Did AI Just End Music? Ft. Rick Beato 

"This is all backwards. AI was supposed to do my chores while I enjoy doing what I like. It was not supposed to do what I like so that I can focus on the chores." - A comment I saw some time ago.

Perfect! AI can code, write music, make art while we humans only have to worry about hard labor and getting stuck in an office cubicle, slaving off our debts

Considering how low the bar is now for a no. 1 Billboard hit, it's not too surprising that AI will be able to compete.

I'm not surprised. People claim they want something new, but all they really want is a variation / derivative of something they already know and want. AI is amazing at that.

So ironic how "art" was the main subject people said that Robots would never be able to replicate. We ended up getting AI art even before commercial humanoid robots. Edit: That's some spicy comment section right there 🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶

Now Skynet will be singing 2000s R&B while murdering us

I personally think every social media app you log onto should show the option to block AI content such as images, video and music right off the bat, and people should be forced to tag all their AI creations appropriately or risk getting their accounts removed.

I quit putting my music up online for sales. I quit all social media to sell my music. When sites were requiring using my music to train their AI models, i got off those sites and pulled my music. I was training my own replacement.

As a music professional who has scored a lot of TV series that were (are) very well known, I can say that sampling technology absolutely impacted the live recording scene significantly in Los Angeles. My first two Disney series in the late 90s were with live players, anywhere from 15 to 46. By 2001 the sampling technology had progressed to the point where Disney stopped using orchestras for their TV series. Even so the technology was such that Orchestration for live players and Synthestration for samples in a MIDI studio were two different ‘arts’ or processes. That started to change when VSL came in the scene and you could, to a large extent, orchestrate for samples the way that you orchestrated for a live ensemble. Today sampling technology is so good that even when live orchestras are used in film, the samples often remain in the final mix. So the drum machine story that Rick (who is awesome) mentioned is much more complex than the simple, ‘drummers started playing like drum machines and their jobs were safe’ narrative. Having written that, I have no plans to buy a T-shirt of my favorite AI musician. The human act of creating art will always matter for the simple reason that we ourselves are not machines.

"I can't wait till computer take over all the terrible jobs so that humans can spend their time doing creative things" 'Oh, turns out the creative things are actually way easier for the computers to do. Looks like you'll have to keep the terrible jobs going'

I've tried Udio. It's impressive. I generated a few song parts in which singers sound like Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins, Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, the singer from Franz Ferdinand... The music was very close to how those bands sound too. They've definitely scanned copyrighted material.

I think an underappreciated aspect or why we enjoy music is the knowledge that a *person* achieved it. It's connecting to another person's message. A.I has taken the freedom to wonder what a musicians inspirations were without doubting it's even human at all. One of the biggest ways to communicate emotionally through the ages will no longer be supported by the industry. It's certainly freeing for people who don't know how to write music, but you're not expressing yourself if you just prompt an AI to twist other people's work. Part of a musician's journey is discovering and honing their sound, and expressing themselves with it. If you're not made for your passion, your passion will make you. If you're not passionate about your craft, your output will be low effort and soulless. All AI will do is allow those creations to drown out truly passionate artists and cut their wages.

Video game music is gonna be 99% ai generated in the future

I asked Udio to create a track in the style of Chopin and got a message saying "We do not generate artist likeness without permission, we have replaced Chopin with: romanticism, western classical music..." Then it proceeded to write something that within 2 seconds reminded me of the Nocturne Op. 62 No. 2. Incredibly impressive, but that text doesn't seem to mean a lot.

Real Intelligence = Vertical innovation: uses present and future patterns, Artificial Intelligence = Horizontal innovation: uses past patterns which results in generic outcomes Note the importance of the P in GPT, does what it says on the tin: Generative PRE trained Transformer.

Maybe as everyone gets dumbed down people that can actually play and write music will become rare but held in high regard. I was at a vinyl store yesterday and it was packed with young people…the human spirit will push back and crave for something real…

Whoa! This is a crossover I hadn’t expected.

