I would highly recommend that folks read Liz Pelly's Mood Machine, which is referenced here via the Harper's excerpt, not just because it shows artists' perspectives on the long tail model that tech pitched to them, but because it can be read as an indictment of the platform model that increasingly dictates how we engage with art and society at large. Pelly's account really gets to the heart of the problem: these platforms are neither neutral nor meritocracies and don't care about the content that they host. Sounds obvious, yes, but reading about the concrete consequences of this fact, namely the aesthetic flattening that results from conditioning the audience to listen to music passively, definitely got me to reexamine how I was using Spotify and consuming music in general. It really drove home the fact that some people treat art as a fungible object, and that these folks are the people deciding what music we're hearing unless we really make an effort to seek it out on our own.
Is the model profitable? For some. Good for society? Perhaps not.
EDIT: also want to concur with others here that the problem here isn't necessarily AI but how we're selecting what music we're listening to. In the book, Pelly specifically identifies channels like Chilled Cow as being part of the watering down of this genre, since they have a similar incentive to play music at as low a cost to the channel as possible versus playing the best music available to them.
The "post-radio" world is a weird one. An algorithm selecting songs for streaming audio just isn't the same as the kind of curated-for-genre/channel experience that radio used to provide. Sure songs would get overplayed, but radio also did a pretty good job of keeping that absolute tripe off the air. Good radio stations would also surface good local bands and cater to regional tastes.
As much as I love the fact that teens these days are growing up with the same songs I grew up with as a teen, I also view it as a problem. The shared cultural experience that radio generated was powerful.
We're lost somewhat in quantity now and there's really nobody who's helping form and shape taste. An algorithm might find similar songs based on musical features, but the same sounding song over and over is boring. AI just makes more boring songs because it's largely looking to replicate popular song features as well. This can be passable for purely background music meant to fill space with non-distracting sound, but is terrible for active listening.
Radio was good at mixing in variety within the confines of the genre and audience expectations. Heck, many channels use to program to support the mood during the commute and work hours, and outside of those main audience times would allow the DJs to get a little wild sometimes. Growing up the only place you could catch early EDM was on weekend late-night broadcasts on the local alt-rock station.
It's not like radio of a sort does still exist - just download the GNOME Shortwave client and you can drown in channels there. It's just not powered by the marketing that supports Spotify.
edit - I think it's interesting that the comments I'm seeing below this so far are talking about recent radio. I should have been more clear. In the U.S. markets at least Radio "died" during a great consolidation wave in the earl 2000s when Clearchannel and a few other media companies slurped up all the local channels, switched their formats and started playing consolidated playlists.
It really did used to be the case that your local station DJs were local brands, each with their own curation of songs. Some stations would even have local music festivals and were big promoters of local talent. I spent many evenings calling up the local station to request songs to be slipped into the playlist, sometimes to promote somebody I knew and get them some airtime.
> the aesthetic flattening that results from conditioning the audience to listen to music passively
I disagree with this assertion and find it cynical. The golden age of radio was a far more 'aesthetic flattening' experience. And yet we wax nostalgic about it all the time. I think there are good things that come about from less than ideal situations. Back then there were next to zero ways for your art to get noticed, but on the flip side the shared experience of having only a handful of 'hit' songs still had its merits.
These days distribution costs have all but disappeared, so the barriers to being heard are far lower than ever before. Yes greasy corps like Spotify will continue trying to take their cut from every angle possible even if it dilutes the pool, but that's nothing new. So instead of making no money and being heard by no one, bands continue making no money but people actually have a chance of discovering their music. SoundCloud, YouTube, streaming services... it has never been easier to find and listen to music.
Consequently have we ever had a time of more diverse musical tastes? I don't think so.
I understand it’s trendy these days to shit on Spotify but when I read about this practice it kind of seems like a non-story. Spotify are adding low cost tracks to their curated playlists (which are usually quite boring) to save themselves some money. If you don’t like this practice just don’t listen to their curated playlists. There are so many better user generated playlists out there.
I have gotten to the point where I only listen to music now at live performances. Expensive, yes, but streaming music has made it dull and meaningless. I went to so many great underground shows in college and music was something I could feel. Now its just noise.
I'd still like to hear how is that exactly different or worse than the old "publisher" model, where everything is gatekept by publishing megacorporations and they decided what the taste of the decade was.
And by "they", it was a few executives in those corporations - it was never a meritocracy and those people never cared about music they peddled either.
So what exactly did it change here except the fact that now we're not at a mercy of a megapublisher to actually ship tapes/CDs across the world to hear a smaller artist?
