AI-Generated Song Tops Country Music Chart (go.com) 68
Slashdot readers Tablizer and fjo3 share news that an AI-generated country song has topped the U.S. sales chart for the first time this week. ABC News reports: The new country tune, "Walk my Walk" by Breaking Rust, recently hit No. 1 on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart, reaching over 3 million streams on Spotify in less than a month. That success has garnered mixed reactions from music fans and artists alike, particularly on TikTok, where hundreds of users have posted videos addressing the tune and others discussing the music in the comments.
Billboard has acknowledged Breaking Rust is an AI act and said it is one of at least six to chart in the past few months alone. "Ultimately, this feels like an experiment to see just how far something like this can go and what happens in the future and in other disciplines of art as well," senior entertainment reporter Kelley L. Carter told ABC News. "AI artists won't require things that a real human artist will require, and once companies start considering it and looking at bottom lines, I think that's when artists should rightly be concerned about it," she added.
Billboard has acknowledged Breaking Rust is an AI act and said it is one of at least six to chart in the past few months alone. "Ultimately, this feels like an experiment to see just how far something like this can go and what happens in the future and in other disciplines of art as well," senior entertainment reporter Kelley L. Carter told ABC News. "AI artists won't require things that a real human artist will require, and once companies start considering it and looking at bottom lines, I think that's when artists should rightly be concerned about it," she added.
Yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)
How many of those 3 million streams were other AIs hoping to use the music as training input?
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mainstream country music has been pop rock with twang and even dumber lyrics (not that pop is typically profound) for decades now. Bo Burnham's country song really says it a lot better than anything else I've seen yet.
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Next, AI background music (Score:5, Informative)
Expect restaurants, bars, hotels, stores and just about anywhere there is background music to play AI generated music since it is possible to get it royalty free in many cases.
Also expect, age / gender / ethnicity detection of the customers in the store to affect the AI music played.
Waiting on 100 people dressed like Jamaican reggae fans to enter a store to see if the background music switches to reggae.
An infomercial type web page on the effect - https://retailnext.net/blog/mu... [retailnext.net]
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My late uncle used to call it Acid Country because you had to be trippin' balls to think it was country music.
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Q. What do you get when you play country music backwards?
A. You get your wife back, your truck back, your dog back, your house back, and your job back. /s
And to really ruin Country Music: Johnny Cash - Barbie Girl (Cover by There I Ruined it) Restoration [youtube.com]
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Path of Exile 2 is a boring, tedious Ruthless Souls-Lite grindfest.
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Not many. Each AI company only needs to download the song once. It's not like web content that gets hit every time a user makes a request.
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You're assuming the downloaders are well-written. But they themselves are probably AI-generated and might download the song thousands of times... just like the stupid AI scrapers were doing to my git repo until I took counter-measures.
Also, I wouldn't put it past AI song generators to artificially generate some streaming revenue... why not?
Re: Yes, but... (Score:1)
See how AI DS works, AI is stupid and can't reason, but AI is smart enough to astroturf its way to No. 1?
We knew country music lovers had poor taste (Score:5, Funny)
And now we have proof!
Re:We knew country music lovers had poor taste (Score:5, Funny)
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Like that ICE woman and her puppy?
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Mod parent funnier for a version of the joke I was looking for? But maybe more on the level of "simplest algorithm" for "song"?
Today, country music, tomorrow rap!
Now if I was an actual comic writer, then I would know the funniest punchline. Pretty sure "rap" isn't it, and "classical symphonies" is worse, but "jazz" would be going in the wrong direction. Or maybe "jazz world" would work? How about "K-pop" or, or... Dang, I seem to have run out of music genres.
(And I'm still waiting for an updated version of
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You can make rap songs on Suno. It's terrible, but it works. Then again, I find much of rap to be terrible. As for jazz, that should be pretty easy to make too, and harder to tell the good from the bad since so much jazz is just a bunch of riffing.
Going to a jazz concert tomorrow.
Bots feeding bots (Score:3)
I'd rather have AI music (Score:3)
Than a herd of vein celebrities and their followers. I need a soundtrack to my peaceful life, no more irrelevant celebrity news and drama.
Re:I'd rather have AI music (Score:5, Funny)
Than a herd of vein celebrities and their followers.
I heard the music of vein celebrities goes right to the heart for their fans.
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Some of them really get my blood flowing!
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But isn't that's what popular music is reported to be already? If only a formula can win, then an AI should be able to do it.
FWIW, my tastes are "folk music" and sometimes "filk music". That's much less a formula, but possibly only because the sample size is small.
Algorithm (Score:4, Interesting)
To what extent was it AI generated? (Score:5, Informative)
Were the lyrics generated by AI? Were they tweaked or modified by a person? Is any of the music "real" or all generated by AI? I can't seem to find specifics on any of that.
Here's a YouTube link [youtube.com] for those who don't pay for Spotify.
Song starts out kinda flat but the vocals really build at the end.
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None of the music is "real." No human talent. Here's a video from a few weeks ago where Rick Beato did just this very kind of thing as a bit of warning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] . Very interesting. The software came up with a couple of different-sounding songs. Beato didn't do anything other than the initial prompt that generated the lyrics, and then he fed that into another AI that generated the music and the vocals.
