Music x AI Commentary & Update | CULTUR:ED

It’s come to my attention how I’ve been producing & learning for years now, talked to several creatives & musicians along the way and still haven’t met a single person who actually gives a fuck about what’s actually going on in terms of use for services such as Spotify let alone staying updated or caring to stay updated in general outside of talking with me.

This is a big topic to me because it’s the sole group of things that made my dreams switch from “musician” to “full time artist”.

The closest I’ve come to a person who’s somewhat tuned in is a friend who actually wanted me to continue talking about this.

Never really them doing their own research, so it’s also a nice little sign how you probably need to be a probing little piece of shit like me to actually spend your time on this Earth doing research, reading, writing and sharing.

So, I’ll give you the whole point as short as possible:

There’s roughly 50.000 AI songs uploaded to Spotify EVERY DAY. This is Spotify only. And rules have changed benefiting AI mostly.

This is the beginning of an era where there seems to be no protecting music, just efforts in compromising with AI which unfortunately goes for so many jobs. Right now, humans seem to be revolting against these things, with those reaching from silent displeasure to law suits.

Talking about the distributors is a whole other piece and if you’re interested to hear more about those company by company try the YouTube content about those made by Top Music Attorney.

Companies like Suno seem to be leading this issue. There’s multiple and as we say often when something feels accusatory - we’re not about it. This isn’t a place for that type of conversation.

But it’s clearly a place where you can read a bit on something important which is written to you the way it is.

What do you think we at officialnycto.com are about when we write that the US musicians union is suing UMG, alleging the member recordings were licensed to Suno & audio without compensation or credit?

We tell you quite literally not to give a fuck. Mind your business. Sometimes it’s shit quite literally much bigger than you. Also, we tell you you should probably know what’s going on in general and that’s it.

A lot of streaming platforms have made it clear that if you’re doing music as a human there’s a new type of nature so assimilate or don’t.

Might sound weird because of, for example Spotify’s efforts in removing AI music as well but it seems impossible to be fair, for now.

Granted, these streaming platforms might be pushing the narrative of if you can’t beat them join them. Who can blame it?

This might sound crazy to some and completely neutral to others but it did something crucial to anyone uploading human music:

You’re officially at a disadvantage unless you figure out your way to go. Or unless your goal is global and high charting reach.

Someone might benefit from making talking TikTok’s, going on live & making YouTube videos as well and all that randomly,

Others might need to find an agency,

Third might need to start performing live, developing the image locally and ground up - you get it.

That still sounds pretty much the same as it once was. Except you never really had such a disadvantage & the necessity to one way or another follow trends.

Now you get your human verification badge after you pass 10.000 streams for 3 consecutive months instead of AI just being marked as AI. Or on another platform in the first place.

What about YouTube?

YouTube allowed the AI videos to reach some success before they took necessary measures, and despite YouTube joining the AI training mistake they’be at least limited the amount of AI videos in general which can still help humans.

So it’s a safer zone?

Not really.

Spotify is also changing into a platform where you can also attach the official video. It will no longer need to be seen by visiting YouTube.

Yes, Spotify is not playing and if you’re an artist on that platform for example - you’re signing up for your music being trained for AI, having to compete looking as if you’re also AI until you somehow reach your three consecutive months of ten thousand listeners as well as potentially get deleted as if you’re spamming.

What’s the solution that allows the human on the platforms to stay loving their craft & the creators of those to not feel offended or even worse, over it?

We have to accept that this might actually result in music being what it ideally is - amazing to the most talented, lucky to some who get a few thousand or something off of streams and call it a day.

Allow the people who are doing the lawsuits, spreading awareness & boycotting the platforms do what it’s theirs to do but it’s a literal fact now that if your actual goal is to gain popularity off of music you might need to reconsider how to achieve it.

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