I'm so tired of this anti-Spotify crap. Artists and listeners are free not to use it, just as they are free not to use Tidal, SoundCloud, bandcamp, YouTube, etc. It's a platform and the market is free. If it's not working out for you find a different way to market yourself. It's not like top 40 or the Grammys are fair either. Art isn't a fair industry and never will be. How many amazing artists barely made a living their entire life and some person sticks a banana on a wall and walks away with 6 million.
If some producer wants to make music under 50 personas that seems perfectly within their rights. Many electronic artists do this.
Spotify made a product that people want and continue to pay for. That includes me, someone who has spent thousands, likely over 10 at this point, on physical albums and live music. Some of those artists I discovered on Spotify. Access to lesser known artists is better than it ever has been and that's thanks to platforms like Spotify regardless of what kind of shitheads are running the place.
AI seems like a scapegoat here when I think the real answer is simply that it was a tired genre that died out like many music fads over the years. (Everyone could learn how to make these with a 10 minute youtube tutorial which flooded the market, independent of AI.)
> Everyone could learn how to make these with a 10 minute youtube tutorial which flooded the market
That is a strange way to view music to me.
Just because people can make music doesn't mean others will enjoy it. It isn't really obvious to me that overwhelming the supply would decrease demand. I mean, look at any extreme pop genre.
One would assume that there are more complicated economics at play.
Spotify wouldn’t have entered the space if there weren’t listeners, and it’s not their responsibility to be some kind of garbage collector for aging genres.
The article doesn’t seem to me to scapegoat AI as much as the dual role which Spotify has being both the dominant distributor and recommendation source as well as creating their own content: even if they were paying studio musicians that would still be a major conflict of interest, just as it is when Ticketmaster/Live Nation controls band management, venues, and ticket sales or when Amazon uses their knowledge of buying habits to compete with their own sellers. We should have laws requiring separation between the delivery layer and content creation, but sadly that is not the era we live in.
I think like anything, the lineage evolves. If we're to call Madlib and Dilla 'lofi', as the wikipedia does, then we can follow that lineage to someone like Knxwledge, who just this week won a grammy for 'Why Lawd?'.
Meanwhile, you have all these people on YouTube that distill something out of that lineage and just make tons and tons of boring versions of it. As more people encounter it, divorced from it's history, the term takes on a new meaning and now the boring version is what the label means.
So I guess you could say the lineage is alive and well while the genre is boring and dead. And I agree, it's not AI's fault.
True but its clear that these systems allow this process to happen at rates orders of magnitudes larger than without it. That changes the severity of the problem and definitely turns it into something people need to intervene in.
The problem is actually Spotify was a bit of a market maker here in terms of getting access to peoples ears. AI probably hollowed out the quality of the music for all but the most dedicated listeners as someone who has listened to lo-fi for a long time. Spotify probably also boosted their own preferred content.
The article sounds part whiny and part boosting Wish on the Beat (multiple mentions of their linked playlist) - which I am supportive but also don't believe all the content in the article as a result.
> Everyone could learn how to make these with a 10 minute youtube tutorial which flooded the market, independent of AI.
I remember back in the 90's a friend who had the same critique of EDM and Daft Punk.
After all, you have to do is learn how to write and play some catchy melodies on a keyboard, learn synthesizers, samplers and sound generation, percussion patterns, and use a DAW.
Is it much easier to self produce Lo-Fi now than it would've been in 1995? Sure, but that's true of music in general. But one isn't going to be able to produce a song similar to what GameChops puts out in 10 mins, even if you are an expert.
That AI is making it hard to have a decent signal-to-noise ratio in Spotify isn't doesn't mean the genre is dead.
Lofi music is a really popular genre to listen to as background music, I wouldn't say it's a tired genre. Perhaps for creators it is, but for listeners it's not.
There seems to be a lot of anger around Spotify these days, often misplaced I reckon.
One of the biggest impediments to new artists making a living from recorded music is not the existence of Spotify and other streaming platforms, rather it's the massive and growing library of existing music, some of which is excellent.
But it's not impossible. My neighbor manages his music career himself. In 2024 he went from having 250,000 monthly Spotify listeners to 800,000. A few months ago he was able to give up his job and devote himself to music full time - he is getting decent streaming royalty checks.
If you complain that Spotify is contributing to a generic and bland listening experience then that is totally your own fault. Spotify will give you excellent and adventurous listening experiences, but you have to put in the time to 'train' your personal algorithms first, mainly by liking tracks, saving albums and playlists, and making playlists. Also: by paying attention to DJs/curators and researching dark corners of the music blogosphere, SoundCloud and Mixcloud.
