Is that the name of a band?
I've been sharing a lot of music on the usual corporate social media platforms lately, and though most people who open an email and click play don't comment, those who are commenting are doing so more than usual, and it's all over the map.
It's all very complicated, and to a huge degree, I feel like we're mostly talking past each other. There are a lot of different things that can be very contradictory, and very true, all at the same time. Understanding this is key to making any sense of the world around us. (Marx and Lao Tzu both thought so, too, among others.)
According to my recent internet queries, about half of the adult population of the US has used a modern AI chatbot like ChatGPT. Among those who have used one, most now use them regularly. The other half of the population has never used one.
Among musicians and certain music enthusiasts, the AI technology of great interest are the musical equivalents of ChatGPT, such as Suno. Among musicians, depending on how you measure these things, a majority are making use of AI music-generation platforms these days. But among the general population, only around 1% have used such platforms.
The vast majority of people who listen to music do so via a music streaming platform. Spotify is the most popular of them, in the US and most other countries. Among young people, the vast majority uses Spotify on a weekly basis. Or they end up on the platform, the way older people end up clicking on a Facebook Event link even if they otherwise may have nothing to do with Facebook.
Spotify led the way in lowering payouts to artists so they could offer their services for free (with ads), and in so doing they destroyed the livelihoods of millions of musicians who had been largely dependent on CD and download sales. Then, in becoming the dominant streaming platform globally, Spotify became one of the more significant sources of income for many musicians who survived this transition.
For most people who are looking for work or still employed, using AI platforms is now part of the gig, it's required that you be proficient in these things.
While monopolistic corporations like Spotify and data-scraping AI platforms like ChatGPT and Suno are upending most professions dramatically, very much including all of those related to music, and while these platforms have all sorts of other negative things associated with them such as energy use in the case of AI, and Spotify running ICE recruitment ads (along with most other major US media platforms), AI as well as Spotify have also made themselves essential to the work and the social lives of an absolutely massive portion of global society.
This is true, even while the dust has by no means settled with regards to the lawsuits and campaigns involved with artists and authors and others trying to have a say in how or if our work is used to train these Large Language Models and music-generation platforms. The lawsuits and boycotts continue, and it also continues to be the case that AI is transforming most industries drastically, and in the process making itself completely essential for anyone trying to remain employed.
It's also amazing technology.
OK, now I'll try to make all of these somewhat disparate thoughts work together somehow. I'll start with a story.
I had long been lamenting the lack of live music at protests these days. While traveling in Australia several months ago my singing partner and I sang at some protests, but we attended others that had no music at all in the program, a phenomenon we've grown sadly accustomed to.
But then I noticed, there in Australia, an odd phenomenon developing. It's one that I then would see replicated elsewhere, particularly at Palestine solidarity events, such as a couple months ago in Milwaukee.
Maybe you've been to protests like this and you've run across what I'm talking about. That is, bands that sound as formulaically Nashville as they can get, with extremely high production values, sounding like a song that just came out of the hottest recording studio with the tightest band of session musicians doing exactly as they're told, and where the singer is singing stuff about the suffering of Palestinians, in a way that just seems a bit completely bizarre.
What the hell is going on here, I wondered. The response from one of the wonderful folks going around Australia and blasting music and speeches everywhere with a Palestine flag as a cape was he was using Suno to make these songs. My guess is he put the lyrics in there and gave Suno a one-word command like "country-western."
Sometime after returning home from that tour and having time for random activities again, I got a Suno account and started playing with it.
Playing with it for just a little while, it was obvious both that this would be the end of whatever was left of the music industry as it once existed, and that this technology was mind-blowingly amazing.
These are obviously two very contradictory truths. The music industry was already a shell of its former self due to the rise of free streaming platforms that hardly pay royalties, compared to how it used to be with terrestrial radio, CD sales, and even downloads. But this technology would be it.
As with the way these technologies are upending the rest of every other profession, it's never been clearer that technological progress, such as it is, can't be allowed to just destabilize everything like this all the time, with people expected somehow to manage to find work and pay rent under these circumstances. Can it?
I don't know what the answer to this vitally important question might be, but what's obvious is the tech is here, it's being widely used and more so by the day, it's objectively profoundly amazing, and the idea of not using it is like sticking to wax cylinders now that everyone else is using 78s.
In some ways it's not at all surprising that the first time I was exposed to this technology was at a Palestine solidarity event.
Back in the early days of the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO film unit was trying to make English-language videos that might get out there in the US and Europe and other parts of the world where public opinion regarding developments in the Middle East might make a difference.
There were (and are) many musicians singing in Arabic that everyone in the region loved, but the PLO film unit was trying to reach the English speakers, so they had a Palestinian woman singing a song in English, which I have noticed half a century later is a song still circulating in English-language Palestine solidarity circles.
Today at Palestine solidarity rallies run by Arabic-speakers, you'll commonly hear Arabic-language songs about the Palestinian struggle, sung by popular artists from the region.
