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I *PRAY* this Startup Never Gets off the Ground


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Are you salivating at the bright future that will be made possible by having 10,000,000 songs a day created by AI, and streamed over Spotify and Apple Music? I'm not. But apparently, this guy is. Scroll down to the section on AI and music. And then to hear some examples of the kind of music this makes, or if you have access to a PA system and need to break a lease, check out the web page for the startup itself at Boomy.

 

Oh, I must be an elitist, who believes music should be reserved only for the elite people who learn music and train on an instrument. Wrong. I think everyone should be able to have fun with music. Use them as fun emojis, create sonic logos, trade them with your friends. I just don't want them increasing the noise-to-signal ratio on streaming media with stuff that has the "look and feel" of music. I think this would apply the equivalent of Gresham's Law to music.

 

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Boomy just launched out of beta last week, and is building accessible tools to help users not only make and edit 'instant music' on the fly using artificial intelligence, but also distribute and monetize that music directly on paid streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.

 

Of course! Monetize music is SOOOOOOOO easy. Good luck.

Músico, Productor, Ingeniero, Tecnólogo

Senior Product Manager, América Latina y Caribe - PreSonus

at Fender Musical Instruments Company

 

Instagram: guslozada

Facebook: Lozada - Música y Tecnología

 

www.guslozada.com

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Boomy just launched out of beta last week, and is building accessible tools to help users not only make and edit 'instant music' on the fly using artificial intelligence, but also distribute and monetize that music directly on paid streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.

 

Of course! Monetize music is SOOOOOOOO easy. Good luck.

 

Well said, amigo! I bet people are just lining up waiting to buy music that...isn't really music, but a collection of sounds, as chosen by a computer.

 

To be fair, though, if robots ever catch on as synthetic sex partners, these songs could provide a suitable soundtrack. Something for fans of Bladerunner 2049...

 

x1wK4r9.jpg

 

And as an aside..so good to see you back here, Gus!!!

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To be fair, though, if robots ever catch on as synthetic sex partners, these songs could provide a suitable soundtrack. Something for fans of Bladerunner 2049...

 

If robotic sex partners are as beautiful as Anna de Armas, I would be TOTALLY into that. Word. I wouldn't care about the music.

 

And as an aside..so good to see you back here, Gus!!!

 

Thanks, Sensei, It just feels like home.

Waiting for my community to wake up and start posting!

Músico, Productor, Ingeniero, Tecnólogo

Senior Product Manager, América Latina y Caribe - PreSonus

at Fender Musical Instruments Company

 

Instagram: guslozada

Facebook: Lozada - Música y Tecnología

 

www.guslozada.com

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And as an aside..so good to see you back here, Gus!!!

 

Thanks, Sensei, It just feels like home.

Waiting for my community to wake up and start posting!

 

It always takes a while for things to ramp up, especially because I assume a lot of people just bookmark KC, and haven't ventured outside its world. It's very heartening to see some new people in SSS, I just need more of them :)

 

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For a moment, I"m going to substitute Architecture for Music. Now I"m a Muso. I live in a hand-built house in the woods. But I think that 99% of people would be quite happy living in a house designed by AI. Truly most new residential buildings are 'corporate" in design (I mean no aspersion), from public housing to McMansions. AI could probably, over time, do just as well, if not better.

 

Algorithm:

What do our target customers buy today?

What are their complaints and desires for improvement?

Given the financial, technical and social constraints,

Provide the design for a 100 acre housing project.

 

Now apply that to music. Up til now IMHO computer generated music has been shamefully awful. Linear programming based on statistical likelihood of the next note being 'X" hasn"t gotten past facepalms. But AI music that I have heard is getting close to the Uncanny Valley, where it"s sort of like real music, but not really.

 

Now get an AI in 10 years. Apply the same algorithm, but targeted to the music industry.

 

Hell, I think the algorithm was used in the Brill building 70 years ago. I imagine a discussion in 1966: 'Hey guys, this LSD wave is getting big. Come up with some psychedelic tunes to cash in. Sid and Marty Croft are already working on some Saturday morning shows in the same line.'

