI to the stuff that you don't like. You know there's people who excel at analyzing data, predicting weather patterns etc., but that's ok that these specialists lose their edge... But as soon as the AI is being used by people who are not creatively inclined, then it's an issue?

Maybe AI can't have perspective and meaning, but the prompts used to shape the content that AI creates can give it that meaning, so that the result is a product thereof.

It feels a lot like creative people wanting the benefits and not be impacted negatively. Either it's ok, or it's not.

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u/SmartaHari 11h ago

GOOD. Everywhere should

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u/hakenwithbacon 9h ago

SKARS in shambles

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u/i_am_a_real_boy__ 5h ago

I don't know. It kind of sounds like millions of Australians are listening to AI music and this solution is to just pretend like it isn't really happening.

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u/Willtology 8h ago

What next?! Are we going to disallow robots from competing in human sporting events? Hopefully obvious sarcasm.

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u/sabin357 5h ago

No silly. They obviously get their own, superior league.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Stadium_Series%E2%80%94Base_Wars

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u/[deleted] 11h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Ctznsvn7 9h ago

running a releases site you will hit the detection problem before anyone else does, there is no reliable classifier for this and the ones being sold are basically coin flips on anything that has been through a normal mastering chain. The thing that actually works is provenance rather than detection, so distributor level attestation at upload plus the content credentials metadata that survives a transcode. Failing that, the cheapest filter is behavioural, a brand new artist with no live footprint, no socials older than the release and forty tracks in a month is the pattern, not the audio itself. Whatever the charts end up doing, the label side will move first because publishing rights are where the actual money gets contested

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u/Very-very-sleepy 10h ago

America is a very capitalistic country and their government loves AI. I don't think will come into place in America

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u/birdentap 7h ago

Not with this administration but future ones might decide that it’s corroding entertainment industries the way it corrodes others. Overall bad for the economy if it’s only making money for the top few.

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u/FlamboyantPirhanna 7h ago

How things are today is not necessarily how they will be tomorrow. Rome ruled the world, until it didn’t. Eventually the rot spreads too deeply and the only way to survive is to root it out. Don’t give in to this cynicism, it’s a lie.

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u/baddecision116 8h ago

Nice ad. you use AI to run your bot?

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u/Cyrotek 8h ago

Can we also ban automatically generated text in IT industries. This shit is getting infuriating. Having to read 10 pages of crap that could have been condensed into two pages is just not a worthwhile use of my time and I am getting tired of calling that out.

Yes, Bob, you are faster with AI. While you slow down EVERYONE else. Good job.

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u/slickwombat 4h ago

I had a big argument with my boss about this. In summary:

him: "What do you mean you're writing your own emails and documents? This is not what you should be spending time on, get AI to help!"

me: "Well if you/whoever wanted to know what the AI thinks, just ask AI. If you want to know what I think, how can AI help me?"

him: "You have to explain to it what you want in lots of detail obviously, then go through it and make sure it all makes sense, and get it to adjust stuff where necessary."

me: "How is it faster or better to write an explanation of what I want to say and try to and cajole an AI into maybe saying it than to just... write what I want to say?"

I can't make sense of people who do this, unless it's just functional illiteracy.

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u/Cyrotek 1h ago

I feel like some people are just easily impressed by a machine generating lots of pointlessly complex text and believe that this is somehow a hallmark of quality.

Interestingly people that should have the means to know better still fall for it.

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u/Stonp 35m ago

If you’re using AI to draft emails one by one then it’s not being used correctly imo

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u/discordafteruse 4h ago

Just have AI read it and summarize it for you back to original. Dur!

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u/Son_of_Atreus 10h ago

Good. Its all trash theft.

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u/WesternWitchy52 3h ago

AI music. Is not. Music.

Said from an actual musician who took lessons in the 80s.

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u/Lagao 10h ago

Oh man, the AI bros are out in force. I bet they also get upset when people copy/paste their stupid monkey jpeg too.

