The AI Effect: A New Era in Music and Its Unintended Consequences

I think that another effect of this is that a minority of people will value small local bands playing live even more. It’s the human connection that will matter. They’ll be the people who care.

I did a gig on Sunday in London. In a venue with 100 people. There was 3 bands, all great. The 100 people were happy, they were smiling, some were emotional. We had great conversations with the audience afterwards, we shared drinks. I spent 45 minutes with music student nerding about my drumming. We sold CD's (Fucking CD's!!!!!!) and books about the record we just released because people wanted to support us. AI will NEVER replace that. Never.

Universal could fracture the streaming services by pulling their content, Spotify could generate their own artists, etc etc. The truly sad part is that none of it has anything to do with music and music making.

I love and admire the way talented HUMAN BEINGS put words together in a song, poem, or book that connects me to them because my journey is reflected in their works. I can't imagine a computer resonating with me in that way.

I’m not a pro musician, I play guitar in a cover band, mainly rock, classic metal. I have to admit that the possible future scenario that this new technology may cause scares me. I’m quite frustrated by the idea that hours and hours of practice, dedication, passion may be overwhelmed by a machine… On the other side I still believe it’s worth keeping on investing my time in such a brain stimulating activity as music. Playing an instrument it’s much more than just producing a sequence of notes. Playing in a band, the confrontation with other musicians is a very powerful way to became a better human being.

Two weeks ago Boris Elgadsen won the Sony world photography award for a piece titled The Electrician. He forfeited the award because the work was AI generated and submitted it to prove the competition couldn't deal with art made by that means.

End of the day... we have gone through a cycle of so much processing on vocals that the AI versions are competitive. Time for organic vocals to be considered a positive thing.

The fact that current artists like Drake have been heavily processing their voices through Auto-tune and everything else that makes them sound like a computer has come back to bite them in the ass. It's made it REALLY easy to clone their voices through these AI programs.

I'm really hoping this will be an ultimate win for the artists who are fantastic live and whose fans like to see live, raw, imperfect, and human music.

It's all about the ''Human Connection''. As a singer/songwriter myself, just listening to all of what Rick's talking about and projecting it in a very near future is just heartbreaking and gut-wrenching. He is so right when he talks about the evolution of technology in the music production. I remember recording on a 4 track Tascam cassette tape back 30 years ago and then digital devices swept the whole analog realm in just a couple of years. Just like the AI revolution or more precisely an evolution on a whole different level because AI was already helping out with VST instruments and DAWs like Cubase or Protools for example 20 years back. When it comes to AI in music, it'll be there to stay and I have no clue how far it'll go and what the music business is gonna look like, but I know that a whole bunch of people will like it, will care at certain levels and won't at other levels. I'm old school on all of this when it come to music whether I compose music and write songs or listen and experience the music of other artists. One thing I know, I will encourage and stay true to my core values, and I will prefer buying real music made by real artists, real human voices and real songwriting even though I have to admit that even nowadays sometimes it's be hard to know how much ''real'' there is in the end product I hear. Just like Elton John was saying in an interview a couple years back on what advice he had for the new generation of artists and the whole streaming thing and how to make money and live off from your music, he said ''It's really becoming insane and a lot of young emerging artists go viral or get on billboard charts with only one song and they get high on that but it's so fleeting. If you want to last in this business especially now, do live concerts and keep on doing it more than ever before. You can't copy a concert ticket or download a live gig experience.'' To me, the one fundamental thing about this whole AI Sh** is that it cannot reproduce in any way shape or form the ''human connection''. We long for human connection naturally in every aspect of life. With the help of humans programming AI, it could maybe get to a certain level of ''understanding'' and display a sort of ''Autotuned Empathy''. Nowadays, the concept of empathy is so popular with growing narcissistic societies. But the concept of sympathy is fading out or isn't the trend right now and this IS the ultimate level, let's say, where AI could not reach cause if you ask your friends or anybody around you what is the difference between empathy and sympathy, don't be surprised of the answers you hear. Lyrics in a song can bring you to a place of understanding or getting the big picture behind the meaning of the song. A sort of empathy arises, a comprehension of the storytelling. But music on the other hand, will ''enhance'' or color and bring the lyrics, the story to that level of beauty like sugar-coating and make you discover flavours you had not expected or experienced before. Only this song has that taste let’s say. It's a sad song because of the lyrics obviously but the music shows you the degree of sadness of that song. Music is on the level of sympathy while lyrics sides more with empathy. Empathy is like putting yourself in the shoes of someone and getting a certain idea or concept of what that person is going through. Just like in the medicine field, they teach doctors about empathy instead of sympathy with their patients because they say it could be harmful for the doctor if he bonded and had this friendly or human connection and transfer with a patient dying of cancer for example. AI would be the best ones to prevent sympathy and really stick to empathy. But a doctor, an artist, a music fan, all of them are human beings with emotions first. We can't separate that from us. Sympathy is not trying to understand what this person is going through right now and trying to help or find solutions for the person's burden. Sympathy is sharing that burden, taking half of it let's say so that the person can have a better chance at getting back up on its feet. Sympathy is suffering with the person and doing something about it. Empathy is easier or less demanding because it's more on a level of understanding how big the burden is and sending flowers and prayers for a quick recovery! Lyrics can bring you to tears or make you feel any types of emotions but music is that extended part where you will reach another level of a song. Sometimes we experience music and cry, or we feel something so strong inside of us and if a person asks you why this song has that effect on you, you can't give a precise answer as to why that particular song strikes a cord in you and you'll end up saying well maybe it's the chord progression or the sounding of a certain instrument, a melody beautifully intertwined with the harmony and lyrics on top of it or it reminds me of a certain period of my life even though the lyrics are not related to that period... It's just the music...they're landmarks. I don't think that AI will reach that level of emotional intelligence. Just my humble opinion. ✌

Honestly if we're gonna be living in a world where actual musicians with emotion, passion, talent and hard work are replaced by something artificial with no meaning, and people even accept that, I won't want to live in it.

This was one of the best Beato-AI videos yet. I can hardly tell the difference!

I could imagine this bringing more meaning to a band performing live right in front of you, because it’s completely certified REAL

This is one of the most fascinating videos you have ever made Rick. Crazy times we’re living in

This Ai is distorting our sense of what’s real and what’s not. And you can’t even tell what’s different. It’s hella dangerous.

So far there's one interesting use case. HYBE LABELS (Korean) used their artist's ai voice to create 1 song in 6 languages. song is called Masquerade by MIDNATT. Maybe it's a no brainer to come up with that usecase for them since Korean music scene always puts effort in making their songs reach a wider audience, whether by adding more English lyrics to their Korean songs, or making Japanese or English versions of their songs.

I'm a classical guitarist who constantly makes minor mistakes and recovers from them. My tempo may speed up or slow down. I play brunches and stuff like that. I don't get paid much, but I am a human being giving you pleasant music and you can watch me do it. I show up with a classical guitar, a coat and tie, a notebook, and nothing else.

R.E.M. said it best: “It’s the end of the world as we know it... and I feel fine”. Happy to have lived through the 80’s and 90’s and enjoyed so much real music.

Great video. It’ll even affect live music as AI plugins will simply change the tonality of a singers voice on the fly. I agree that people will probably always want to feel the awe that comes with experiencing real talent and will look for ways to differentiate between real voice and AI voice. Interesting times.

I actually love going to jazz gigs because of the improvisation and to see a group make musical conversation...I don't really see that go away...however...with AI popular music is gonna be challenged even more. Maybe improvisational music in popular music will become bigger again?