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The AI apocalypse isn’t here yet. Here are some takeaways from the recent Velvet Sundown AI band controversy: the key one being that human music is still very much viable.
It’s been hard to avoid the last week or so. The Velvet Sundown, an oddly synthetic-looking band that’s currently got 1.1 million monthly listeners on Spotify, rocketed into the internet’s collective unconscious with conjecture of, is it AI or not? (Spoiler alert: it is.) Although the story, with all of its twists and turns and third-act surprise, is interesting in itself, it’s also exacerbated anxiety for many producers struggling to make ends meet in this 21st-century media hellscape. Why even continue when all of the rewards are going to bots?
Your fears are not unfounded – there’s a lot to worry about right now – but it’s also too early to throw in the towel. There were a number of things that came to light throughout this AI band discussion that are worth holding onto, especially for dance and electronic music producers. And, despite Gary Numan saying, “Ultimately, I believe (AI) will be the end of mankind,” the synthetic apocalypse isn’t here. Yet.
Bot on Bot Action: The Current State of AI Music
Before we look at the good news, let’s wade into the bad. AI bands like the Velvet Sundown are growing in popularity. If you’re unfamiliar, TVS is a synthetic entity created by a single person, most likely with Suno, which, along with Udio, is one of the most popular generative music platforms. With two albums released in the last few months and another on the way, plus no social media presence or upcoming tours, and a set of press photos that are glaringly obviously AI, the fact that people were debating whether TVS is AI at all is kind of sad.
Even sadder, though, is that the Velvet Sundown’s music – ‘70s classic rock in a vaguely psychedelic kind of way – continues to be popular on streaming sites like Apple Music and Spotify, the latter of which is actively recommending it to users.
Also sad is that TVB is not the only AI artist to hit it big. Outlaw country “singer” Aventhis has over a million monthly Spotify listeners, with The Devil Inside, another country “band,” also popular – and, like the Velvet Sundown and Aventhis, also Spotify verified, a term that has truly lost all meaning.
Lo-Fi AI
As electronic music producers, do we really need to be concerned with AI rock and country bands? Unfortunately, it’s not only guitar-style AI music out there. A recent article in Pitchfork outlines how the lo-fi community is being hit hard by AI beat slop, with bot music rising in popularity on YouTube and human-made music falling in views.
Whatever your opinion of lo-fi, the fact that it’s predominantly electronic and instrumental has made it really easy to generate with artificial intelligence. “The lack of vocals, which typically gives away robo fraudulence, make it easier to infiltrate,” says the piece’s author, Kieran Press-Reynolds. “The music’s association with aimless, unfocused listening … means people aren’t paying as much attention to what’s real and what’s not.”
It’s a lot harder to identify a downtempo instrumental beat as being synthetic than a supposed band, which is often full of odd vocal tics and unhumanlike musical passages. In electronic music, it’s that very oddness that may make it appealing. Scary stuff.
AI Music Isn’t Going Away
Unfortunately, AI music isn’t going anywhere. We’ve already opened Pandora’s box, and there’s no stuffing it back in. In a recent report released by music production technology company Sonarworks, the researchers modeled four future scenarios involving (among other things) generative AI music. In all three scenarios, AI songs remain a presence in the industry, and in all but one, AI eventually overtakes human-made output, the only difference being how quickly this happens.
The model where AI slop doesn’t win? That’s the one in which people fight back, with serious backlash, either technologically, socially, or legally, derailing the AI-generated music. “In this scenario,” the study says, “AI-generated takes a niche share in the overall industry by dominating the ‘elevator music’ category. Humans continue creating most of the commercially viable content.”
So even factoring in the best-case scenario, where AI gets relegated to background music for YouTube videos and podcasts, it looks like we’re going to have to live with it to some degree. That doesn’t mean we have to actively consume it, though. It could be that AI music exists side-by-side with human music, much in the same way that ultra-processed food does with fresh food on grocery store shelves. Lots of people eat junk food, but it’s not all that they ingest. In the same way that there are still plenty of places where you can go to get fresh, locally sourced and healthy food, we will always be able to access human music.
