Comment by autoexec
> Of course faceless artists exist if that's what you're actively seeking.
AI generated music is shoved at listeners without them ever knowing about it. Spotify has even misrepresented AI songs as real (https://holrmagazine.com/spotify-publishes-ai‑generated-song...) and has been quietly stuffing them into playlists. (https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...) so even people who did actively pick a particular artist or a particular playlist ended up unknowingly listening to AI slop.
> And like I said, people have been "just taking whatever comes next over their speakers" by listening to the radio for many, many decades.
Radio never had a daily/hourly limit on how many times you could change the station. Radio wasn't filled with AI generated music either. Every song you heard on radio was performed by an actual human. If you liked what you heard you could see the bands in concert. Even acts like milli vanilli were better than scams like The Velvet Sundown (https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/tim-boucher-velvet-sun...)
Certainly people continue to exist who like listening to music made by real bands, but increasingly people are listening to AI generated music that is anything but distinct and individual.
The music landscape and the way music is experienced is vastly different from how it was back in the days of radio and CDs and yeah, I suspect that much of this change is for the worse.
Everything good in the AI generated music getting millions of streams came from humans whose talent and creativity were used in training the AI. If real artists increasingly have trouble getting discovered and building fans because their efforts are lost in a growing sea of AI slop that will be bad for artists and there will be less good music being made for AI to take and regurgitate back at listeners. AI will increasingly have to feed off of it's own slop and its hard to imagine that being ideal for music lovers either.
> I suspect that much of this change is for the worse.
I think you're just not aware of so many things that have changed for the better. So much better.
I just can't get worked up about AI slop music. It's not taking over. It's the easiest thing in the world to avoid.
Today, new artists can get started in SoundCloud and YouTube without label gatekeepers. They're not constrained by top 40 tastes. They can communicate directly with fans. They get discovered on people's curated playlists as well as custom "radio" stations.
Music is in a better place than it's ever been before. I'm sorry you seem to only focus on small negatives, without seeing the massive positive shifts.
I get the feeling you're not actually into music yourself, and you're just talking about news reports you've read. Because if you were really engaging with artists today, I don't understand how you could be writing the things you are.