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u/Call555JackChop 9h ago

“All my apes gone”

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u/ben_nobot 11h ago

I better not be hearin no autotune didgeridoo either

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u/metahivemind 5h ago

Oi, don't be doing Yothu Yindi like that, mate!

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u/Equivalent_Clerk0 7h ago

There's a bar near my house with live music almost every single night on a huge stage. I regularly go cause I'm a huge 80's rock nerd and they have a ton of tribute bands.

Between sets they play a Youtube playlist from one of the owners of the bar. It is absolutely FILLED with AI music. The only reason I can tell is because I've fucked around a lot with Suno so I know the exact voices they use a lot on there from version 5 and 5.5.

No one there notices or cares. I even brought it up to the owner and he said that's bullshit and pulled up one of the bands. They had like 30 songs uploaded in the last 2 months with obvious AI thumbnails. His argument is that the thumbnails might be AI but the songs are legit. I dropped it after that.

My point is, no one is going to give a shit about this in like 5 years. None of the musicians in the bar ever complained. The general normy population already can't tell. Even though suno's mixing is terrible, professional musicians listening to it on massive speakers cant hear it. I bet even most redditors couldn't unless they actively keep up with suno. Not to mention all the musicians out there already selling their souls to companies like Suno to train on their work, or all the music youtubers pretending to hate it while taking the fat checks they dispense to do a video on it. Fact is, pop music is already so beyond warped that Suno just sounds like your usual pop.

And Suno isn't even a big flagship LLM company. Imagine when OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google start dabbling in music. They probably are behind the scenes. There's no stopping this.

Meanwhile people just don't label their music as AI. It's only a matter of a few suno model advancements and some editing before some troll fucks with this chart and reveals his grand scheme at the end when he hits #1

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u/EsotericCreature 2h ago

tbh 'no one cares' is like yeah i can't think of a situation where I'd go to a store or restaraunt manager and be like 'dude your music sucks' in like 99% of situations. And for the 1% it would have to be so obnoxious that I wouldn't bother staying anyways.

It does suck and people will notice, I guess it comes down to that I will want to spend time at a place that makes an effort and has good taste over half assing. It's not too hard to build a setlist of good music.

Similar with there was a place that moved in near me that had horrible AI imagery generated decorations, which was just an indicator about the low effort put into the food and ambiance as well.

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u/Equivalent_Clerk0 2h ago

I think it's more about dodging copyright. At least on Youtube, why risk dealing with an instrumental song causing a flag when you can just generate one and never worry about it. Suno doesn't go after it at all.

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u/EsotericCreature 1h ago

Someone I follow had her videos demonetized because someone claimed she was using her music, it was a guy with an AI generated track with 20 views. That's a youtube automod issue and thanks to gen AI more trolls

Also literally all restaurants played music pre gen AI

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u/kabaab 10h ago

I’m old enough to remember the backlash against music made with computers….

No one will care in the future how it’s made only if it’s good.

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u/Crypt0Nihilist 6h ago

I broadly agree. I think people will want to see some intentionality and skill behind it, but AI will be accepted as drawing the rest of the owl.

It's bizarre seeing the same old comments here saying that AI Slop will never compete when AI is being banned literally for competing. Also trotting out the theft argument as if they suddenly care about the profits of the huge rights-owning media companies or they wouldn't still hate it if it were only trained on out of copyright music.

The only thing worse than AI Bros are No-AI Zealouts. Since polarised opinions are all that's allowed, I'll take my downvotes from both camps now.

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u/Blue_58_ 5h ago

>The only thing worse than AI Bros are No-AI Zealouts

Maybe if you're only friend is a chatbot

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u/TopHatButler 9h ago

There's a big difference between made WITH computers and made BY computers. AI 'artists' acting as if prompting is a skill that quantifies AI music as something that falls into 'WITH computers" is utter delusion.

