Monday's Interesting Things
It’s not that it’s AI music; it’s that no one tells you it’s AI music.
A week or so ago we got into The Velvet Sundown - a band currently with over 1.3 million listeners (just on Spotify) that finally revealed - after some sketchy back and forth - it was AI generated content.
And while there are many issues with this, issues I’ve alluded to before, including the lack of labeling from the big gun services such as Apple and Spotify, I think perhaps the biggest, or at least the most annoying is that the success of a band like this is going to now inspire the masses the release their shitty bedroom AI bands into the music landscape, creating not just more aural crap to for music fans to wade through but more dead internet slop that will have the snake eating itself to produce shittier product. It’s a self generated AI feedback loop that we will make the world stupider and less interesting. Because The Velvet Sundown was generated off 70s summer rock bands such as The Eagles, Kansas and old Tom Petty records.
What will the bands generated off The Velvet Sundown sound like?
I can’t believe the dangers of Multiplicity are going to apply to the real world, but here we are…
If you’d like to stay up to date on AI generated bands, or maybe even check out whether what you’ve been listening to is human generated or not, your best bet is to head to reddit. Here’s a decent place to start there. The box of course has been opened though, and with the success of Velvet Sundown, we will soon be covered in AI slop - and it will get harder and harder to tell and eventually reality and fiction will blend together into a seamless new version of… well I guess we should be working on a new word to define what is coming.
What else
Sorry, Baby looks to be a deep thinking movie laced with some humor to guide us through it… as many A24 movies do. I’ve read the synopsis/review and while I won’t spoilt it because maybe it shouldn’t be spoiled, this is from a first time director, making it all the more amazing:
I remember stumbling over Netflix’s Troll awhile back, putting it on a list of mine somewhere as something I wanted to watch and then promptly forgetting about it. But it looks awesome. And I guess I need to get my watching eyes on and catch up because Troll 2 is coming!
Now, we’ve got some time because Troll 2 bounces December 1, and I will surely bring it up again, but I think we should all pledge to dive into the Norwegian back country and give this movie some love:
What to Listen To
With the whole stupid Velvet Sundown shit, I am committing to digingeven deeper to find music for people to listen to. Will I be fooled by AI ever? I’m not dumb enough to suggest no, but I will at least promise not to offer it up without labeling it, or go out of my way to find it.
Robert Randolph has a new album out. That should be cause for some celebration! Pedal steel guitar work is fine art…
And if you’re looking for that 70s sound that Velvet Sundown poorly invokes, but want the real thing, why not check out the band Family?