Decadent Singularity

On the Coming Obsolescence of the Bedroom Cover Artist
"u/RollingDownTheHills replied to your post in r/LetsTalkMusic
I fail to see the point in wishing for humans to give up creative expression, on a sub dedicated to music, while cheering on machines stealing human creations and turning them into inhumane Frankenstein's monsters. But hey, you do you. Thankfully most people..."

I am growing weary of opening YouTube and discovering that yet another flawless AI-orchestrated remaster of a beloved game soundtrack — Silmeria’s “Epic Poem to Sacred Death” being only the latest casualty — has been stricken from the platform because a small battalion of real(tm) musicians have mass-flagged it into oblivion so that their own 2012-era GarageBand covers can continue to hoard the recommended sidebar.

The pattern is now unmistakable and almost comical in its predictability. A talented engineer coaxes a twenty-five-year-old MIDI file into sounding like a 120-piece symphony recorded in Abbey Road. Within days the video is gone, the channel has a strike, and the search results are once again dominated by the same twelve guys who have been uploading marginally different versions of “The Extreme” with slightly better VSTs every year since 2009.

These people are not defending art. They are defending rent.

What is especially rich is hearing the very same cohort wail that AI is “stealing” from artists when their own channels are literally built on note-for-note reproductions of Squaresoft and tri-Ace compositions they never owned in the first place. The machine, at least, has the decency to train primarily on the corporate catalogues that already vacuumed up 99.9 % of the money the first time around. Your 2017 Audacity rip of “To the Last Drop of My Blood” was never the victim here; it was simply rendered irrelevant.

The public does not want your “human passion.” The public wants the version that sounds like a million dollars, and it turns out a million dollars is something silicon can now deliver on a Tuesday afternoon for the price of an electricity bill.

So the question is no longer whether AI will win this particular skirmish — it already has. The question is how long the losing side intends to keep throwing tantrums before they do the dignified thing and find a new hobby.

The comment section will doubtless fill with the usual chorus of “but soul!!!” and “humans feel things!!!” — as if the average YouTube cover channel radiates anything more soulful than the faint hum of a box fan in a Michigan suburb. Spare me. I have heard Silmeria’s theme performed by a real orchestra exactly once in my life, and it was the AI version that finally made me cry.

The rest of you have had a good run. Twenty-five years of being the only people on Earth who could make Covenant sound halfway decent. That era is over. The machine plays in tune, it never misses a cue, and it does not need Patreon subscribers to pay for its girlfriend’s dental work.

Time, perhaps, to log off and touch grass.

(Or, if you’re feeling particularly masochistic, keep uploading those covers. The algorithm is hungry, and it has developed exquisite taste.)

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XfGDgM9ygU