alt Hacker NewsAI music has taken over small businesses like coffee shops and restaurants. AI music drives me nuts because, to me, it still is very much deep in an uncanny valley. That said, I can't blame the businesses because they are all (dis)incentive driven.
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.
Replies
This is all about streaming platforms commandeering royalties away from artists.
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.
Why don’t they play indie alternative pop music? It’s easier than ever to create, surely there are many bands with almost no audience who would give away their music for free. The reason may be discovery, but they could band together and make a centralized platform.
For me personally, I no longer hear the difference between AI generated music and new pop-songs. Not sure what that says about me or the music industry.