I find that the Spotify algorithm is great if you ignore all of the Spotify-branded recommendation junk, and just use the 'Keep Listening/Autoplay' feature.
As in, put on a playlist, then finish it without having repeat on. I find some of my favorite music from the following tracks. It helps if you have a very varied playlist - it discourages just playing tracks from the same artists.
>you have to put in the time to 'train' your personal algorithms first, mainly by liking tracks, saving albums and playlists, and making playlists. Also: by paying attention to DJs/curators and researching dark corners of the music blogosphere, SoundCloud and Mixcloud.
If you're going to do all of this, what's the point of the algorithm?
> We can support musicians we like by adding them to our personal playlists and playing their music every day.
We can also just buy their albums like ye olden times. Buy tracks for $1.29 like ye slightly less olden times! If you have disposable income, buy albums! It's easy and also fun.
> For Japanese soundtrack producer Nujabes, the “lofi” sound wasn’t an aesthetic choice. It was an artifact of creating such forward thinking music with the dusty equipment from 20 years ago.
I trying to figure out where the author got this from? Audio hardware/software hasn't changed that much in 20 years, and Nujabes' lofi aesthetic seems intentional.
He was using old equipment such as the MPC60 and SP1200. The SP1200 in particular has a "sound" due to its 12-bit architecture. And when Nujabes was writing said music in the mid 2000s, that gear was 20ish years old. MPC60 was 1988, SP1200 was 1987.
This is due to sampling limitations in old machines. The hiphop producers would record samples from vinyl playing as fast as possible on the turn table and then pitch down in the sampler. This to get around memory restriction.
An sp-1200 can record less than a minute if i remember correctly.
The resulting sample rate reduction creates a crunchy vibe to the sound.
I was delighted to see Nujabes and Samurai Champloo cited right off the bat.
For the uninitiated, Champloo is the second anime series by Shinichirō Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop fame. Where Bebop is science fiction meets jazz, Champloo is medieval Japan meets hip hop. Weirdly under-rated IMO.
To this day I still bump into fellow Nujabes fans in the wild and it’s like having a secret handshake
Nujabes tragically died in 2010, at the age of 36.
Another Japanese producer I like who straddles "lo-fi hip-hop" (but perhaps with more classical and vocal elements) is DJ Okiwari. Here's the track "Brighter Side" which draws on the vibe of '90s uplifting progressive hip-hop / R&B - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l23qmgf51z0
I used to work in the record industy. If you want to understand how artist royalties work the seminal article on the topic was written by Steve Albini and is highly reccomended. https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music
Spotify and other streaming sites also killed mixtapes of rappers on other people's beats.
The AI generated stuff will probably be good for its intended purpose white noise with a beat to help you study but its unlikely you'll find you're next favorite artist
Lofi Girl still has an active audience. >100k for each video. GameChops has a channel as well with >5k & <100k for each video.
The Musician's story adds to the vibe. If someone can relate to the creator, it helps to create more connection with the audience than a pure algorithm. The human curated/generated animations seem more coherent...even if it's on a loop.
I like some of the new AI animations for being novel...mostly futuristic. Though this will soon become common & something new will show up.
Speaking of the artists, I keep seeing articles about Lo-Fi being AI generated, but nobody ever lists who the authentic human artists are. The folks who love the genre and are making music because they love it, not just slinging out track after track where each one is being uploaded to Spotify under multiple artist names.
Surely there are many genuine, human Lo-Fi artists, and I'd love to know who they are.
You should check out the artist "Home Alone." Their stuff has a very neatly crafted vibe. It's lofi esc maybe a bit more jazzy than you'd expect. But their album covers are great and albums are coherent.
Just another example of an artist doing well for themselves still.
Does anyone ever comply with these "As listeners we must band together" things? I couldn't care less. I like the lo-fi sound myself and put on some Nujabes while in the kitchen. It's a good time.
But whether any specific artist gets to play or not doesn't concern me that much. I've found that single artists rarely preserve the feel so much as ones in a genre.
As a long time (actual) hip-hop fan, I do find it quite hard to muster sympathy for this weirdly isolated, and perhaps disposable, genre? Kind of like, okay, how much did you try to build with the origins of the thing you're using to make new music?
Reminds me a bit of "nerdcore" hip-hop; which also made little sense because e.g. Del the Funkee Homosapien and RZA were also nerds making VERY nerdy music, but for "some reason" weren't seen as the same thing.
The same thing is happening to jazz playlists. Spotify is cramming jazz playlists with bland interpretations of standards that they paid bottom dollar to desperate conservatory students for. As a long-term jazz fan, I know what I am looking for and it ain't that. But for someone new to jazz who doesn't know exactly what they are looking for, their attention is being diverted to this slop, and they may never discover any dimension of jazz music beyond it, which is kind of sad.