You know, there’s something that wasn’t mentioned here that’s going to be a real issue. The judge ruled that AI art can’t be copyrighted, but you absolutely know there’s going to be artists out there who will generate an entire song with AI and re-record it themselves to get around this. Lots of major artists have song writing teams behind them.. but I can see those people getting replaced pretty quickly. I work in this industry and it’s just depressing really. Never would’ve thought I’d be questioning if my favourite artists have generated a song or wrote it themselves without any AI assistance.

Pulling sounds out of the ether is the best part of creating music! That’s real magic✨ the ai music just still feels, ick.

It will never replace the EXPERIENCE OF CREATING art. It will ALWAYS be respected and considered cool & awesome when someone or a group can actually play and perform. Actually more than ever

So as far as I can see, all these GenAI/LLM applications are for exactly one thing: getting creative work without paying an artist to do it, while also using millions of examples of actual artists' work to train the machine, also without paying them. GG.

When those companies say they want to "respect the rights of the artists", I always have to think about a line by Danny Schmidt: "And so we kill it like the buffalo, with awe and with respect". (Song: This too shall pass)

amazing to find some balanced commentary on this topic. I kinda needed that actually, been freaking out just quietly.

thank you for involving the amazingly professional Rick Beato

Whenever someone says "Now, everybody can create music / drawings / art", I shiver. It doesn't have anything to do with "creating". It's writing a prompt and clicking a button - it's basically just downloading from an infinite library.

With the endless uploading to the internet, we have uploaded our souls.

You are very much appreciated! I remember when i started with my first Amiga in the 80´s creating tracks with Pro-Tracker. IT´s insane how everything has evolved! Great Video. ;) People with commen sense and are getting rare today.

Great to hear don’t go (Dusky remix) used in the background. Such an oldschool banger. Was blasting it in my car the other day!

A band of musicians performing a live concert is nowhere near being replaced by AI. But non-performing artist already saw a sharp decline with internet and MP3s. Some musicians even started releasing albums for free as an advert and getting money from live performances only.

I am a non-professional musician for 30 years. When my brother who is a sound technician sent me a link to Udio a month ago I was blown away. It was a feeling I couldn't quite cope with - it was awe, amazement, shock and sorrow all at the same time. That's not to say I didn't enjoy immediately playing around with it and creating some crazy tracks (like a heavy metal version of a Sandra Boynton kids book, or a british space odyssey of Vogon poetry) It is very impressive and very scary.

I'm certain I share the same fears and anger as much of the creative world-community as a whole when AI is mentioned in relation to making 'art', 'literature', 'music' etc, but I'd like to put forward a more optimistic viewpoint that has recently emerged from the shadows of my darker, moodier thoughts about all of this - that it could well come to pass that human-made art of all kinds, actually INCREASES in value, depth, meaning and purposefulness, for all beings with a soul and beating heart, people who are still wanting to be moved by the myriad ways human experience and emotion can be expressed. Seeing a great painting or sculpture in a gallery, or listening to and watching musicians and dancers performing live for example, rather than on an illuminated digital screen, will draw us away from our devices and back into the real world, especially when we become aware that most of the images, words and sounds we will come to experience on our phones, tablets, VR headsets, will be AI generated. Anything AI creates will always be 'unimpressive' if you consider it has an almost godlike processing/scanning/filtering/producing/plagiarising 'ability', and especially this will become apparent when the novelty wears off. Our humanity will be our strength, because we can give artforms something AI will never be able to give - soul, mortality, experience, love. Our slow, imperfectly perfect creative labours, over many years of dedication, will always have more value.

Welcome to what visual artists been feeling for over 2 years now. But i guarantee no one actually cares about this unless or until it affects and replaces them personally. Wait until the office people start losing their jobs on mass in a year or two in every sector everywhere.

This happened FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: I played drums for ten years. I went over to my friend's place and his Son was in the basement writing a song with synth, including a separated drum machine. I told him the drum track sounded a bit too perfect, or artificial. He turned what might be called the slop knob, and that drum track sounded PERFECT, with TINY imperfections that drummers have. You could hear some 1/2 notes from the Snare Drum, hit dead center, and a few hitting slightly off center! I couldn't believe it! Like I say, that was fifteen years ago.

as an artist i was exited about this tech at first but i tried to type a chord progression and it failed to understand the concept, so its clear this isnt a tool for musicians its a tool for company's to replace us .

