@markamericana Seems he's depending on submissions to self declare the presence of AI. I doubt that will work.
Good luck with that.
We are already so far down this road there's no going back now. It doesn't really matter if you or I think think it's acceptable.
I have no doubt that the end result will be negative for most and positive for the very few though.
What will happen in 5 years when AI does create a true masterpiece? ... and everyone agrees that it is, without question, one of the greatest songs ever written? .. and then it happens again and again? Because that's where we are going.
I can't begin to imagine what effect that will have.
As humans we often relied on each others strengths to get by and to achieve great things. Now ANYONE can do it themselves with AI help and soon AI won't need any input from us at all, it will just keep churning out incredible songs. What is that going to do to us as human beings? ... what is that going to do to the musicians we know and love?
Add that to every single area of our lives and I think it's a disaster, sorry to be so bleak but I don't see any good in this.
I think AI producers and Mixers might be first, you'll just play it a sample of an album you like the sound of and AI will produce and mix your music to something as good or better. That's where my worries are, not in the end result but the job losses and our shift in perception of other human beings, they will not be valued in the same way, their skills will become worthless. We'll become even more selfish than we are now, less sociable, less tolerant of others weaknesses and less needing of other people's skills. We won't need to work with other people who's skills differ from ours, we'll just do it ourselves with AI.... and anyone will be able do it, no talent required.
When everyone can do it, who is going to care that you can?
Not related to its impact on culture specifically and I know this is the usual high brow lllllooooonnngggg read from LRB but it's a really interesting piece on when the AI bubble is going to burst and concludes by saying the most likely place we'll end up is that
"AI turns out to be what Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor call a ‘normal technology’. It is an important invention, just as electricity or the internet are important, but it is not a radical discontinuity in the story of mankind. This is partly because computer intelligence is inherently limited and partly because of ‘bottlenecks’, human obstacles to the adoption of technology. Some things stay the same, and some change radically. Some jobs, especially entry-level white-collar jobs, are automated away. Back-end processes in logistics and suchlike become more efficient. Some forms of labour become more valuable and some less. There are breakthroughs in some fields, such as drug discovery. Other areas are largely untouched, and there are many areas in which AI is a strange combination of surprisingly useful and profoundly unreliable."
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n23/john-lanchester/king-of-cannibal-island
AI in music creation isn’t a single, uniform category. In practice, it spans a wide spectrum of approaches.
At one end, there are individuals who simply enter a prompt along the lines of: “Create a modern country song with electric guitars, a female lead vocal, big harmonies, an uptempo feel, and a catchy chorus about feeling good after a romantic encounter with the local band’s singer.” They receive a fully formed track from start to finish — sometimes impressive, sometimes less so — but fundamentally generated by the system with minimal human input.
Then there are artists who remain deeply committed to the craft itself: writing 100% of the lyrics, melodies, and music, and using AI only to imagine how their song might sound if interpreted by another performer or band. In this case, AI becomes a tool for creative exploration rather than creation.
A third group might take an AI‑generated backing track, remove the vocals, and record their own performance over it, perhaps adding further instrumentation. The result is a hybrid: part human, part machine, but still rooted in the artist’s own expression.
My sense is that Bandcamp’s ban is aimed squarely at the first category — works that are entirely computer‑generated with no meaningful human authorship. It’s difficult to see how they could reasonably extend that to the latter examples. If they did, where would the boundary lie? Would simulated strings be prohibited? Drum machines? Sample libraries? Loops? These tools have been part of music production for decades.
I think the key word is "substantial" John and yes I do think that's subjective but it's good there are companies trying to at least monitor this, Bandcamp despite its issues has been one of the better services over the years. For reasons already explained I think it's different to drum machines or sample libraries. All that said, I don't feel hugely strongly about this as an issue. I hate big tech companies in general and am just happy to see some fightback.