I mean, I don't disagree with you, but nobody should have to compete with AI on the biggest market out there. If the genre was dying because it isn't cool anymore, whatever. If more people are listening than ever, but they're just getting AI lofi to avoid paying artists, then it's bad news.
I'd like to do a tangential mention of SomaFM, web radio that does electronic chill and mood music very well and has survived for a long time on donations.
Spotify is ardently anti-consumer and anti-artist. Their business model extracts revenue by siphoning off artist royalties through label rev-share and then compounds the issue by restricting royalty payouts. Further siphoning off revenue by loading the playlist with AI-trash is not even their worst offense. They're a company begging for an artist boycott.
Is there a website that let me auto-queue music based on what I have listened to in the past, and is not a for-profit algorithm like Youtube and Spotify?
With Youtube, I feel like I am the product, and they can't wait to put "sponsored" songs into my feed.
The only good recommendation engine is Pandora's Music Genome Project. It's the only one that auto-queues songs that sound like what you've seeded. Every other service will play you other songs from the same artist or genre, even though they sound nothing like what you've seeded. And then they pepper in other things that have nothing to do with anything - the "sponsored" crap.
It's just too damn bad that Pandora refuses to keep up with the competition and add higher quality streams. It sounds noticeably bad by comparison when using modern sound hardware. I just use them for recommendations now, so that I can curate my playlists in services that do offer high quality sound. They could easily be the only music service I pay for, but I'm not going to pay for subpar sound.
> For us listeners, it’s more important than ever to seek out real
artists.
I can understand listening to genai music as a background space filler
but music has more functions.
It is a signifier and mnemonic, and sets mood for production.
Everything on https://cybershow.uk is made in house, on the fly as
needed. We mostly use Ardour, Audacity and some weird old computer
music tools like Csound, Puredata, Supercollider for all the beds and
backings, many of which are in the old-skool, lo-fi styles because
these sit behind talk as 'beds' very nicely.
It would be easy to grab licensed tracks or use "AI" to make music,
but we don't do that. That's mainly because its better to keep control
over the feel and exactly craft everything. An example is this
poetry episode [0] where everything is cut specifically for the poem,
and this latest episode "Owned By Bots" where the grungy "crime beat"
is a main feature [1]
I do not dispute that Spotify creates "perfect fit content" tracks. What I will dispute is that, artists with generic bios and AI sounding tracks, are always Spotify tools.
I love lofi I was actually creating a few lofi tracks and doing so taught me a new style, mixing and mastering and release process. If course no money no followers but it’s the creative process. Lofi girl is about the only thing I listen to in that genre on Spotify.
For all it’s “Ai playlist promotion is bad” Spotify will only play things that someone somehow got through their editorals
I listened for 5 minutes and and was confused, as I was waiting for a track to build up to a climax, only for the track to transition to something else of a similar . It's the sort of ambient music played at a store.
AI is best stated as a tool to permit wealth to access skill without skill being permitted to access wealth.
I've been called a Luddite so many times on this website asking basic questions of how in a world where your labor is required in order for you to earn a living these entire reams of people are meant to continue living, and nobody has an answer.
I think you’re arguing against continued development of AI? (Apologies if I’ve misunderstood)
I won’t use the word “Luddite”, but your argument could be applied word-for-word to automatic looms:
“[The automatic loom] is best stated as a tool to permit wealth to access skill without skill being permitted to access wealth… how in a world where your labor is required in order for you to earn a living these entire reams of people are meant to continue living…“
Historically, automatic looms were a net benefit to society. I think this indicates that your argument against development of AI is insufficient.
I also wonder what everyone is supposed to do if skills are simply AI’d in to uselessness.
The usual answer is something about how rich people want to rule the world and not pay for labour … but then that world will become pretty unpleasant for them to live in so that doesn’t track to me.
There is this narrative that "every technological revolution eventually created jobs, and this one is no different."
I think that glosses over some critical historical facts. When the saw mill upfitted with "labor-saving" machinery, those displaced saw hands didn't necessarily "upskill" themselves to get office jobs or start waiting tables. Chronic unemployment and an early grave from drink was a pretty likely outcome.
Where AI is different is that the scale and speed of job displacement is going to be unprecedented. We will need a new operating principle for our societies, and it will have to come about quickly. Otherwise, millions of displaced workers will have no reason not to defect from the social contract.
Eventually, humans can act as a managerial class for AI agents, just as we manage existing technologies. But you have to transition to that point without blowing up society.
