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.
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.
Most radio stations only played the most blandest junk music, even from great artists. Seems they would rotate the top 3 songs even from the absolute most popular musicians. I must have heard Fear of the Dark by Iron Maiden >500 times on the rock stations in Stockholm. The Prowler? 0. Maybe some 3am DJ could play some cool songs on occasion, like you said.
There was always very little variety.
Historically radio worked because their was actually money in the advertising, but also because radio was inherently regional. You could license content at a rate that made sense for your station's reach.
Now it's trivial to broadcast over the web to a huge audience but the floor has fallen out on monetization. Podcasts and streaming both work because they don't rely on licensed content, but music can't make the jump.
Ad-supported radio eventually guarantees that only genres with desired-by-advertiser demographics exist on the radio. So it's hard to say if any curation radio was ever doing was out of love for music, or the genre, or simply to keep a certain timeslot valuable.
I will say up until about 1997 I feel things were meeting in the middle fairly well. Radio was cool up until then. In the early 90's at least where I was from there were 8 or 9 radio stations of various genres, so lots to hear.
> We're lost somewhat in quantity now and there's really nobody who's helping form and shape taste
This is what freedom looks like. But not everyone wants it. AI will be the thing to keep them happy and contained at some point and that is the prize for not caring. These same types of people would not have cared about the difference between Queen and Nickelback and probably have barely really listed to any song on the radio other than a few lyrics that resonate with them.
If ever there was a more censorious medium, I have yet to see it. Not only content dictating _what_ could be played, it dictated _how_ it could be played. This wasn't just about contemporary HipHop and vulgarity - even instrumental songs like Nick Wrays' 1958 song "Rumble" were banned from radio play.
The list of songs banned by the BBC is a fantastic read
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_banned_by_the_BB...
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.
It's probably a good thing it's hard to pull off because you'd see Taylor Swift streams going for 10 cents and aspiring artists paying you $0.0001 to listen to their work in the background.
the initial release of Discover Weekly 10 years ago gave everyone such uncanny recommendations that it was a cultural event, people were talking about it, it was written up in major newspapers. Apple Music had just released a few months before and was a serious threat to Spotify, so Discover Weekly changed the trajectory of the company.
It was also technologically interesting because it was one of the first times that a recommender system incorporated deep learning (on the actual song audio) in addition to collaborative filtering.
It was really amazing! Now instead, they are shoveling whatever garbage costs them the least. Depressing.
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?
Maybe I am out of touch but that dynamic seems fairly lost, and we only temporarily discarded the mega publisher dynamic, which seems to have returned.
Note that Barnes & Noble has been successful since its last change of ownership because the CEO cares about books, not because he’s trying to squeeze every penny possible out of it.
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.
Historically, we retrospectively recognize the seminal importance of scenes that had virtually zero participants, and rather than regretting that those scenes were so tiny and demonizing the distribution networks that served less-seminal music to the vast majority of listeners, we romanticize the marginality of those scenes.
But when we see the same thing playing out contemporaneously, with creative niche music reaching tiny numbers of listeners and not getting traction via the distribution networks that serve the vast mainstream, we treat it as a crisis.
If you want to discover new music, YouTube Music and SoundCloud seem superior.
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.
But the thing about fads: if everybody and their dog knows how to make "proper" punk, low-fi-hiphop or whatever, the result will be bland, uniform, shapeless and generic. That doesn't mean the genre stopped producing great music, it just means you will have to wade through the bland stuff to get through the gold. And few people are willing to keep doing just that.
Plus even that aside, people often crave change. No genre of music has ever remained entirely static. And all styles of music comes in and out of fashion.
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.
'ease of creation' has never been the metric by which popular media has been judged.
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.
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.
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.
(Assuming the general style of the genre is staying similar and you don't listen to specific songs you discovered but just put on some collection of songs from the genre.)
Is there new elevator music being composed all the time too?
How corporations killed stomp clap hey!
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.
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.
Schur's music does have a very catchy and upbeat vibe, I like his stuff. I guess it's possible he could have had a track featured on a TikTok video that went viral, without being aware of it.
So for him his best channel is Instagram. I noticed that he's using Insta ads, I'm getting them in my feed, but I follow him too.
If you're going to do all of this, what's the point of the algorithm?
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.
However, I only buy albums (preferably physically, will accept flac download), so they won't be getting money from me.
I guess the closest equivalent is Bandcamp where artists can still use a pay-what-you-want model
Spotify killed lofi hip hop? Lets continue use spotify but use playlists.
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
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.
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 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.
That is.. arguable
Lofi IS instrumental hip hop. Dilla was doing this in the 90s.
It comes off as someone who's ignorant of the topic they're writing about.
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
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
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
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.
Surely there are many genuine, human Lo-Fi artists, and I'd love to know who they are.
Just another example of an artist doing well for themselves still.
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.
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.
With Youtube, I feel like I am the product, and they can't wait to put "sponsored" songs into my feed.
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.
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]
For all it’s “Ai playlist promotion is bad” Spotify will only play things that someone somehow got through their editorals
My other playlists I listen to are rock and related. Lofi has utility if such a comment I saw in this thread is a way to describe it
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 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.
What I care about is all the musicians, the designers, the artists, the writers, who to be clear, are already and have been for many years struggling to earn a living plying their craft, who are in for even more torment for trying to just... live. For trying to turn their given and practiced talents into money so they can not freeze to death.
And I'm frustrated that they need to go without a means to live because billionaires, apparently, need more billions. And I'm angry that our society has allocated power solely to those billionaires to make those decisions. And I'm nursing a visceral hatred of every single one of them who are preparing to break the social contract to millions of people so they can have another, and I can't stress this enough, absolutely meaningless massive amount of money, to go with their already massive amounts of money...
For. Doing. Nothing.
So yes, I am a Luddite. I see monied classes financially backing new technology that will allow them to generate more products of lower quality using fewer (if any) human laborers so they can pocket even more money while fucking over working class people.
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.
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.
Also AGI is a floating signifier thats going to mean whatever is useful to marketers once they've used up the easier ones.
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.)
No it hasn't, the global poverty rate has been falling for 20+ years. 69% of people globally lived on <$5.50 a day in 2000, that number is down to 47% today.
You can also look at China and Vietnam, countries that have had drastic improvements to standards of living and collapsing poverty rates after abandoned communism. Or you could look at the divide between East Germany and West Germany or North Korea and South Korea. Or the economic collapse in Venezuela. The communist experiment was tried and it failed miserably.
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.
Buy music directly from the artist or on bandcamp, stop supporting Spotify if you give a shit about music
This is a really interesting quote. I definitely feel that there are analogies in other fields as well.
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.
