> It could then generate practically any style and probably quite creatively.

Mimicking a style... easy. Delivering a coherent message or story... harder. Emotional impact... even harder. IMO. But I think these are great goals for an Artistic Turing Test.

Most popular music doesn't deliver a coherent message or emotional impact.

Some genres (i'm looking at you mumble rap) don't even require coherent language.

> Most popular music doesn't deliver a coherent message or emotional impact.

It does via the Forer Effect. The goal is to make generic statements and tell the listener that you’re talking about them (or someone just like them). Listeners then subconsciously fill in the blanks and create the most relatable impactful art imaginable.

That’s why beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You need the audience to impart the meaning ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect

You don't need interpretable language for emotional impact or even narrative. Have you ever felt moved by a song in a language you don't know a word of, or a purely instrumental song? The same's true of paintings, movies without dialogue, etc.

Mumble rap is a totally legitimate art form. I just tend to not be a huge fan of most of the song structures and compositions, personally.

It may be art, but being art doesn't make it deep or emotionally impactful. Even the people who like mumble rap often say they just care about the beat, not the vocals.

That, to me, means it could probably be generated by an AI. And I'd say the same of any genre for which repetition matters more than lyricism or storytelling. I could see a machine coming up with Lil Pump's Gucci Gang[0] much more easily than Wu Tang's Triumph[1].

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LfJnj66HVQ

[1]https://youtu.be/cPRKsKwEdUQ?t=51

Seems like this is more of an uncomfortable vendetta backed by preference instead of any examples, logic, or facts.

We can deliver coherent stories. We recently published https://notrealnews.net. We're committed to improving journalistic integrity in the information age.

Style has always been slightly more important than content. Style is why people care about content. Currently art seems to be evolving into raw style devoid of any coherent content.

“I ain’t got the surfers ‘cause I know I’m not that hard”

That's assuming that what we describe as "artistic" is not the result of processes that neural network can emulate reasonably well. But even if that were the case, I'd argue that 99% of music is rehashing previous. Hell, that's exactly what I want from most of my favorite bands when they release a new album, I just want more of what I liked before, maybe with a few new things thrown in but it's extremely unlikely (more like never) that I end up enjoying new albums where the band makes very different music than previous albums.

Check out https://www.openai.com/blog/musenet/

Same tech as GPT-2 applied to musical composition!

You would need general AI for this.

What is in reach of current methods is EDM. The function that produces a dance beat is a lot more tractable. It's a pure signal processing problem, not a linguistic one. I think sooner than later we will see a startup churning out chart-topping robot beep boop bangers. It seems like this is the Hegelian endpoint of music.