 

So what"s going to be the earth shaking difference between a pro song writer coming up with 'My Green Tambourine ' and an AI in the future coming up with a ditty about the heart breaking transition from a quad-sexual love affair to a quint?

 

Could the future of hand-made music be like the hand-made furniture industry today?

 

 

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The reference to architecture is interesting. Certainly, architecture can be art. But, there's a huge market for architecture as "rectangular-box-that-works-and-won't-fall-down."

 

I think most people who listen to music are in search of art, not "something that makes melodies and won't make me turn it off." I could be wrong. As more people use music mostly as a soundtrack for their lives, then I can see a generic soundtrack as doing what people want.

 

But still, the idea of monetizing this on Apple Music and Spotify is beyond ludicrous. If I have access to an algorithm that spews out stuff all day long that's supposedly aligned with my interests, what benefit is there to paying to listen to stuff that's aligned with someone else's interests, and probably has no spark of inspiration anyway?

 

Until machines have experiences that can be the subject matter of music, they're at a disadvantage. Every song I write has a story of some kind or another. What is the AI story going to be? "I got a rev today, oh boy...a hundred bits were added to my brain." Music is about expression, it's a language - what is it that machines what to say? "Hey baby, calculate me all night long."

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Of course, the future needed a human to say the future doesn't need you :)

 

I went to the Boomy playlist on Spotify. I have to say, perhaps I was too hasty in my evaluation. It's worse than I thought. It sounds like the random stuff generated by those Commodore-64 programs that were popular at one point, and we all know how well they caught on.

 

The irony is that I actually am quite bullish on using AI in music. I think there's a lot of potential, but it's kind of like driving a car. A person driving a car can do some very useful things. But if you just start the car, and before getting out put a brick on the accelerator to see what happens...I don't think it will end well.

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But still, the idea of monetizing this on Apple Music and Spotify is beyond ludicrous. If I have access to an algorithm that spews out stuff all day long that's supposedly aligned with my interests, what benefit is there to paying to listen to stuff that's aligned with someone else's interests, and probably has no spark of inspiration anyway?

 

Perhaps a random thought on my part but this reminds me of our weekend trip to the lake. On the boat the captain will plug your phone in and broadcast your playlist on the stereo so I spent some time tweaking one. When it gets plugged in the captain will crank it up occasionally when she likes one of the songs but often the playlist gets turned down or muted as conversation and other events override the "listening experience". It's almost hard not to take it personally since you'd spent time "crafting" the perfect playlist. Then at other times while other's playlists are going there will be songs you just wish where over. Music listening is such a subjective thing.

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The advantage of having record companies distribute music in the old style is that no record company wanted to become known as the one that consistently released crap. And by crap I don't mean like (going with The Archies theme) "Sugar Sugar", but just random junk that does not even have the artistic merit of a bowl of confectioners sugar. Being able to use AI-branded technology to generate musical noises and then use web to deliver these widely will not actually create better music for people to hear, and will not help nurture the creation of better music. Instead it will just flood the channels most people listen to with junk, and make it difficult for good music to be found by polluting the search pool.

 

There is a parallel with traditional newspapers vs. Facebook, Twitter, and other web-based sites. Whatever the imperfections of newspapers in the past and present, their desire to not be seen as a publisher of false information was and is generally much stronger than what we see today with the web-delivered "information sources".

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The advantage of having record companies distribute music in the old style is that no record company wanted to become known as the one that consistently released crap. And by crap I don't mean like (going with The Archies theme) "Sugar Sugar", but just random junk that does not even have the artistic merit of a bowl of confectioners sugar. Being able to use AI-branded technology to generate musical noises and then use web to deliver these widely will not actually create better music for people to hear, and will not help nurture the creation of better music. Instead it will just flood the channels most people listen to with junk, and make it difficult for good music to be found by polluting the search pool.

 

We need a corollary to Gresham's Law...we can call it "Boomy's Law," which states that bad music drives out good.

 

There is a parallel with traditional newspapers vs. Facebook, Twitter, and other web-based sites. Whatever the imperfections of newspapers in the past and present, their desire to not be seen as a publisher of false information was and is generally much stronger than what we see today with the web-delivered "information sources".

 

But if it wasn't for the web, how would I have known that flesh-eating koala bears are taking over the state of Montana?

 

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