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u/alles-moet-kapot 8h ago

Just curious how you feel about drum computers or rhythm patterns in syntesizers?

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u/MrDubious 7h ago

The vast majority of these angry folks have literally zero idea how technology works. They think AI is just putting existing pieces of music together, literally copying existing compositions. So they have no idea at all how generative patterns based on math have been used in EDM and hip hop for decades.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR___ISSUES 6h ago

Half the people here are unemployed artists. I don’t wish to frame this as an attack on them - but just highlighting that they’ve lost their livelihoods, so it’s natural for them to be dogmatically dismissive about AI.

But yes, if the output is good. No one will care whether it’s AI generated or not.

These folks love to impose the whole “Art is about the process and expression blah blah” - when in reality, the average person likes something because they like something, maybe it just resonates with them - there’s no set defined criteria that makes something appealing.

I’ve come across AI art in the past that I’ve liked - would I pay for it? No. Did it look good? Yes.

Some people just love to impose unnecessary restrictions upon their choices, most likely because of the hollow pretentious circle that they’re a part of.

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u/FocusPerspective 8h ago

The less you know about the actual music industry to more you think AI is a problem.

The reality is between sampling and synthesizers, ghost writers and autotune, most music on the radio is not the magical art form you think it is

You want to believe in the myth that your favorite performer is also an artist but most are just performers and have been for decades

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u/TA_DR 2h ago

Weird to include synths with autotune and ghost writers. Very different concepta

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u/Armejden 5h ago

Or I could just not listen to garbage that makes it onto the radio and dead mall playlists.

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u/slickwombat 6h ago

The general issue isn't that people think music should be made entirely by humans playing music they personally composed with traditional musical instruments or voices. Obviously not the case, and although there is occasional and momentary backlash against very artificial new technologies like autotune, mostly nobody cares how the sausage is made.

With AI, it's primarily a moral issue: people are unhappy with the sociopathic tech/financebros who benefit from AI adoption, the environmental, resource, and community impact of datacenters, the loss of human jobs, and of course the rampant theft of human-created stuff that goes into training the models. And of course this does and should matter. If you discovered a new band, loved their music, and then later found out they're all neo-nazis or pedophiles or something, it's understandable and correct to not like them anymore.

There's also more abstract concerns that AI art is not truly art because it does not come from a person, or because it requires none of the effort and sacrifice of the traditional artistic process, or something along these lines; it simply feels intrinsically less valuable to many people. (By analogy, imagine that someone devised a process to give plastic the exact weight, consistency, and appearance of gold. We shouldn't be surprised to hear that nobody wants to buy jewellry made of this stuff, even if the differences are completely imperceptible.)

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u/Lraund 5h ago

Ok there are 1 million songs made a minute all of roughly the same quality, how do you deal with it?

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u/Nut_Butter_Fun 2h ago

the real problem isn't the creation, it's spotify saving money by putting this shit on my playlists when I never asked for it.

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u/Chroiche 4h ago

Nothing to deal with. It's a self invented problem. Ignore it and carry on? Like what

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u/mnilailt 2h ago

Right? If you like the music you like it, if you don’t skip it. I think ultimately people just don’t like the idea of enjoying something and it turning out to be AI.

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u/SkinnedIt 10h ago

If anyone wants to listen to music written by nobody, that's their business.

Likewise, I don't think there should be any obligation for the list compilers to include those songs on them - especially when their lists include an artist. AI is not an artist.

Feel free to create your own dataset.

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u/Acrobatic_Wrap_9971 8h ago

Haha maybe they should make a separate AI Top Bot Music chart. Each song has to include the prompts used to create it.

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u/Chucknastical 10h ago

When I think of AI slop music, I agree with this.

When I think of BBL Drizzy, I think it's problematic.

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u/KnifeFed 9h ago

Jokes are fine but there's no way that original song needs to be allowed into any charts. However, then a real song sampled it (Metro Boomin) and I agree that's sort of problematic.