The New Importance of Live Music
Aside from taking money out of the pockets of hard-working musicians, AI music is particularly insidious because it masquerades as human-made. As with AI-generated pictures, movies and voices, you lose the ability to tell fact from fiction. The only way you can trust your eyes – or ears – is by seeing it performed live in person.
“In the AI era,” says the Sonarworks study, “live shows could become the central expression for human connection with the artists.” This could be in the form of completely live performances of bands or solo performers or DJs. Humans interacting with other humans will take on a whole new importance, with this authenticity factor playing a large part in music going forward. Of course, this will require a rethink of the current live music industry, with smaller, local venues likely growing in importance.
Keep it Physical, Keep it Underground
AI music can only exist because the algorithm has been trained on streaming music or MP3s. AI companies feed their hungry progeny on 100 years of music releases, with the programs learning to best mimic the music with the most examples. This is why we’re getting rock and country artists that sound fairly convincing: there’s a lot of publicly available guitar music to copy. Unfortunately for lo-fi, there’s also a lot of that on YouTube and other streaming sites
If you want to stay ahead of the algorithm, make music that’s hard to ape. AI can’t replace you if you
work in a genre that it can’t reach. Ever asked a generative music platform to make a breakcore track, or an Autechre-style beat, or footwork? It can’t do it, or at least not convincingly. It doesn’t have enough information to work with.
Another way to hold AI at bay is by keeping your music off streaming, YouTube and other free sites. Stick to Bandcamp and make everything paid, or better yet, go back to physical media. Nobody’s going to spend the time playing records for AI. If we all stick to vinyl, CD and cassette, AI will have nothing to work with. It will be a difficult transition, for sure, but isn’t it about time to rethink streaming anyway?
It’s Time to Re-Evaluate the Industry
“The oversaturation caused by AI-generated music is very real,” says Berkkan B., the manager of Lofi Records, in the Pitchfork piece. “It’s flooding the platforms, and unless streaming services implement some kind of regulation … this will inevitably dilute the presence and visibility of real artists.”
This is the crux of the matter right now. AI music is here, and it isn’t going away. Right now, though, it’s getting harder and harder to tell it apart from human-made stuff. For some casual listeners, that won’t matter. Many, though, would like to know what they’re listening to. They might even want to give their money to a streaming company that refuses AI slop outright. To go back to our food analogy, we’re shopping in the grocery store, but we can’t tell the junk food from the healthy stuff. We need regulation.
As of the time of publication of this story, the only streamer with anything approaching an anti-AI policy is Deezer. In June this year, the company launched an AI tagging system to identify synthetic music. This is a step in the right direction. Compare this to Spotify, which said it wouldn’t allow AI music on its platform in 2023 but now seems to have gone all-in, even investing in an AI military defense company.
If AI music is getting you down, divest from companies that support it. Spotify is a good place to start.
Abandon the Dead Internet
Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to the Harrison Ford original, features hardly any human characters. Most are replicants, androids that look like humans. These robots work and participate in capitalist society, keeping the economy running while most humans have gone off-world to (presumably) better environments.
Along with detecting synthetic music, Deezer also found that “up to 70% of the streams generated by fully AI-generated tracks are in fact fraudulent.” That means that non-humans are listening to music made by non-humans. It’s bots making music for bots, who recommend it to other bots and post about it on social media, where still other bots comment and argue about it. According to the dead internet theory, some reports have found that nearly half of all internet traffic in 2022 was made by non-humans. We don’t even have to wait for the year 2049; it’s already here.
There may come a time when us humans abandon the internet for a return to physical spaces, enjoying music played live by musicians and spun live by DJs far out of the reach of zombie AI. Who’s ready to live off-world?
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