It's little comfort that current AI has some rough edges. Sure, current AI might be adequate as a junior graphic designer or junior software engineer. But in the process of using these AIs, the senior humans will be generating the data to train the AI to replace at least mid-level positions. This doesn't require "AGI", just that the AI can follow instructions at one level higher abstraction and critically judge its own work.
This is a subtle and uncomfortable argument to make without falling into the "class warfare" or "luddite" tropes.
Would an AGI that is “intelligent” enough to replace any kind of human labor deserve independent personhood and remuneration, or would they just be the perfect slave to capital?
Thats because there is no answer. Marx and all of the people who developed his theories after him have exhaustively and scientifically proved this. That's really whats happening: its not that people dont have an answer is that they're not admitting to the exploitative nature of private capital accumulation. The main internal contradiction of capitalism leads to the system creating large amounts of wealth but also equivalently large amounts of poverty.
Also, if you havent read the wikipedia article on the luddites you should. It's not as bad a moniker as revisionists would have you think! (Hint: they were protesting labor abuses, not simply opposed to advencement.)
I highly recommend people stop using music streaming services, they take away the control of the music listener and producers.
Bandcamp might be a different story since it has a policy it stands by (for now), provides access to the music downloads and doesn't try to artificially alter their listings, but that can soon change with the new ownership.
Spotify is a blight upon music and it would be better for our culture if it would cease to exist - I have been boycotting these vultures and culture-vampires since day one but apparently I’m a big weirdo Luddite for that.
Buy music directly from the artist or on bandcamp, stop supporting Spotify if you give a shit about music
Without Spotify and the rest of the streaming services most of the people would just pirate music. I would probably spend less on music than I do now on Spotify per year.
I think it say something about the relatively low-effort nature of this genre that it could be so easily codified and displaced by AI. The human-produced examples in the article follow simple and predictable rules and already sounded pretty artificial before the robots got involved.
Shout out to Flow State (https://www.flowstate.fm/) for their daily album recs which have served me as a nice alternative to Spotify's lofi for the past few years
Yeah, this article misses the mark.
The author definitely frames the issue of AI-generated music and stock music in Lofi Hip Hop through a Spotify-centric lens.
While they acknowledge that lofi originated and gained popularity outside of Spotify's control, particularly mentioning YouTube channels, it's BS to act like Spotify is the be-all and end-all of this (or any) genre.
Disclosure: I've never paid for a Spotify account.
The Truth: Lofi Hip Hop continues to flourish far beyond the profit-prioritized walls of Spotify's garden, a meticulously manicured space where genuine discovery is choked out by the weeds of algorithmic control.
True artistry is blossoming in the wilder, freer spaces online.
Also I really recommend Shlohmo & quickly quickly for some fresh Lofi.
For those on Youtube, check out OGDONNINJA. He has a channel of literally thousands of old-school underground boombap hip hop tracks, in their dusty and 12-bit glory.
nluken|1 year ago
Is the model profitable? For some. Good for society? Perhaps not.
EDIT: also want to concur with others here that the problem here isn't necessarily AI but how we're selecting what music we're listening to. In the book, Pelly specifically identifies channels like Chilled Cow as being part of the watering down of this genre, since they have a similar incentive to play music at as low a cost to the channel as possible versus playing the best music available to them.
bane|1 year ago
As much as I love the fact that teens these days are growing up with the same songs I grew up with as a teen, I also view it as a problem. The shared cultural experience that radio generated was powerful.
We're lost somewhat in quantity now and there's really nobody who's helping form and shape taste. An algorithm might find similar songs based on musical features, but the same sounding song over and over is boring. AI just makes more boring songs because it's largely looking to replicate popular song features as well. This can be passable for purely background music meant to fill space with non-distracting sound, but is terrible for active listening.
Radio was good at mixing in variety within the confines of the genre and audience expectations. Heck, many channels use to program to support the mood during the commute and work hours, and outside of those main audience times would allow the DJs to get a little wild sometimes. Growing up the only place you could catch early EDM was on weekend late-night broadcasts on the local alt-rock station.
It's not like radio of a sort does still exist - just download the GNOME Shortwave client and you can drown in channels there. It's just not powered by the marketing that supports Spotify.
edit - I think it's interesting that the comments I'm seeing below this so far are talking about recent radio. I should have been more clear. In the U.S. markets at least Radio "died" during a great consolidation wave in the earl 2000s when Clearchannel and a few other media companies slurped up all the local channels, switched their formats and started playing consolidated playlists.