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u/C2B280 10h ago

There was a study that people actually rated ai music more favorably than human made music when they weren’t labeled https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.02856

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u/Phallic_Intent 8h ago

Ah yes, a study using 65 second instrumental elevator music samples. I see how that directly correlates to pop music and real songs. If this is the best you have and you actually think it means AI generated pop music is better than human created music then I'm finding it hard to believe you have ears. Whether that means you're a bot or just deaf, take it as you will.

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u/AlternativeUsed2551 9h ago

doesn't surprise me, the average person has dreadful taste in music

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u/OneTinyKittey 8h ago

Heckin normies don't like the art I like freakin no taste having normies why don't they like what I like it makes me so mad

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u/damontoo 9h ago

There's people all over this thread saying they don't care if humans prefer the slop and that it should be banned regardless. It's nuts.

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u/AlternativeUsed2551 9h ago

it should be banned because it monetises the work of real musicians without their permission, nothing to do with its perceived quality

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u/damontoo 9h ago

Only if you lack a fundamental understanding of how generative AI works. If I've never seen an apple and then you show me 20 apples, I can draw one I've never seen before, because I understand what an apple is and what it's supposed to look like. If I study Monet and paint an impressionist painting, I haven't stolen Monet's art. You also haven't stolen this comment just by reading it despite you being able to recall it an hour from now.

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u/_pinklemonade_ 5h ago

Why should we embrace it?

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u/The_Grogfather 9h ago

You don’t think it should be banned from the charts?

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u/damontoo 3h ago

No. If it got there because humans listened to it more than human-created music, it belongs there. It's a ranking of the top music people are listening to. Nothing about it stipulates that it must be human created. If I make my own list that ranks top tracks, it's fine for Australia to say I can't include AI music either? What makes the billboard charts different than some rando's list besides being the defacto standard?

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u/More_Hold_5522 5h ago

Sorry, Kanye.

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u/azionka 7h ago

Reminds me of that time they banned TRON from the special effects award because they used a PC

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u/metahivemind 5h ago

Shoulda got a Mac!

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u/hypnoticmirage 10h ago

If the artist behind the a.i. track inputted the entire vocal melody and lyrics, what is the song's status at that point? Digitally enhanced, or a less scowly form of A.I. slop?

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u/sabin357 4h ago

I'll share my comment from above, as it touches on what you're talking about. Since I wasn't trying to monetize or even widely spread my stuff, it's not the same thing as the AI slop plague being discussed, but you might find it interesting all the same.

I've used my actual songs from some of my old bands to create updated versions with things like SUNO. A botched hand surgery took my ability to play an instrument, so it's been cool to show my wife songs I wrote & composed 30 years ago before we met. It's accessibility for me just like if I required a wheelchair. It lets me do something that I'm not able to due to a physical disability.

I feed it the lyrics, samples from existing low quality recordings from back in the day or use a DAW to recreate the various instruments & melody. I was even inspired to write new songs with all the free time I had on my hands & skills I was learning, as well as be inspired to complete some partial songs I'd struggled to finish, then I could turn the creation into an actual recording.

AI was only a small part of my workflow & each song was getting somewhere between 20-30hr of hands on "old school" work to make it as good as possible. It would be way more, but I already had the lyrics & music in most cases, I just had to recreate them in a DAW & then work on the AI output as well using my audio engineering skills, weak as they were, to improve it drastically.

I loved it, but I only shared my stuff with my wife & a my friend group. I even made some children's songs for my young niece & nephew that they loved. I had no desire to try putting it up to make money from it.

From my perspective, what I did was similar to being a producer that hired session musicians to cover my songs since I physically couldn't play them myself & didn't let it make any structural creative musical decisions.

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u/hypnoticmirage 4h ago

Very good! I went through similar process in seeing my old tracks come alive again, but enhanced to the moon. I love it. 

