AI Music Cannot Replace the Joy of Making Music
Mikey Shulman, CEO of AI music generation startup Suno, actually thinks people don’t enjoy making music anymore. “It’s not really enjoyable to make music now,” according to him.
I have been pointing out for many years now that humans have been making music together ever since they could bang rocks together and grunt. Every single society in the history of humankind does this.
But a strange thing happened in North America in the early 1900s. People started listening to recorded music, deferring to professionals instead of making music themselves. People started to become embarrassed if they weren't perfect, and you started hearing people say, "I can't sing". And then they didn't sing.
I was at an international gathering, and people from different organizations started singing their countries traditional songs to each other. The Germans did. The Danes did. The Brits did. When it came to the Canadians, we had no idea what to do, because none of us were used to making music.
My feeling is that the decline in making music together, whether it be around a kitchen table, in a bar, or in a concert hall, is one of the reasons that people in North America especially feel isolated and lonely.
That's why I encourage everyone to join a choir, pick up an instrument, and just make music no matter how little it sounds like what you hear on a CD or radio (or Spotify). It's not the quality of the music that matters, it's the action of collaborating with others to do it.
Actually, yeah, you highlight a very important point
Were effectively ceding parts of our humanities to commercialization/capitalism, and then subconsciously not allowing ourselves to participate in those things anymore, eroding our humanness
Regarding your second paragraph: I think about that so much these days.
You didn't miss once with this take.
It’s not really enjoyable to make music now
LOL reminds me of when american ISPs were trying to convince everyone, anyone that "we don't provide gigabit internet across the board because americans don't want it"
The fun part of being an artist isn't in having made something.
It's a mistake non-arists often make.
The fun part is the exploration and the discovery. The willing of something new into existence. The learning and experiencing.
You make for yourself first, not an audience.
These techbros are not artists. That's why they think you should just jump to the end product.
As a tech geek and an artist (writer), I wholeheartedly agree. This is purely for the benefit of investors, not the craft.
For me the fun part is the frisson I get from a moving piece of music. Playing music and just listening to it are completely different.
It's part of a more anti-intellectual movement in the United States, where the arts and humanities are frequently dismissed as "useless" because these people fail to understand that introspection, the creation of culture and the understanding of ourselves is in itself just as fundamental to human happiness and a fulfilling existence as the economy they're so hellbent on defending.
Dude has never made a banger in his life and he announced it to everyone with that statement.
I love making music. Isn’t any good? Honestly, probably not, but I enjoy making it more than I enjoy listening to my creations. I like the process. It makes me feel like I’m communicating with the music actively compared to the passivity of listening.
And yet, there is more music created than ever before…
I’d love to know what his sources are as I have never heard anyone say that
Anyone who doesn't enjoy music shouldn't be making music.
And anyone who thinks that it's impossible to enjoy making music should have nothing to do with any sort of music business. In an ideal world, anyway.
Capitalism, everyone!
I saw a react to this interview. This guy is so out of touch with any actual reality. He probably had trouble playing a g chord on his dad’s guitar in middle school, got laughed at and decided to make sure musicians would die out. Fuck this guy.
I had my life ruined by my former psychiatrist and I didn't go out there to replace psychiatrics as a career. This company is a fucking dumpster waiting to catch fire.
The problem is the masses probably don't care how it's made. Think the chicken nugget display Jamie Oliver did to a bunch of kids. He tried to show them how disgusting it was, but the kids all wanted them anyway.
Photography didn't stop anyone from painting.
People, AI isn't going to make any creative process less possible. It adds new stuff. Some of it's stupid. Most stuff is. But this one idiot grifter isn't about to ban guitars or whatever, as he makes mouth noises in the shape of "give me one billion dollars." Just do your thing.
But if you want to fake a Liverpool accent and sound just like John Lennon, neural networks can probably do that.
And if you have two distant genres and mind and want to hear their exact midpoint, neural networks can probably do that.
And if you want notes that imply "Never Gonna Give You Up," but won't get your Youtube video flagged for a brief gag, well, neural networks can probably do that.
This will of course be used to make assholes rich. Most stuff is. But the tech is not the problem, here. We taught computers to make music and they're alarmingly flexible about it. That's inherently cool. You can ignore the dipshits who insist it means human beings have nothing left to say.