It really did used to be the case that your local station DJs were local brands, each with their own curation of songs. Some stations would even have local music festivals and were big promoters of local talent. I spent many evenings calling up the local station to request songs to be slipped into the playlist, sometimes to promote somebody I knew and get them some airtime.
MetaWhirledPeas|1 year ago
I disagree with this assertion and find it cynical. The golden age of radio was a far more 'aesthetic flattening' experience. And yet we wax nostalgic about it all the time. I think there are good things that come about from less than ideal situations. Back then there were next to zero ways for your art to get noticed, but on the flip side the shared experience of having only a handful of 'hit' songs still had its merits.
These days distribution costs have all but disappeared, so the barriers to being heard are far lower than ever before. Yes greasy corps like Spotify will continue trying to take their cut from every angle possible even if it dilutes the pool, but that's nothing new. So instead of making no money and being heard by no one, bands continue making no money but people actually have a chance of discovering their music. SoundCloud, YouTube, streaming services... it has never been easier to find and listen to music.
Consequently have we ever had a time of more diverse musical tastes? I don't think so.
bazmattaz|1 year ago
DiscourseFan|1 year ago
izacus|1 year ago
And by "they", it was a few executives in those corporations - it was never a meritocracy and those people never cared about music they peddled either.
So what exactly did it change here except the fact that now we're not at a mercy of a megapublisher to actually ship tapes/CDs across the world to hear a smaller artist?
goosejuice|1 year ago
I'm so tired of this anti-Spotify crap. Artists and listeners are free not to use it, just as they are free not to use Tidal, SoundCloud, bandcamp, YouTube, etc. It's a platform and the market is free. If it's not working out for you find a different way to market yourself. It's not like top 40 or the Grammys are fair either. Art isn't a fair industry and never will be. How many amazing artists barely made a living their entire life and some person sticks a banana on a wall and walks away with 6 million.
If some producer wants to make music under 50 personas that seems perfectly within their rights. Many electronic artists do this.
Spotify made a product that people want and continue to pay for. That includes me, someone who has spent thousands, likely over 10 at this point, on physical albums and live music. Some of those artists I discovered on Spotify. Access to lesser known artists is better than it ever has been and that's thanks to platforms like Spotify regardless of what kind of shitheads are running the place.
qoez|1 year ago
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7|1 year ago
That is a strange way to view music to me.
Just because people can make music doesn't mean others will enjoy it. It isn't really obvious to me that overwhelming the supply would decrease demand. I mean, look at any extreme pop genre.
One would assume that there are more complicated economics at play.
acdha|1 year ago
The article doesn’t seem to me to scapegoat AI as much as the dual role which Spotify has being both the dominant distributor and recommendation source as well as creating their own content: even if they were paying studio musicians that would still be a major conflict of interest, just as it is when Ticketmaster/Live Nation controls band management, venues, and ticket sales or when Amazon uses their knowledge of buying habits to compete with their own sellers. We should have laws requiring separation between the delivery layer and content creation, but sadly that is not the era we live in.
serf|1 year ago
'ease of creation' has never been the metric by which popular media has been judged.
mtalantikite|1 year ago
Meanwhile, you have all these people on YouTube that distill something out of that lineage and just make tons and tons of boring versions of it. As more people encounter it, divorced from it's history, the term takes on a new meaning and now the boring version is what the label means.
So I guess you could say the lineage is alive and well while the genre is boring and dead. And I agree, it's not AI's fault.
ixtli|1 year ago
boringg|1 year ago
The article sounds part whiny and part boosting Wish on the Beat (multiple mentions of their linked playlist) - which I am supportive but also don't believe all the content in the article as a result.
16bytes|1 year ago
I remember back in the 90's a friend who had the same critique of EDM and Daft Punk.
After all, you have to do is learn how to write and play some catchy melodies on a keyboard, learn synthesizers, samplers and sound generation, percussion patterns, and use a DAW.
Is it much easier to self produce Lo-Fi now than it would've been in 1995? Sure, but that's true of music in general. But one isn't going to be able to produce a song similar to what GameChops puts out in 10 mins, even if you are an expert.
That AI is making it hard to have a decent signal-to-noise ratio in Spotify isn't doesn't mean the genre is dead.
hecanjog|1 year ago
spinach|1 year ago
yapyap|1 year ago
hassleblad23|1 year ago
TrackerFF|1 year ago
How corporations killed stomp clap hey!
carabiner|1 year ago
fallinditch|1 year ago
One of the biggest impediments to new artists making a living from recorded music is not the existence of Spotify and other streaming platforms, rather it's the massive and growing library of existing music, some of which is excellent.