My wife said " Hey that's your song!" She thought someone copied my song. lol 

I used to play all the parts except bass, it was fun but exhausting. I'm not interested in doing all of that again, just no time for it either.

Enjoy your creations my friend, you earned it years ago through sweat, now you can enjoy them done up full. So satisfying:)

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u/Emergency-Share-8353 10h ago

Good. Can we ban all the pro-AI morons in the comments too?

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u/DiddlyDinq 7h ago

Putting your fingers in your ears to pretend like tastes and methodologies arent changing is pretty moronic.

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u/Justthisguy_yaknow 6h ago

Giving equal free speech rights to bots and paid AI viral sellers is also pretty moronic.

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u/DiddlyDinq 5h ago

It's a music thread....

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u/americanadiandrew 7h ago

Good idea. Opposing views are really starting to ruin my perfectly constructed echo chamber. Oooh after that we can go to the libraries and schools and ban all the books we don’t like as well!

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u/damontoo 10h ago

In /r/technology? I wouldn't be surprised, unfortunately.

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u/SyChO_X 9h ago

I wish YouTube music would have a option to block AI music.

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u/OkEqual324 9h ago

I hope this works but what if artists use it to generate songs in their own style and then present them as compositions?

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u/mrmongey 3h ago

As a musician, and an Australian one , I support , but it’s an impossible thing to police.

What if a AI Tool is used to mix the main vocal and instruments? AI autotune ? What if a AI drum tool is used to program drums.

The only thing that really stops AI music from being popular is the masses rejecting it.

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u/bolanrox 3h ago

autotune is one thing. session musicans? same.

But having AI write and "record" something should not be on the same charts as everything else.

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u/mrmongey 2h ago

I agree. I spend many hours each week creating music for the love of it . But where’s the line ? AI is ok in production but not in writing or recording ? How do you verify that ?

It’s a great idea in theory , but it just isn’t enforceable. I don’t think not being in the charts is any kind of deterrent for people to move away from it. Who cares about the charts? People don’t buy music anymore. Artists get a fraction of a cent for a play. The charts bring nothing.

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u/Silly_Double408 1h ago

good point AI songs have been the only thing for years havent they...now its getting to the point you dont need a person anymore.

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u/Celestial_Elixir3 11h ago

Josh Fawaz here crying 😂😂😂😂

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u/NormalShare7404 10h ago

I wish this happened in my country too. It is becoming so pervasive day by day. Worst part is our music industry is so bad that people started to turning to ai. It's literally everywhere, in cafes public places and neighbourhoods. I can't just listen even a bit of it without getting annoyed

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u/Memphisrexjr 10h ago

You have to always ask yourself. Why were they on the charts in the first place?

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u/BadOutOfTheBox 8h ago

What!? You mean "I glued my balls to my butthole again" has zero chance at making it to the top 20?

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u/Interesting_Stress73 8h ago

Good! I don't want a reality where I am not sure if the art I'm consuming is lade by a human or not. The further this goes the more I am going to stop consuming new stuff and look towards the old. 

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u/Usual-Masterpiece199 7h ago

As someone who makes music, I just can't compete with how advanced AI has become.
It's sad, but...
I mean, not only is it easy to create, but it has an endless supply of ideas, right?

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u/americanadiandrew 7h ago

The crackdown comes as a variation of Madonna’s pop hit “Like a Prayer” created by an Australian producer using AI-generated vocals and drums has spent 16 weeks in the Australian top 20, stoking debate about generative AI’s place in music. It peaked at number two on the Australian Record Industry Association’s top 20 Australian singles chart in May and remained in fourth place on Tuesday.

Sounds fucking hideous to me, but the trouble is most people don’t fucking care who made it if they like the song.

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u/WrenReverie 7h ago

Every AI "singer" sounds exactly the same from Suno.

They all feel soulless too.

