Classifying something based on the tools used is lazy and shortsighted. 'we will now ban anything made with a synthesizer' is clearly silly. Totally their right to do it in their store. But I have a lot to say about this.. hey maybe I'll write something ☺️
I keep getting stuck on “fully AI-generated,” because I’m not sure the industry has a stable definition for that.
Is a track “AI” simply because no human sang the vocal or physically played an instrument? If so, that logic gets strange very quickly. A lot of electronic music is built from soft synths, sequencers, presets, MIDI editing, automation, sample manipulation, generative patches, drum programming, resampling, and DAW production. The producer may not be “performing” in the traditional instrumental sense, and yet nobody seriously argues that the authorship disappears. But then I look at the classifications platforms are starting to push, and they are very black and white.
Serious AI music can work in a similar production space. In my own process, we generate from noise, direct and iterate, cut fragments from many outputs, combine parts from multiple generations, layer, rearrange, edit, automate, mix, master, then maybe send parts back through the process and reshape it again. Every source fragment might technically be AI-generated, but the final record can still be the result of taste, selection, arrangement, production labor, and creative accountability.
So what exactly is being labeled? The origin of the raw audio? The lack of a human instrumental performance? The percentage of generated material? The absence of “enough” editing? Or the absence of a clearly accountable creator? If we define this too narrowly, I suspect a lot of current mainstream music would start looking uncomfortable under the same standard ... which makes the argument partly moot anyway.
I understand protecting the royalty pool from industrial catalog flooding. But blocking direct fan payments is the wrong dial. At that point the platform is benefiting from the attention captured by the music while refusing to recognize the work that went into creating it, whether that work was a simple prompt with a lucky result or a month-long production process.
To me, that disrespects a new generation of artists.
Not paying for the attention that the tracks earned is a bad business model. When you pay people based on how much time they spend on a platform interacting with your content and then section off portions of content as free it makes one wonder who they are going to cut off next. They make it seem like an anti AI stance, but it’s a cry for relevance and a way to play ads without paying the creator that kept the listener on their platform.
The issue with banning wholly-AI-generated music ... how do they know for certain that a track falls into this category? It would be nice if there was some service that an artist could submit their song to before trying to distribute it, that would tell them whether or not any given platform will accept their song and monetize it.
I understand platforms wanting to halt the influx of tracks from AI bot farms. Such tracks could eventually overburden a system. But I can envision an independent human artist spending hours, days, or even weeks on a track and it still not passing an AI check. I don't see how any attempt to measure human involvement after the track is finalized can possibly take into account what all the human did prior to finalizing the track.
If only there were a way to embed within the audio for a song some code that could track certain actions taken on that song. Then an artist could have proof of some degree of human involvement for a track. Any track without such a code could be submitted to the AI detectors. It would be nice if such a code could survive stem separation. I don't know... It would take brighter minds than mine to come up with a system like that, but I'm sure there are plenty bright minds out there that could work on this if it might be useful.
Classifying something based on the tools used is lazy and shortsighted. 'we will now ban anything made with a synthesizer' is clearly silly. Totally their right to do it in their store. But I have a lot to say about this.. hey maybe I'll write something ☺️
I keep getting stuck on “fully AI-generated,” because I’m not sure the industry has a stable definition for that.
Is a track “AI” simply because no human sang the vocal or physically played an instrument? If so, that logic gets strange very quickly. A lot of electronic music is built from soft synths, sequencers, presets, MIDI editing, automation, sample manipulation, generative patches, drum programming, resampling, and DAW production. The producer may not be “performing” in the traditional instrumental sense, and yet nobody seriously argues that the authorship disappears. But then I look at the classifications platforms are starting to push, and they are very black and white.
Serious AI music can work in a similar production space. In my own process, we generate from noise, direct and iterate, cut fragments from many outputs, combine parts from multiple generations, layer, rearrange, edit, automate, mix, master, then maybe send parts back through the process and reshape it again. Every source fragment might technically be AI-generated, but the final record can still be the result of taste, selection, arrangement, production labor, and creative accountability.
So what exactly is being labeled? The origin of the raw audio? The lack of a human instrumental performance? The percentage of generated material? The absence of “enough” editing? Or the absence of a clearly accountable creator? If we define this too narrowly, I suspect a lot of current mainstream music would start looking uncomfortable under the same standard ... which makes the argument partly moot anyway.
I understand protecting the royalty pool from industrial catalog flooding. But blocking direct fan payments is the wrong dial. At that point the platform is benefiting from the attention captured by the music while refusing to recognize the work that went into creating it, whether that work was a simple prompt with a lucky result or a month-long production process.
To me, that disrespects a new generation of artists.
Not paying for the attention that the tracks earned is a bad business model. When you pay people based on how much time they spend on a platform interacting with your content and then section off portions of content as free it makes one wonder who they are going to cut off next. They make it seem like an anti AI stance, but it’s a cry for relevance and a way to play ads without paying the creator that kept the listener on their platform.
The issue with banning wholly-AI-generated music ... how do they know for certain that a track falls into this category? It would be nice if there was some service that an artist could submit their song to before trying to distribute it, that would tell them whether or not any given platform will accept their song and monetize it.
I understand platforms wanting to halt the influx of tracks from AI bot farms. Such tracks could eventually overburden a system. But I can envision an independent human artist spending hours, days, or even weeks on a track and it still not passing an AI check. I don't see how any attempt to measure human involvement after the track is finalized can possibly take into account what all the human did prior to finalizing the track.
If only there were a way to embed within the audio for a song some code that could track certain actions taken on that song. Then an artist could have proof of some degree of human involvement for a track. Any track without such a code could be submitted to the AI detectors. It would be nice if such a code could survive stem separation. I don't know... It would take brighter minds than mine to come up with a system like that, but I'm sure there are plenty bright minds out there that could work on this if it might be useful.