Good balanced discussion around this. I personally enjoy making all the small details in my tracks too much to have found AI helpful in my process, but some musicmakers are very excited about it. Rick Beato's example of Drum Machines and Drummers emulating eachother in the 80s is a great reminder that the inspiration can go both ways.

Cold Fusion and Rick Beato… here’s a collab I never expected but definitely needed

3:55 - that's not "users creating music." it's users prompting an algorithm on what music it will make for them. Big difference.

I'd like to point out one thing though... "creating" music like this feels more like "ordering" music to be created, and much less like "creating" music. And there's something to be said for actually "creating" music. I don't know if this makes sense? But yeah, when someone "creates" music like this it's like saying I "created" a printful t-shirt, when all you did was input text and clicked "order now"

One plus side is that RU-vid won't be able to censor AI music.

Interesting to see how a lot of musicians react in the exact same way as many of us visual artists did 2 years ago. We feel you. And while most of us are not ludites who "hate" technology - how could we? Many of us are using digital tools after all - it really hurts to see how some companies strip away the humanity of something like creative work. And most of the time just for pure profit motivated reasons where they do not care who gets hurt in the process.

AI will absolutely devalue and dilute real human talent and creativity. We are already being inundated with AI art to the point that some online image boards have very little human-created art in comparison to AI-generated pieces.

Great episode Dagogo. It's a real bummer that we were told AI would do the dishes so we could all make art, in the end AI does the art and so we can still do the dishes.

Beautiful ending ! Thanks fir your videos ! 🙏

The production sound of the song Opia is like an audio version of the optical illusion when two different photos are intertwined as vertical strips, so the viewer walking past it sees the images morph back and forth from one to the other.

Every time I see a video or read an article about AI going to dominate or take over the music industry, I literally come to tears. And I am not embarrassed to say that. 90% of my life I've been in the music industry and been in the music industry all my life. Music industry got me out of very hardship times. And if it were not because of music and me being in the music industry, I would have parted this life a long time ago. It was what kept me going in life. And now lately I have been watching as the music industry are getting more into AI music. I am afraid that within 10 to 20 years, every piece of music created will be created by someone in their apartment or basement in their moms house pressing 1 button, or a few keystrokes on a keyboard, and they release music to the masses. To the point that eventually they will win Grammy's on music they in reality did not create. I am watching the music industry crumble. I come from the disco days and of when Salt N Peppa first release their single "Push It" when I went to college, Madonna "Isla Bonita" first released. White Snake "Is This Love", Diana Ross "Upside Down", Journey "Faithfully", Starship "Sara", Foreigner "I don't want to live without you", and other artists like Phil Collins, Tears For Fears, Chaka Chan, Richard Marx, and so many others. I am watching the world k!!ll the music industry. It's bad enough that the world in 2024 is putting out nothing but garbage & noise, and most talents out there are null and void compared to the talents of the 80's. That now people have decided to make matters even worse and k!!ll the music industry with AI generated music. I am just in tears, literally in tears. 😢 Humans are literally burning the world. That is what it feels like.

This is just the very, very beginning. Anything that isn't perfect now, will be in 5-10 years. In 25 years I have no clue where society will be.

It was nice to hear the Illiac Suite mentioned. Watching this video made me think of an early attempt to generate music electronically which was less ambitious, and thus less threatening, but I had to search online to find out the name of what I was thinking of. The Triadex Muse.

AI music cannot be protected under copywrite law. That one, clear rule states that in order to qualify the piece must have been generated by a human author.

I am a lover of technology but I’m also a music producer and I had to go through a lot of years of training to learn music theory, how to use all the tools DAWs and plugins, learn composition, mixing and recording. This AI tool while it lowers the barrier of entry to people who want to create music, it also devalues the fact that for us musicians it took a tremendous amount of skill and hard work to learn to create quality music. Now almost anyone can create a song via a text prompt without having to put in the effort to learn everything it takes to create a song.