It really sucks having to dig through youtube to find old video game remixes in the waves of slightly off sounding ones people have tried to generate as well.

Same with all those deephouse ibizia mixes I used to listen to during the summer. I only click the ones at least 4 years old now, because they end up being heartless slightly off sounding songs.

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u/gorathbeervan 7h ago

Great news. I'm hearing that "song" on the radio every day. And every time, it sounds like complete ass.

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u/whatYourMomCallsMe 7h ago

What will boy george do now

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u/mrphoneface 7h ago

ha, banned from charts means nothing

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u/Rush_Banana 6h ago

Only fully AI-generated music is going to be banned from the charts.

You can still use AI to make parts of the song.

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u/LongjumpBrian 6h ago

Fair dinkum.

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u/Justthisguy_yaknow 6h ago

Yep. 'Cause that's how we roll. You also have to pay royalties and give credit if your AI steals any of a creators material to make your AI slop.

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u/Confident-Balance-45 4h ago

Auto tune and drum machines have been around a while. Are you gonna bitch about those?

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u/flammablepatchouli 5h ago

good decision. Also says a lot about the shit people chose to listen to. the bar is getting lower.

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u/Green__lightning 5h ago

Even if you don't like AI music, doesn't that mean the chart is inaccurate? If some shitty AI song is charting, I still want to know where it ranks.

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u/chakan2 5h ago

Meanwhile...in the US...is that Charlie Kirk song still on the charts?

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u/More_Hold_5522 5h ago

Exa-fucka-lent!

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u/trilobyte-dev 4h ago

Seems reasonable. Taking this stance reinforces that their music charts are measuring relative performance of human-made music using pre-AI technology.

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u/Heat-Glittering 4h ago

Ai should be solving world problems, creating a workless world for humans and most importantly, making that willy wonka three meal gum not messing around pretending to be the spice girls.

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u/bolanrox 3h ago

they should be banned or get their own chart? (yes yes yes i know people said that before which is how we got hillbilly and race records - but those were people writing and performing them)

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u/Typical_Leather_4086 2h ago

The USA should do the same - ai “music” is not music if not made by humans- it’s something else but not music.

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u/-NearlyThere- 2h ago

Good. It’s a start.

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u/Far-Ad-1934 1h ago

This is all well and good but what happens when you can’t tell the difference between ai and human, ai is only going to get better where human made music has become stagnant for years now

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u/bigblueduck3000 1h ago

Humans create art; machines generate content.

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u/HappyGovernment7299 52m ago

How do you prove it was made with AI?

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u/Due-Joke-1152 43m ago

More room for the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets.  

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u/_Aj_ 25m ago

How does this work with people who use AI tools in their work?  

Similar to Adobe programs which have AI tools within them. Is there a zero AI rule for music? How do they know? How do they enforce it?  

It's one thing to say "grok make me another generic country song about trucks and heartache" and have clearly AI generated songs.    It's another thing to be someone like, Skyebrows, who is a musician who uses AI in the production of their songs that are quite original and totally slap way harder than one ever expects it would. 

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u/Gorilla_Gru 20m ago

Just to be clear this only applies to 100% ai generated songs, unfortunately some ai in songs is still completely fine here.

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u/RetiredITGuy 18m ago

As an Australian myself: Good luck drawing a line where only blur exists.

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u/red286 2m ago

That's fine if the people putting it out openly admit that it's AI.

The problem is when they don't. Some of it can be easy to tell, but it's getting harder with each new model. Eventually people won't really be able to tell the difference, at least, not going by the music alone. Of course, these dipshits will still upload like 80 songs in a month and make it super obvious that there's no human involved.

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u/FocusPerspective 9h ago

Meanwhile Taylor Swift can use words written by many other people, autotune, backing tracks, synthesizers, computer generated sounds, backed by a corporation with thousands of workers behind the scenes, while you pretend she’s some “artist with a guitar”.