The Music Industry Enters Its Less-Is-More Era (bloomberg.com) 47
The music industry's long romance with an ever-expanding catalog of songs appears to be souring, as streaming platforms and rights holders confront a daily deluge that now includes 60,000 wholly AI-generated tracks uploaded to Deezer alone -- roughly 39% of the French service's daily intake, a statistic the company shared during Grammys week last month.
Streaming services now host 253 million songs, according to Luminate's most recent annual report, after adding 51 million tracks over the course of 2025 at an average pace of 106,000 uploads a day. Spotify has already responded by requiring songs to hit at least 1,000 plays in the previous 12 months to qualify for royalties, and Luminate reported that 88% of tracks received 1,000 or fewer plays in 2025.
The distribution layer is in flux too: Universal Music Group is trying to acquire Downtown Music, owner of DIY distributor CD Baby, TuneCore's head recently stepped down without a planned replacement, and DistroKid is reportedly up for sale.
Streaming services now host 253 million songs, according to Luminate's most recent annual report, after adding 51 million tracks over the course of 2025 at an average pace of 106,000 uploads a day. Spotify has already responded by requiring songs to hit at least 1,000 plays in the previous 12 months to qualify for royalties, and Luminate reported that 88% of tracks received 1,000 or fewer plays in 2025.
The distribution layer is in flux too: Universal Music Group is trying to acquire Downtown Music, owner of DIY distributor CD Baby, TuneCore's head recently stepped down without a planned replacement, and DistroKid is reportedly up for sale.
can we go back to the 60-80's and maybe the 90's a (Score:4, Interesting)
can we go back to the 60-80's and maybe the 90's and just end new music?
Re: can we go back to the 60-80's and maybe the 90 (Score:1)
Re: can we go back to the 60-80's and maybe the 90 (Score:4, Funny)
No, that's "do you really want to hurt me"
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Or perhaps "baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more"
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No. We like good music.
The United States of America just hosted arguably its largest sporting event of the year. And for the first time in decades, the halftime show featured the artist commonly known as WhoTheFuck NeverHeardOfEm.
I don’t give a shit how many clicks you have. If you can still manage to be unheard of and unliked by a significant portion of a target audience, you ain’t all that, Papi. Didn't help he also chose to sing in WhatTheFuck instead of Spanish.
One hardly has to be old to know the “music
Re: can we go back to the 60-80's and maybe the 90 (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, AC, there's your problem. The vast majority of those in the target audience knew exactly who was performing, many outside of that target were cheerfully willing to learn, and only whacked-out bigots got as upset about it as you appear to be.
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All you have to do is read the name to know he is there for fame first and art second.
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Sounds like you need a musical safe space.
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Re:can we go back to the 60-80's and maybe the 90' (Score:4, Insightful)
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I agree. The likes of Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Wagner and Dvorak just can't be beat.
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Most of this stuff I hear thumping from cars today doesn't even sound like music. The lyrics (if you want to call them that) are mostly disgusting too.
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Squeeze me, baby, till the juice runs down my leg
Squeeze me, baby, until the juice runs down my leg
The way you squeeze my lemon, ah
I'm gonna fall right out of bed
Bed, bed, bed, yeah
Oh yeah lyrics were never dirty.
'Cause she's playing all night
And the music's all right
Mama's got a squeeze box
Daddy never sleeps at night
She goes in and out and in and out and in and out and in and out
Wonder what this is about?
Ah, get on, brown sugar, how come you taste so good?
Ah, got me craving the, the brown sugar
Just like a
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Lollypop, lollypop, oh lolly, lollypop
sweeter than candy on a stick...
was about oral sex, so yeah, been quite a while.
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Les Paul and Mary Ford as well as the early Elvis were in the '50s.
Country has been holding up well since the '90s. I just found Ella Langley for instance.
Heart and Fleetwood Mac have retired, Linda Ronstadt has lost her voice, yes, the situation is dire.
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Clearly, you're OLD!
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Honestly... a lot music is really shitty...
Fixed that for you. Every genera from every decade since the beginning of music has had A LOT of shit music. There are no exceptions.
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There were some good songs in the 2000's although the decline was already well underway at that point.
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can we go back to the 60-80's and maybe the 90's and just end new music?
There's still good music being made. The problem is, it's buried under an absolute avalanche of stale, regurgitated garbage. I have the advantage of hanging out on musician forums since I dabble in music myself, and find some great stuff in the underground through those connections, but honestly I'm not sure how to point a non-musician toward an avenue of finding good new music. Youtube sometimes recommends a newer band that doesn't blow goats on the street corner as an advertisement for their general acces
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can we go back to the 60-80's and maybe the 90's and just end new music?
Fleetwood Mac's Rumors came out in 1977. That was peak. It's all been downhill since then. The Chain is the greatest song ever made, and anyone who tries to argue with this is wrong.
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can we go back to the 60-80's and maybe the 90's and just end new music?
Fleetwood Mac's Rumors came out in 1977. That was peak. It's all been downhill since then. The Chain is the greatest song ever made, and anyone who tries to argue with this is wrong.
I have some 80's music that begs to differ - Tears for Fears springs immediately to mind, although there are lots of others. As for the 70's: as much as I love Fleetwood Mac, I'd say that Pink Floyd's Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall are all better than Rumors.
I also have some 60's music, as well as other 70's music, that begs to differ. But of course, by your definition I'm wrong...