I never thought I'd see a Rick Beato and Dagogo Altriade collaboration! Especially not one on Ai and music but what a fantastic intersection of people and interests. Rick was absolutely spot on. Brilliant!!! 😉😅 I won't stop playing my little guitar 🎸😭

I really love 'Opia' , it's beautiful. I bought it on Bandcamp. Will you be putting it on Spotify? Where is the vocal sample from?

Example #1 of it messing up, at 7:00, sounded amazing to me - I’d totally listen to that

I once heard about science fiction story (probably from the time of the original Twilight Zone) of a computer asked to create the most beautiful song ever; and upon hearing it, the man was permanently enraptured, almost as if he'd fallen into a comma for the rest of his life. It's an intriguing story, which I'm thinking of more and more in these times.

one day it will replace movie, then games, then life itself

To answer Rick's question "what's the difference" : TIME. Finding samples, moving around notes etc still has to be done and reviewed, using ones talent and time, which limits the amount of songs you can put out in a week/month/year and of course the individual quality of them. AI is simply much much faster. It won't "replace" music as an art form. But it could (imo will) potentially destroy businesses of people who are creating "utility music" for a living. Commercials, movies, radio jingles.

Not surprised. 'Creating' music is literally pulling on everything we've already heard to create something 'new'. That's truer today than ever before, especially in popular music. Even human artists sound a LOT like one another. As AI gets smarter and trained, voila. When AI can play blues guitar like Eric Gales, I'll be really impressed.

that "mucking about" had soul man. the day AI makes me tear up is when it's all over, but we still have time, keep creating.

"Popular/Top Chart" music has been manufactured for decades now, AI is just another way to churn them out more efficiently. Real music will not go away because as Rick stated: people enjoy playing and creating music. For the real music lovers out there, musicians will always be found and have a place.

Making Ai Music feels like it's more about the product...while making music, in my case, is far more about the process. The process of spending time puts the soul into music. Not the artificial Music can't sound good, it's more about if you care or not. I started playing guitar not to write songs in the first place. It was all the fun, the hurt, the way to express myself, to learn, to evolve, to be pround, to have something to look back at...and now something to listen back too. I feel how I felt when I listen to old recordings, remember the painful part getting the lyrics done, finding the right sound twisting knobs. For not one of those things, Ai will matter in years when I look back on what I've created.

What ai program works with a musician instead of making a complete song based on a prompt? For example, will add a bass guitar track to a daw file?

I've been noticing a bunch of tiny channels on RU-vid doing this kind of thing. I get recommended them sometimes and they've got like 50 subscribers and 300 views.

I was an indie game developer for about three years, and in that time I learned to compose music that I thought was pretty good. After about five minutes on this website, I got it to produce a metal boss fight song with a vocalist and lyrics that seem better than anything I’ve ever written. It’s crazy that AI is coming for all these creative outlets at once.

that was a great excerpt from your beato interview. i think he is right about about all he said (only nit is i dont think it will be 10 years for some of that)

Well balanced and with clarity. Thanks.

I asked Suno to generate some Hindi songs and its insane how it knows all the finer nuances of Indian singing styles (which is a whole different beast to learn in itself) and how perfectly incorporates it into the vocals. Its scary good. 'Suno' is btw a Hindi word that translates to "listen"

Humans watch humans playing chess, despite knowing any ultra advanced chess bot will defeat grand masters. If we don't value it, it won't affect us.

Brings a whole new meaning to "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should"! It would be interesting to see how many of these "songs" have passed RU-vid's copyright bots... Also: GOOD music depends on the life experiences and how much of a polymath the composer/lyricist is - I'd love to see how close CrapGpt - sorry - ChatGpt would get to a lyrically and musically profound piece such as Nightwish's "Greatest Show on Earth" (OK I know I'm biased, but prove me wrong).

I just spent a couple hours playing with Udio, generating Black Metal, Broadway Musical songs, Doom, Uptempo Hardcore, and Ritualistic Folk... Some of it is recognisable as "a bit off", but over all this is downright scary. There is very little that "gives away" that fact that this is AI, and I'm pretty sure the music scene will be flooded with AI generated stuff in the very near future. I also found myself second guessing music I recently bought, because the voice now feels somewhat generated, and... Do I really want to start thinking about this any time I listen to music?

