I've seen my fair share of musical innovations over the decades. I grew up in a time when record players and 8 track tapes were the norm (the first time). I saw the peak of the cassette tape and the introduction of the compact disc. I was a kid when synth music gained popularity and a young man in college when MP3's flipped the music world on its head.
Throw MIDI in there somewhere and the ability to import the sounds from your instruments into a computer, and it's not too surprising everything went digital. I saw the height and subsequent lock down of the music trading scene, I witnessed the advent of streaming music and the resurgence of vinyl records, and I have seen dozens of live shows.
With everything that has happened, it's almost hard to believe that we could go anywhere new from here. Just when you think you have hit that wall and there is nowhere else to go, something comes along and flips things upside down.
A few weeks ago I wrote a post for #threetunetuesday sponsored by @ablaze highlighting a few artists who I thought were legit new artists only to find out they were actually AI generated songs. I was pretty embarrassed, but I couldn't help but appreciate how good the songs sounded. If you remember that post and you listened to any of them, I think you will agree. A couple people didn't like this song or that song, but for the most part people were quite impressed.
Vowing not to be hoodwinked like that again, I continued my music listening routine.
Then this song came along...
There is something about soul music that just gets to me. I love a really low sultry soulful voice whether it is a man or a woman. If I am listening to Spotify and suddenly something like that comes along I am going to immediately pay attention.
That's exactly what happened when "Let's Chase The Sun" came on the other day. This artist named Luna Sole suddenly getting added to my favorites in that platform, and then the subsequent search to find out more about her so I could write this post.
Only to find out that there is practically no information about her out there. This is the blurb from Spotify:
Along with the fact the person in the photo looks a lot like Sofia Vergara, I guess I should have known. The description is about as generic as you can get and it feels like it was written by AI. If I could copy and paste it into a AI checker, I totally would.
I think what bugs me the most about this is the fact that Spotify allows it. It's one thing for these songs to show up on places like YouTube and stuff like that, but when they get added to Spotify as a legitimate artist, that's when I think there is a bit of trickery happening.
You still can't deny whoever is singing, they have a pretty amazing voice. Likewise, before you knew it was AI (I'm 99% sure), it probably still evoked a lot of emotion. At that point, does it become fair to judge "what or who" created the music as long as there is still that emotional connection.
I can't answer that for you, and I am honestly still not sure about it myself!
Listening to three of them in a row, it's hard not to realize they are all pretty similar. If you look at a lot of music, it is quite formulaic though, so can you really fault AI for using a formula that seems to work.
"Moonlit Memories" is just another example of the algorithm doing its work. Again, I don't know for sure if this is actually AI, but it's hard not to think it isn't. As I said, it would be nice if Spotify had some kind of disclaimer or separate section for this sort of thing. It's actually impressive on some level that people are able to create this sort of things with prompts or whatever.
If nothing else, it makes me realize I need to be a lot more careful about what I believe to be real.
It's a bit scary now much those lines have blurred over the past couple of years.
What do you think? Are these a hit or a miss? Would you have known it was AI or do you think I got it totally wrong?
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