You'll also increasingly hear the kinds of songs I was hearing in Australia and Milwaukee, written by people who are using technology to try to bridge the gap between their Arab selves and the wider English-speaking world. Are they all fans of country-western music? I don't know. I suspect they realize this is a popular form of music in the US and Australia, which it is, and they want to communicate using a popular art form with people who speak English.
The high production values of the songs recorded with these platforms works brilliantly in the protest setting, with a clarity of sound that cuts through, in the way that not long ago only an expensive studio recording with professional engineers and session musicians might approach.
As what we might call a "real" artist, the kind of music I have been able to elicit from Suno far exceeds what I have heard at these protests, I will humbly submit. The best prompt engineers for creating music are naturally going to be the "real" musicians, just as the best prompt engineers for creating visual art are going to be "real" artists, and the best prompt engineers for vibe-coding apps are going to be the "real" programmers, etc.
Say you're writing powerful lyrics and setting them to great music that sounds really great, too. Should you not release these songs, because your band was AI? Just because you can write and record a great song every day with this technology, does that mean the songs aren't as good anymore? Do these songs serve the people, in the way songs can do, any less than other songs might?
With Spotify the argument goes the same way. Spotify achieved its dominant position through paying artists very little and still losing money at it for many years, wiping out so much of the competition in the process, and making the surviving competition lower their payouts and offer ad-supported versions of their product in order to compete.
But now that Spotify plays the role of the virtual living room for hundreds of millions of regular users, should artists stop using it? If we take our material off of the platform, will that do anything aside from cause us to lose a lot of fans and money?
All the arguments against Spotify that I'm familiar with are correct, and I make them often myself. We can make the same kinds of arguments against General Motors, but that doesn't mean Ford is all that much better. We need a different system altogether, in so many ways, very much including for Spotify and ChatGPT, but we're way past the stage of effectively being able to boycott such dominant platforms. Or at least, if an artist does so, all that happens is they lose audience and lose money. Almost all the ones that leave for one reason or another end up soon returning because of these reasons.
What I want is to win the hearts and minds of the people out there who speak my language. English is a big language, but a lot of people out there aren't into the styles of music I usually play. With AI music generation platforms I can make some very powerful music with a much broader array of stylistic variation than I would normally be capable of without much greater effort, and the involvement of many other musicians.
I want to win those hearts and minds on the platforms that are available to me. Spotify is the biggest of them, and the one whose algorithms most effectively introduce my music to new listeners, at the rate of thousands every month. For whatever reason(s), on the US-based platforms my music gets much less traction than on this Stockholm-based streaming giant.
It's not surprising that with all that's going on, people have lots of opinions to share about AI and about Spotify, both. As someone who is actively promoting music I've written with an AI band, and doing so on Spotify, among other places, I've regularly been hearing from people who are critical of me having my music on Spotify, and people who think it's awful that I'm using AI for any purpose.
For all the good reasons to criticize Spotify and AI platforms, the idea of criticizing people for using them seems a lot like criticizing people for driving their electric car on a highway. I have literally been involved with protesting the building of highways in various parts of the world. But once they're there, the idea of avoiding them in the effort of getting from point A to point B becomes a bit ridiculous. Even more so when your job depends on you driving that car on that highway, to deliver your next pizza or whatever you're doing to make ends meet.
Lots of people listening to my recent musical efforts that I'm calling the artist Ai Tsuno have been full of praise. But especially among those who don't listen out of principle, there's a lot of criticism.
It reminds me of the criticism of Milli Vanilli for being caught lip-syncing, or Taylor Swift claiming she wrote all her own songs. There are expectations people have of artists, who then try to maintain those illusions, in line with industry practice. And then the ire of the public generally doesn't go to the PR people who tell the artists how to dress, how to act, and what to say, but to the artists whose fabricated bio gets exposed in one way or another.
According to polls I've seen, most musicians are using AI, and most musicians are cagey about admitting to it publicly. It's easy to see why, for a variety of reasons.
I'll just keep erring on the side of using whatever tools are at my disposal for making great music, in the interest of reaching the most people with the kinds of songs that I think could make a difference, especially if heard widely. I'll put those songs on whichever platforms might get them out there, and that definitely includes Spotify.
I hope those people who are horrified by the billionaires and their corporate practices will continue to be horrified, and demand a world where everyone can prosper, one way or another. We all need to organize a movement capable of addressing such profound questions.
But for the time being, there are fascists taking over a bunch of different countries like this one, and they are participating in genocides in places like Gaza. If we keep burning fossil fuels it'll soon spell the end of life on Earth. I'll personally be using whatever tools are available to use to communicate about those things, and maybe some other time worry about harassing artists for using AI and putting their AI music on Spotify.
Here's my AI playlist for the next Palestine solidarity rally that has a bluetooth speaker.
