I strongly agree on labeling the generated content.
Would love for YouTube to follow suit on this
> Tidal will hold AI-generated music to a higher standard of content integrity. We will not tolerate AI-generated music that exploits an individual’s or group’s music, name or likeness, deceives listeners, or diminishes the quality of our service.
I think this is a very reasonable approach, and probably also the best way to treat AI-powered copyright infringement as a whole. Just like we don't penalize artists for consuming content unless they produce actually infringing content, we should set the same focus for AI systems.
> Starting today, AI-generated music will not be monetizable. We are only in the beginning of the era of AI-generated music.
Don't really agree that this follows from the stated principle here ("... ensuring royalties go to original works produced, written and performed by people"), but will definitely help with spam etc.
It's actually gotten better for those of us that value all sides of a given story so we can come to our own conclusions, instead of parroting stuff we hear in bubbles. I don't know anyone that's paid to engage, including myself.
Edit: Nevermind, see riddley's comment. That's what I get for being logged in, I guess?
Tl;dr. Another one bites the dust.
But "creators" pushing AI music won't tag their slop as such because they want to monetize (surprise, they're not doing it for the love of the game).
So this hinges on Tidal being able to reliably identify AI-generated music.
I think this needs more clarity. I can think of a lot of different ways AI is used in music today as a part of the song generation process and not sure whether or not this definition would apply to it. They specifically mention developments in "text-prompted generation" but if anything that confuses the issue more, for example what about training on specific music.
This isn't a comment on how expansive or narrow the definition should be, just that they need to spell it out more to allow for consistent application (to say nothing of enforcement). If someone uses ChatGPT for lyrics, but writes the instrumentals themselves, does this policy apply? I genuinely have no idea.
My Tidal "feed" is full of new releases that are clearly AI-generated. They use the same artist name as artists that I really like, but the music is clearly not from the artist as advertised.
I have no problem with AI-generated music, I just don't want someone trying to spoof the artists I am interested in.
Coming soon in 276 days from now.
Tie it to in-person concerts and it might actually work as a business, as well as logistically – maybe the company can be a record producer in disguise and physically meet every musician they host.
"art is in the eye of the beholder."
I listen to a lot of EDM, which can be very mechanical, but I personally have strong emotional connection to. I personally would welcome AI-generated music as an alternative to human-made.
To be clear: I do agree a "human-verified" system would be great, but I don't think it would be black and white. And I would guess that eventually AI music will be better than a lot of human made music.
Personally I think it’s a bit like cultural junk food: it has the appearance of real food, but leaves one hungry afterward. Which really isn’t all that surprising – music isn’t just some random collection of patterns, it’s intimately tied to real culture. Current AI software is only ever going to copy and regurgitate human culture, not make meaningful creations from scratch.
> Generative models synthesize sound mathematically. These synthesis methods leave unnatural dips, specific spectral noise profiles, or phase alignments that rarely occur in real, human-recorded audio
AKA: We will take the value, if any, AI-generated music gives, but we will not be paying royalties. This is a contradictory statement. How does the AI-generated music give value if the generated content is inherently worthless?
The music industry has stepped up its efforts globally to crack down on small businesses that play copyrighted music. They actually hire people to go into these places and spot violations.
People blame social media for the death of the monoculture but I think music rights holders have done a fair share of the damage to themselves.
The way royalties get assigned is based on a percentage of your listening versus your monthly payment.
For example, spend an entire month listening to Taylor Swift’s new album, she gets the entire royalty share.
But if you listen to the album 100 times but then listen to lofi beats 900 times, Taylor only gets 10%.
The “earnings per stream” number you’ll see cited is only an average and varies greatly because there’s only so much money to go around since your listening is unlimited.
But now you have services like Spotify that are removing real songs from “mood” playlists and replacing them with AI music that directs royalties toward Spotify.
Another factor that has happened: record labels have been working to screw over artists so much that they actually negotiated lower royalty rates with Spotify in exchange for company stock.
Giving up royalties but then instead owning a part of Spotify effectively directs money away artists and toward the labels.
This would then become something similar to how legal tech where a license is required to practice law relies on a few lawyers sitting as a gate after the AI
I know professional musicians that will use AI models like Suno as an aid to their tracks - mostly where they'd previously use samples or program things themselves. In these cases, where the track may be x% AI and (1-x)% Human performance, where x is very small, I think monetization or even copyright shouldn't be too difficult.
But I also know people that use tools like Suno for everything, where every single aspect of the song: Lyrics, music, production is all done by AI tools. They basically just prompt some style and vibe they want, and will upload the result. In these cases, I don't think monetization or copyright should be possible.
Then again, it is difficult to know how much AI someone used to generate their tracks, so I'm not sure how this could be enforced. I also know people that are earning very good money off their (entirely) Suno-generated tracks.
Take away the attraction to the grifters and you reduce the issue.
Of course this does not eliminate the problem of the streaming platforms tolertating AI generated work so that they do not need to pay as much out for your subscription fee.
Personally, if there were a decent Spotify alternative that had a zero tolerance to gen AI policy, I'd switch without a second thought.