But it's not impossible. My neighbor manages his music career himself. In 2024 he went from having 250,000 monthly Spotify listeners to 800,000. A few months ago he was able to give up his job and devote himself to music full time - he is getting decent streaming royalty checks.
If you complain that Spotify is contributing to a generic and bland listening experience then that is totally your own fault. Spotify will give you excellent and adventurous listening experiences, but you have to put in the time to 'train' your personal algorithms first, mainly by liking tracks, saving albums and playlists, and making playlists. Also: by paying attention to DJs/curators and researching dark corners of the music blogosphere, SoundCloud and Mixcloud.
ZeWaka|1 year ago
As in, put on a playlist, then finish it without having repeat on. I find some of my favorite music from the following tracks. It helps if you have a very varied playlist - it discourages just playing tracks from the same artists.
ekam|1 year ago
itsoktocry|1 year ago
If you're going to do all of this, what's the point of the algorithm?
roywiggins|1 year ago
We can also just buy their albums like ye olden times. Buy tracks for $1.29 like ye slightly less olden times! If you have disposable income, buy albums! It's easy and also fun.
jdboyd|1 year ago
However, I only buy albums (preferably physically, will accept flac download), so they won't be getting money from me.
perfmode|1 year ago
0x073|1 year ago
Spotify killed lofi hip hop? Lets continue use spotify but use playlists.
dhosek|1 year ago
eppp|1 year ago
calibas|1 year ago
I trying to figure out where the author got this from? Audio hardware/software hasn't changed that much in 20 years, and Nujabes' lofi aesthetic seems intentional.
According to Wikipedia, it originated from an effect button on Roland samplers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lofi_hip-hop
NickC25|1 year ago
He was using old equipment such as the MPC60 and SP1200. The SP1200 in particular has a "sound" due to its 12-bit architecture. And when Nujabes was writing said music in the mid 2000s, that gear was 20ish years old. MPC60 was 1988, SP1200 was 1987.
olelele|1 year ago
An sp-1200 can record less than a minute if i remember correctly.
The resulting sample rate reduction creates a crunchy vibe to the sound.
itsoktocry|1 year ago
I laughed at this too. Oh yeah, back in 2005 there was no way to get good sound from that dusty old equipment.
I mean, some of the best sounding albums of all time are 50+ years old.
999900000999|1 year ago
Lofi IS instrumental hip hop. Dilla was doing this in the 90s.
cool_dude85|1 year ago
Synaesthesia|1 year ago
rappatic|1 year ago
Eric_WVGG|1 year ago
For the uninitiated, Champloo is the second anime series by Shinichirō Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop fame. Where Bebop is science fiction meets jazz, Champloo is medieval Japan meets hip hop. Weirdly under-rated IMO.
To this day I still bump into fellow Nujabes fans in the wild and it’s like having a secret handshake
portaouflop|1 year ago
chrisweekly|1 year ago
pcthrowaway|1 year ago
Another Japanese producer I like who straddles "lo-fi hip-hop" (but perhaps with more classical and vocal elements) is DJ Okiwari. Here's the track "Brighter Side" which draws on the vibe of '90s uplifting progressive hip-hop / R&B - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l23qmgf51z0
josefritzishere|1 year ago
dvngnt_|1 year ago
The AI generated stuff will probably be good for its intended purpose white noise with a beat to help you study but its unlikely you'll find you're next favorite artist
lawgimenez|1 year ago
briantakita|1 year ago
The Musician's story adds to the vibe. If someone can relate to the creator, it helps to create more connection with the audience than a pure algorithm. The human curated/generated animations seem more coherent...even if it's on a loop.
I like some of the new AI animations for being novel...mostly futuristic. Though this will soon become common & something new will show up.
hoherd|1 year ago
Surely there are many genuine, human Lo-Fi artists, and I'd love to know who they are.
ZeroCooly|1 year ago
Just another example of an artist doing well for themselves still.
renewiltord|1 year ago
But whether any specific artist gets to play or not doesn't concern me that much. I've found that single artists rarely preserve the feel so much as ones in a genre.
Tarq0n|1 year ago
dangrape123|1 year ago
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mingus88|1 year ago
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jrm4|1 year ago
Reminds me a bit of "nerdcore" hip-hop; which also made little sense because e.g. Del the Funkee Homosapien and RZA were also nerds making VERY nerdy music, but for "some reason" weren't seen as the same thing.
midiguy|1 year ago
cool_dude85|1 year ago
cess11|1 year ago
https://somafm.com/
josefritzishere|1 year ago
izacus|1 year ago
fph|1 year ago
With Youtube, I feel like I am the product, and they can't wait to put "sponsored" songs into my feed.
stronglikedan|1 year ago
It's just too damn bad that Pandora refuses to keep up with the competition and add higher quality streams. It sounds noticeably bad by comparison when using modern sound hardware. I just use them for recommendations now, so that I can curate my playlists in services that do offer high quality sound. They could easily be the only music service I pay for, but I'm not going to pay for subpar sound.
nonrandomstring|1 year ago
I can understand listening to genai music as a background space filler but music has more functions.