Disney will now replace everyone now. No one is safe. Actors, musicians, directors, and production teams.

22:06 the AI fatigue you mentioned in this bit makes me think of this episode of Star Trek Voyager with The Doctor where he explores his love of opera with this alien species the crew comes across. I think at one point the aliens think the Doctor could go further by altering his program to sing in weird directions that would take away the core of what he is. I think he refuses and the aliens make a copy of him that does what they want. does a farewell performance that's super soulful that barely gets a reaction from the aliens, but when they bring out the clone, he sings in the weird cut up all over the place version that takes away a lot and they go crazy for it. but i think it doesn't have any meaning to it or something like that. at least that's what I think happened in that episode. Season 6 Episode 13: Virtuoso is the name of the episode if you want to see what i was talking about.

great video. watched to the end. Nice to see Rick on here too 😀

There's no substitute for live performance. I only like to listen to recordings if I know who the musician is and if they are capable of performaing it live. ...in general. There are some exceptions but they tend to be variations on a theme that fits this constraint.

I just tried Udio with making specific era hardcore / metalcore songs and it nailed it. Yeah, it's over, especially because 1000s of real life bands sound similar regardless (not a diss to them, just the nature of the genres that have been ongoing for a 20 years now). No, I don't mean people won't be able to make music on their own and enjoy it. But clearly being able to have a livable income is going to be extremely difficult, more than ever. Rick Beato for example is going to be fine. He already has his wealth. The youngest Gen Z and/or maybe starting at Gen Alpha will likely never be able to make a living off their creative efforts; if those who are successful now are in few numbers, then their numbers will be fractions of it, to the point no one will think it's viable; except maybe the ultra wealthy and technocrats that own the machines, the technology and/or have the money to push their child to a spotlight. If it's 1% now out of the population, it'll be 0.1% for them, in my opinion. But people like Rick Beato, even if they act nice and cool, don't really care because they're set in life already, so are many other people. They''ll never have to struggle for food, a roof over their head or the ability to just exist regardless of what AI does because they're already on a financially secure path and have been, have had the headstart, have the money sitting around, etc. All this stuff is extremely fun and cool if you completely and utterly ignore the reality of what it takes to live in the real world....income....money. Seeing the history of mankind, you have to realize, even in Star Trek with their post-scarcity society, there was a massive world war before it.

David Cope just described AI before that phrased was ever coined. "A small program that will sit of the music data, not part of the date but can create music from the existing music data."

Udio is absolutely trained on songs, because in 2 instances I've got unmistakably characteristic singing by artists (without even naming the artist).

The problem I have with Udio is the problem is the same problem I have with all the graphical and stoyrwriting tools: all of these tools are trained on samples of music / pictures / stories that I personally don't find very good, and they additionally make slight mistakes here and there (with graphics, things like hands and body proportions, and with writing, almost everything) that require a person to correct them. It kind of feels like AI is being used to replace low and high quality labor with mid-quality labor across the board.

I've always been more into live music than recorded. I don't see how AI will ever replace the experience of being in the same room as a human putting their heart and soul into a performance.

Tbh the biggest outcome will be soulless studio music will turn into soulless AI music. Personally this won’t change what I’m specifically into much. In fact- Suno/Udio is what pushed me into making music actually. It couldn’t generate what I wanted and left much to be desired, so I realized I had to do it myself

... excellent presentation, really enjoyed your take ...

Just tried Udio with one of my poems. This is uncanily ridiculous! I have seen and used LLMs and image generation a lot before, but this absolutely blew my mind.

Voice acting in danger 💀

Didn’t expect rick beato being excited about this. AI is a job killer for the music industry

I've worked with tools with Ai. And also have tested many Ai music creation pages... The only thing I see is to go into more niche styles that the Ai is never gonna get trained for now. At the same time I've use Ai to make some playlist, but still the mind relaxation and game we get from creating art is never gonna be replaced, the curiosity of creating sound design or music is something you have or you don't. But I can see how Ai tracks , like hiphop or rnb, can help maybe singers that can't create their own beats and don't have the money to pay a "beat maker". now they can choose between many tracks easily...