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Most people who make a living off of AI produced music probably select from multiple candidate tunes made by the bot, and tweak the ones they like with prompts, and/or editing via old-fashioned sound editors.
Thus, humans are becoming vetters and tweakers rather than direct creators.
It's best if the bot generates the music as seperate tracks for each part (instrument & voice), as that makes hand-tweaking easier.
Not quite (Score:5, Interesting)
Rick Beato explains it here. It did not top the charts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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OMG, that is one of the shittiest songs ever. The lyrics are like stream-of-consciousness from a pothead.
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Re:Not quite (Score:5, Informative)
Well it did top a chart - the Digital Download (IE purchase for $0.99) Chart, with.... 3,000 sales. As Rick says, "So it cost $3,000 to get the #1 spot."
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FooledGPT
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Indeed, someone literally bought this headline for $3000.
Coulda happened anywhere (Score:3)
We know for certain they use it in the comments, and "for you" to, you know, "curate" articles tailored magically to your specifications without you needing to do differently.
In other words use the system we provide, particularly the app, and we will take care of everythiiiiing.
So, also, the AI comments input filter flagged the whiff of criticism of The Mad King. It was mild.
So I cancelled my subscription pretty much right away.
Thanks Jeff Bezos for driving a spike into the heart of American freedom.
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Not defending WaPo generally, but the protest did get them to reverse course on the AI comment controls and filtering. The comment system still sucks but all the AI stuff has been backed out.
Basic income looking better yet? (Score:1)
Uncanny vallety crossed?
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I think spell checkers look much better.
Re: Basic income looking better yet? (Score:1)
Should I just prompt AI to write my posts?
The sound of inevitability (Score:2, Interesting)
I just listened to the track. It's really good and it doesn't surprise me that it hit the top of the charts. Normal people don't care whether something is AI-generated or not - they only care about how good it is. The pop chart will be next.
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To each his own. To me nothing sounds worse than auto-tuned -sounding country music.
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There is no country for old men... (Score:2)
The Bellamy brother and John Anderson say it well...
https://www.bing.com/videos/ri... [bing.com]
The name for this (Score:2)
Customized music is the future (Score:3)
I can envision a future where everyone has their own AI agent who will generate music they like to hear, anytime they wanted it.
And anyone can share what they like with other people, without the pesky stuff like copyright blocking them.
Similarly for novels and movies.
That will be the end of so-called "content creators" who produce junk content and make a living by creating lots of them.
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It's a skill, and if you haven't got that ability to start with then
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Meh. DJs don't even enter into it. Most people turn on spotify these days for background music. It's not a huge jump from Spotify "curating" a bunch of music to a personalized bot that pumps out a steady stream of background noise for your life's soundtrack.
Less than meets the eye (Score:2)
Music is made by musicians playing live (Score:2)
Pop music is another story.
The way it's constructed is exactly like AI would construct it.
Identify a popular trend or style, then hire a team of top professionals to copy it almost perfectly but include barely enough difference to avoid copyright lawsuits.
Then hire an attractive singer who can follow orders to be the front person. If they can't actually sing, apply autotune.
It's artless industrial product.
People will continue to make music, it's an important part of who we are.
Talentless weasels will contin
Country music audience expects certain things (Score:1)
All it proves is, like MAGA, they have no taste and are easily fooled like dumb animals.
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You;re assuming they care whether it "musician" is an AI or not. Usually they won't. Think of it as "mood music"...it's purpose is to establish or reinforce a particular mood.
Actually, it doesn't matter much whether the "musician" can feel the emotion or not...if it did jukeboxes would never have been a thing. What matters is that it establishes a particular mood in the listeners, and note that that was a plural.
Spotify (Score:2)
I can't believe people still subscribe to Spotify. Those people are the ones handing over the reins of music to pimps and bots instead of artists.
Does it actually sound like a country song ? (Score:2)
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Quit it (Score:2)
In Other Funny News... (Score:2)
No it didnâ(TM)t. (Score:1)
First of all, which chart? Not one that matters.
It topped a specific chart where you can spend a few thousand dollars to make it number one. This is a total scam. The song is garbage.
Formulaic (Score:2)
This is because most music, like movies written these days, is formulaic. It's easy to reproduce something when they have proven that almost all music these days sounds a-like.
Sadly, since the beatles have come and gone, the one things successful bands discovered, is that there is a formula to songs, and all it takes to keep hitting the charts, is to not deviate.
Sadly, this means, there's no vast creativity in music, because in order to get played, you are required to be under a certain length, as well as
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Every genre has its formula. For the boy band era, Da Vinci's Notebook satired that formula quite nicely with their song, "Title of the Song." https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Talk about low-hanging fruit (Score:2)
"She left and took the kids,
Klingons repossessed my car,
Mah dog died
And I'm down to seeds and stems again, too"
Down to Seeds and Stems, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet
Airmen
Fake Accents in Country Music (Score:2)
Not surprising that they picked "country" to do th (Score:2)
It's country music, after all. There's only one country song, anyway. They just play it at different speeds and call it a new song.