> AI music generation tools are changing how music is created and distributed. As this technology evolves, Tidal is introducing platform standards to protect artists, their craft, and inform listeners.
> Here are the highlights of our new AI Policy:
> - Tidal will identify and tag AI-generated music in our app. Listeners will see an "AI" badge next to music we detect as wholly AI-generated.
> - Tidal will not tolerate AI-generated music that impersonates an artist or group, or that facilitates fraudulent activity. We're implementing automatic tools to remove these releases immediately and on an ongoing basis.
> - Tidal will not allow music that is 100% AI-generated to be monetized. No royalties will go to such releases, nor will AI-generated uploads be eligible for direct-to-fan sales.
> - We will expand these policies to music that is substantially AI-generated when AI detection technology is sufficiently reliable to do so.
> You'll start seeing these changes from July 15.
> Check out the full policy here. To learn more, please visit our FAQ.
> For the music,
> The Tidal Team
All in all seems reasonable. There's definitely been a wave of cheap slop flooding Tidal's library lately and removing the incentives for it seems like the exact correct approach to stemming that tide.
The only thing worrying to me is the use of “AI detection technology”; that stuff is notorious for both false positives and false negatives, and it seems to only be getting worse as AI is getting better at hiding its “tells”. As long as there's an appeals process with a human in the loop it should work out fine.
I'm also curious about how they'll define “substantially AI-generated”, i.e. where they'll draw that line. Human vocals over an AI backing track? AI vocals over a human backing track? All human performers, but using instruments with AI-generated sounds?
X is not a meritocracy of ideas, either.
1. A different bubble is still a bubble.
2. Regardless of political leanings, paying for engagement is a really bad sign.
> I don't know anyone that's paid to engage, including myself.
So? You don't have to know anyone being paid for it to be happening. The people who are really motivated by that are often poor by western standards and living on the other side of the world from you.
Facebook also pays for engagement, and what that's lead to is stuff like AI-generated shrimp Jesus and fake "I made this" memes, created by guys in India that don't even know English and don't own a computer. They throw crap at the wall from their cell phones to see what sticks, then do more of that.
IIRC the same thing happens for politics. Just the other day I read that a lot of popular "Alberta separatist" accounts are run by people who don't even live in Canada. They just use AI and shamelessly copy posts made by other accounts.
Accounts pushing white supremacy, the reversion of women's rights, hatred towards other on the basis of their race or religion, climate change denial, skepticism f science and promotion of pseudoscience, etc etc. are heavily promoted across the platform and get millions of engagements.
If you create a new account, the majority of the accounts you are shown and suggested to follow will be those pushing the above.
Let them do, if they like to listen, whom are you to say their tastes are bad ?
A synthesizer is not AI.
Furthermore, it is an oracle built on copyright infringement.
Do you understand the difference between "tool" and "oracle"?
Electronic music is probably my favorite genre, broadly. But there’s a human behind the machine, not a random collection of patterns. To use a concrete example: NIN is about 1000% more interesting because of who Trent Reznor is, and not because it’s merely good music.
This disconnect is much more of an issue with say, country or bluegrass or jazz. To divorce those from the musician and their cultural context is to miss the whole point.
Doesn’t matter how carefully crafted it was: it’s only real if you couldn’t hit “play”. Sorry, Mike Oldfield. Hate to break it to you that you’re a fake musician.
I agree with you. I do enjoy some live musicians jamming on a stage, but for a lot of the genres I frequently listen to, I’d have no way of knowing if a song was written by human or by AI. If it’s good, it’s good.
Don't give ticketmaster any ideas.
The very act of recognizing some difference is the tool with which the next generation of outputs is refined, until it's so "good" for any and all particular instances of "good" that human perception is insufficient to differentiate the source.
At some point we're going to have to admit that the distinction based on source is a problem, and perhaps there's a lot of nuance in the context of any particular piece of media such that an arbitrary dismissal of a song, or image, or piece of writing, for the mere reason that AI was used to produce it in whole or in part is missing the point.
If you enjoy a song, your enjoyment is real. If you appreciate beauty, your perception of beauty is real. If you feel deeply about a written text, your feelings are real.
How you perceive things, while not entirely conscious, does involve elements of choice. Make the choice to judge things on meaningful merit, and if the next generation of musicians and artists use AI tools to explore new territory, don't dismiss their art and passion and creations out of hand.
An electric guitar is artificial. People used to make the same sorts of "that's not music" statements people are making now about music and art. Imagine being so twisted up over some arbitrary distinction that you miss out on Jimi Hendrix or BB King, or Joe Satriani, or any of the brilliant musicians that have wrung beauty and soul from "artificial" electronic signals.
That seems pretty uncommon to me, for most people. The most popular musicians in the world are basically celebrity characters, with the music as a key ingredient, not the only one. Do Taylor Swift fans or Kanye fans or [musician] fans just listen to the music and not follow the person? Pretty unlikely IMO.
I also think it’s an entirely false equivalence to say using electronic instruments are like AI music tools. Very different things – an electric guitar doesn’t play music by itself. It’s still a tool at the end of the day.
throw_m239339•55m ago