Maybe it'll weed out the kind of music that's been put out for the last quarter century and return us back to when musicians actually had to write something creative and interesting.

its always an enormous whiplash to see a man as handsome as Dagogo on camera after almost 20 minutes of hearing him with his usual monotone (almost AI sounding, but soothing) narration.

6:23 that's exactly it, if you just want to have a song ready to go, then AI is an option. But most musicians enjoy the creative process just as much, if not more than having a finished song.

I believe there are, broadly speaking, a few factors here: - People who listen to music - People who hear music - Creative music made by artisans for the love of music - Music made for and by the music industry. Of course, I generalise, but conveying what I believe relies on you agreeing to, or at least understanding the four definitions above, even if you don't agree: Industry is a branch of an economy that produces a closely related set of raw materials, goods, or services. People who listen to music will immerse themselves in it. It doesn't just make them tap their feet or dance or even sing along, it stimulates their emotion. It is a passion. They often actively seek out creative innovation. By "People who hear music" I mean those who enjoy hearing music, but they have no intrinsic and fundamentally deep-seated passion for music. I believe that AI only has its roots in commercialism. AI will pander to the music industry and their goal of making music for people who hear music. Sometimes they get lucky and find creative innovation, but they don't go looking for it. It will seldom sell as well. It's too risky. To the industry, music is seen as the product. We're already seeing this, as more and more creative and talented people need to have day jobs to support their passion. Creative musicians will always want to make music for the love of it, but they will find it increasingly difficult to make a lucrative career from music. But no, AI will never end music.

Another excellent video. Thanks again.

Thanks for bringing this to light. As curators, we try to make space for independent emerging artists, although we're afraid of the future of the music landscape. Whether we like it or not, the general audience doesn't care much about independent emerging artists, they often fly under the radar. And even so-called indie artists, only the well-known ones, receive support from the audience. It's a challenging reality for artist, and it will be even more so in the future.

"And when everyone's Super. No one will be" Syndrome

Embracing change is one thing, turning an industry into chaos another. The choice between pressing a button to create and actual human creativity cannot be compared. Billboard will have a separate top 100 for AI generated songs, so how does one prove between AI song and the real one. ? AI should simple insert the song into the software and in seconds detect whether it’s AI generated or otherwise.

Name of the song please! Of you on the guitar. It’s so good!

it's so sad to think that in a few years people wont even believe i make my own music myself

Scary to see how AI is advancing in all possible ways

Tried out Suna and Udio with my own lyrics in Latvian language. Suno generates full songs but the voice is not distinct, it's raspy and as if mixed from different choir voices. Udio voices have much more distinct characteristics and often sound like a mix of identities and styles of popular Latvian singers. But sometimes Udio sings total rubbish or mangles the lyrics in weird way. When Udio sings proper words, it sounds very believable and emotional. I wish there was a tool that could expand on my own supplied melody though providing me with more detailed control over arrangement using simple descriptive commands like "make it more tense here", "make it less naive here", "use a countermelody I will whistle now" etc.

As someone who spent last 3 days using Suno after buying the sub to it. i can tell you now it's really really good! Music artist will still have a job but only if they can do something good and not just because they can create normal songs with real art behind it. I am talking about top 100 pop songs lol

That "mess up" example 1 sounds class!

This might be the first time I've ever heard someone mispronounce David Bowie's name.

Honestly not sure how I feel about this. I must comment positively on you collaborating with Rick Beato and Legal Eagle. I feel great that three of my favourite content producers, you, Rick and Devon are cross pollinating views and insights yet have to wonder, a little bit, if that you all coming together in my feeds is of my choices or due to the algorithm’s 😳 At least the result is, I love all three of you and your streams and have been following all of you for a few years so keep it comin’ 👍🙏

Fascinating. I can vouch that AI does have its utility in generating supporting and background music. 👌 I utilise these for my RU-vid Shorts, by selecting from a few music genres, and then generating a track of the perfect length. This is useful in setting the appropriate mood for the Short, without having to use copyright audio. The question is: Will people knowingly accept fully AI generated tracks as mainstream on the radio or Spotify? 🤔