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Re:This Music Video Does Not Exist [video] by ChrisMarshallNY on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @05:00AM (#26552651)
I am old enough to remember when people were afraid that Muzak would take over.

It did not.

I was at a Chinese restaurant, around a year and a half ago, and realized that the music they played was a sort of “ersatz” music. It was familiar tunes, like Scarborough Fair, or Hotel California, slightly modified, and strung together. Vocals were basically wordless humming.

There is an entire industry, based on musicians, providing “stock music,” and it’s been around for a long time. Sort of a musical equivalent of Shutterstock. Some of this music is quite good. Most is fairly boring.

Music is way too connected to our emotions to be reliably synthesized. AI would need to advance to be able to produce emotions and creativity, before it would threaten the music industry.

Also, there’s always the “tabloid” aspect of the industry. There are artists that may be fairly unremarkable musicians, but generate a lot of press coverage. Unless the world of Questionable Content becomes real, I can’t see any Star headlines of AIs beating up paparazzi.

Re:This Music Video Does Not Exist [video] by martyvis on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @08:18AM (#26554149)
>I am old enough to remember when people were afraid that Muzak would take over.

In the 1980s musicians unions wanted to kill the Fairlight CMI synthesizer and it's progeny

https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1985/7/29/a-source-of-di...

Re:This Music Video Does Not Exist [video] by ChrisMarshallNY on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @10:32AM (#26555491)
That was revolutionary, at the time. I remember when the guitarist for our band got a Korg sampler. It was amazing.
Re:This Music Video Does Not Exist [video] by cycomanic on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @05:43AM (#26552930)
I would argue that a lot of this "stock music" is just a continuation of elevator music which has been around for a very long time. There's musicians (often very good ones) who essentially made their whole career doing this music, look up James Last for example.
Re:This Music Video Does Not Exist [video] by ChrisMarshallNY on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @07:36AM (#26553807)
Exactly. In fact, there was a Romanian electronic musician that I used to like, and his catalog suddenly disappeared.

When I contacted him, to find out what happened, he informed me that all his music was now only available through a stock agency.

Can't blame him, but I was a bit sad.

Re:This Music Video Does Not Exist [video] by TheOtherHobbes on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @09:20AM (#26554620)
It's called library music. It's much used in ads, trailers, and corporate productions. Ad agencies sometimes also commission music.

Ad use pays incredibly well, because unlike streaming you get a non-trivial fee every time it airs on TV/radio/cinema.

Some musicians make very successful careers doing this.

Re:This Music Video Does Not Exist [video] by soylentcola on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @02:13PM (#26558234)
Always seemed like the modern analogue to the older practice of artists only being able to make a living if they could secure patronage. The days of (semi) direct payment for physical copies of recorded media are starting to seem like an aberration rather than the rule.