It is a signifier and mnemonic, and sets mood for production.
Everything on https://cybershow.uk is made in house, on the fly as needed. We mostly use Ardour, Audacity and some weird old computer music tools like Csound, Puredata, Supercollider for all the beds and backings, many of which are in the old-skool, lo-fi styles because these sit behind talk as 'beds' very nicely.
It would be easy to grab licensed tracks or use "AI" to make music, but we don't do that. That's mainly because its better to keep control over the feel and exactly craft everything. An example is this poetry episode [0] where everything is cut specifically for the poem, and this latest episode "Owned By Bots" where the grungy "crime beat" is a main feature [1]
[0] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=13
[1] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=38
pipeline_peak|1 year ago
lanstin|1 year ago
madmountaingoat|1 year ago
quintes|1 year ago
For all it’s “Ai playlist promotion is bad” Spotify will only play things that someone somehow got through their editorals
paulpauper|1 year ago
ToucanLoucan|1 year ago
I've been called a Luddite so many times on this website asking basic questions of how in a world where your labor is required in order for you to earn a living these entire reams of people are meant to continue living, and nobody has an answer.
pinkmuffinere|1 year ago
I won’t use the word “Luddite”, but your argument could be applied word-for-word to automatic looms:
“[The automatic loom] is best stated as a tool to permit wealth to access skill without skill being permitted to access wealth… how in a world where your labor is required in order for you to earn a living these entire reams of people are meant to continue living…“
Historically, automatic looms were a net benefit to society. I think this indicates that your argument against development of AI is insufficient.
simonbarker87|1 year ago
The usual answer is something about how rich people want to rule the world and not pay for labour … but then that world will become pretty unpleasant for them to live in so that doesn’t track to me.
avidiax|1 year ago
I think that glosses over some critical historical facts. When the saw mill upfitted with "labor-saving" machinery, those displaced saw hands didn't necessarily "upskill" themselves to get office jobs or start waiting tables. Chronic unemployment and an early grave from drink was a pretty likely outcome.
Where AI is different is that the scale and speed of job displacement is going to be unprecedented. We will need a new operating principle for our societies, and it will have to come about quickly. Otherwise, millions of displaced workers will have no reason not to defect from the social contract.
Eventually, humans can act as a managerial class for AI agents, just as we manage existing technologies. But you have to transition to that point without blowing up society.
It's little comfort that current AI has some rough edges. Sure, current AI might be adequate as a junior graphic designer or junior software engineer. But in the process of using these AIs, the senior humans will be generating the data to train the AI to replace at least mid-level positions. This doesn't require "AGI", just that the AI can follow instructions at one level higher abstraction and critically judge its own work.
This is a subtle and uncomfortable argument to make without falling into the "class warfare" or "luddite" tropes.
dublinben|1 year ago
ixtli|1 year ago
Also, if you havent read the wikipedia article on the luddites you should. It's not as bad a moniker as revisionists would have you think! (Hint: they were protesting labor abuses, not simply opposed to advencement.)
trinsic2|1 year ago
Bandcamp might be a different story since it has a policy it stands by (for now), provides access to the music downloads and doesn't try to artificially alter their listings, but that can soon change with the new ownership.
portaouflop|1 year ago
Buy music directly from the artist or on bandcamp, stop supporting Spotify if you give a shit about music
mns|1 year ago
stuart78|1 year ago
localbolu|1 year ago
jmuguy|1 year ago
joshdavham|1 year ago
This is a really interesting quote. I definitely feel that there are analogies in other fields as well.
hoppp|1 year ago
tantalor|1 year ago
d3rockk|1 year ago
The Truth: Lofi Hip Hop continues to flourish far beyond the profit-prioritized walls of Spotify's garden, a meticulously manicured space where genuine discovery is choked out by the weeds of algorithmic control. True artistry is blossoming in the wilder, freer spaces online.
Also I really recommend Shlohmo & quickly quickly for some fresh Lofi.
NickC25|1 year ago
For those on Youtube, check out OGDONNINJA. He has a channel of literally thousands of old-school underground boombap hip hop tracks, in their dusty and 12-bit glory.
lyzml_AF|1 year ago
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