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I only listen to music from the 60s and 70s (I'm old).
They haven's made any music better than that era.
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I only listen to music from the 60s and 70s (I'm old). They haven's made any music better than that era.
That's funny - I'm in my late 60s, and I love music from the 60s all the way through to some of the stuff that's being released now.
That said, for me the 70s and 80s offer the highest 'density' of music I love.
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The Beatles were capable of producing an album over a weekend.
If they'd had the inclination (and assorted supplies best left undiscussed), they were more than capable of churning out 52 albums a year. Whilst we must be grateful for small mercies (it would likely have had an impact on quality), I would argue that the 60s were not short of new music.
What scares me (Score:5, Interesting)
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The summary says 50,000 AI slop songs per day, 39% of the total. That implies around 150,000 human generated tracks PER DAY.
I do not believe that is true.
loss of corporate control (Score:2)
It is that the corporate control cannot prevent a solo person working on their own from creating a song and making it available to the world's music listening audience.
They could control, shape and extract fees from millions of want to be star musicians every year, now the self publishing skips the gatekeeper corporations.
It doesn't mean that more artists will become wealthy. It means that a lot less music industry, music venue, music publishers, producers, etc. will have a lot less work and money to make.
T
If I wanted less I'd listen to Nina Kraviz (Score:1)
As if only AI outputs junk like a cookie factory.
Lest anyone think the problem is just AI slop (Score:5, Insightful)
The music industry has always earned the majority of its revenue from a small percentage of extremely popular acts. Part of it is that the industry is gatekept to where your music won't be promoted if you're not already well connected, and the other part of it is just human nature over what becomes popular. Some stuff clicks with the masses, and some doesn't, no matter how much money you throw at promoting it (there's plenty of examples of "manufactured" pop stars flopping). It's also a safe assumption that a lot of good music goes unheard too, because it's buried under a mountain of crap and the musician just happens to be a nobody.
That's the entertainment industry for you.
Re:Lest anyone think the problem is just AI slop (Score:4, Informative)
The business side of music has been trying to control how much new music is released ever since reproduction because easy in the early days of printed sheet music.
About 25 years ago a radio station in Melbourne had a contest where bands had to send in an album that was less than a year old and had at least 3 songs that weren't covers. Their listening area was about 3 million people and they got 3,000 entries. To me that implies that there is a band for every thousand people who is producing an album worth of music every year. That would imply there should be about 8 million new albums every year globally.
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Then suddenly one week I started getting played a lot. I had no idea why - hadn't released anything, I don't really promote...it's all just a hobby for fun. Turned out another track with the same name as mine had gone super-popular, and I was picking up the results of bad searches. (Annoyingly, it was also one of my tracks that..err...'
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There are lots and lots of talented musicians creating new music that is very, very good. I manage a small arts centre that hosts Americana, Bluegrass, and classic folk performers from across North America and the UK. Over the last 10 years they have all brought almost exclusively self-penned music and wile most has been very good some has been good enough to persuade me to buy a CD or vinyl Album with my own money.
However they all complain about fighting Spotify and AI Slop, touring and selling music dir
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Musical talent is not rare
There are millions of people who can play, sing and write
AI music makes your brain uncomfortable (Score:2)
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I listen to DI.fm a lot when I go to sleep and lately something strange has started happening. The music is fine when I go to sleep but at some point in the night it gets really shitty. So shitty I thought my phone was dying and having problems decompressing the music properly. So shitty I can't believe a person would have allowed their name to be connected to it. Like the sounds are hissy and the drum is slow, monotonous and uneven. It's like someone took the average of all songs and got the color gre
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Maybe in a few years double blind studies will show people like it, just like they prefer music with MP3 compression artifacts. But I guess other than MP3, the AI music will still change a bit until then.
artists (Score:3)
Spotify has already responded by requiring songs to hit at least 1,000 plays in the previous 12 months to qualify for royalties, and Luminate reported that 88% of tracks received 1,000 or fewer plays in 2025.
So thanks to AI, Spotify has essentially eliminated itself as a platform for small, niche artists.
Just enforce quality controls. (Score:3)
As music evolves, it has tended to become simpler, more repetitive, less original, and basically BORING AS ALL F.
(And those who know me on Slashdot, I think this is the third time I've used that sort of language since the site came into operation, which should tell you something about just how bad modern music is.)
If the only music out there is, honestly, turgid, then having it AI-generated simply eliminates the brain-damage induced by having to memorise and play these excuses for songs.
You cannot blame people for skipping the middleman when the middleman honestly doesn't do any better of a job.
Yeah, I fully understand, not everyone wants to listen to 22-minute metal anthems about the universe (even if it does feature Richard Dawkins and fireworks), or indeed 18 minute songs about exploding air balloons, even if I am of the personal opinion that said people should seek help. And people are going to like what they like.
But if you're going to object to AI music, then the only way that's ever going to work is if you reverse the trend and make songs that have sophistication that AI cannot match.
Personally, I have no problem with electronic music or even music wholly manufactured through complex electronics, and regard Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram as polymath geniuses that really should have been respected in their lifetimes, but I'd also argue that they actually made an effort to do precisely what I'm describing. They did not, as a rule, make stuff that was simple, unless ordered by higher-ups to do so. It would not be hard to mix their techniques with modern synthesiser ideas and generative systems to produce much more sophisticated music of decent quality.
The music industry... (Score:2)
...needs to die so the artform of music can flourish