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Comment by danduma | Hacker News Reader

Spotify (like other streaming services) pays about 70% of its revenue to the rights holders of the music it plays.

AI music means near-zero cost of goods sold so the full 70% can turn into profit. The incentive is so strong that it's a certainty waiting to happen.

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I hope I am not wrong, but there is so much music out there already that success today is not about the quality of the music but instead about the audience's connection with the artist.

If there is no artist I don't see how any strong following could be built. (Obviously AI will carve easily into elevator music etc.)

Who will ever look up a song and favourite it on Spotify if there are no humans behind it?

People will just follow curators, who pull the right AI music into the right playlists.

People like me who mostly take songs at face value, valuing them by music and lyrics, and don't really care about who wrote or performed them, much less what else they're up to in their lives?

That said, the quantity of music is in itself a problem. Half the value of art is in experiencing the same thing as others. It's going to get even harder with cheap generative art. The better it is, the worse the situation gets.

Personally 3/4 times I'll put my big Spotify playlist on random or play a Spotify curated playlist. Certainly there is scope there for Spotify to select songs based on their licensing costs.

I've certainly had a hunch that certain songs get much more frequent rotation than others on my liked songs playlist (although I appreciate humans are notorious for picking out patterns where there are none!)

The "relaxing piano for studying" type playlists get a huge amount of streams, and they're among the easiest to fill with AI slop

I haven’t cared about the artists (their biography or something?) since I was a teenager. Just the music.

But I’m also the kind of person that hardly ever goes to concerts.

> Who will ever look up a song and favourite it on Spotify if there are no humans behind it?

"Obscurest Vinyl" has 249,608 monthly listeners on Spotify. No one is interested in the humans behind their hit "I Glued My Balls To My Butthole Again".

K/DA and Hatsune Miku would like a word, perhaps.

I view them (and Gorillaz) as counter-examples.

I feel like more people are familiar with Miku than her music.

I rather think that makes them examples on point, specifically on the point that:

> success today is not about the quality of the music but instead about the audience's connection with the artist

...although I would rather say "sense of connection", since in all three of these cases there is in the narrow sense no "artist" involved at all.

More broadly, this seems a fairly uncontroversial point, given how crowded by supply our current media markets are made. Certainly it seems like it would be uncontroversial on that supply side, at least if what I hear from artists and writers and musicians in my circles is any guide.

Like 10% of the music I listen to is a deliberate listening experience: I sit on the sofa and play something that I like.

The other 90%? Background music, e.g. for daily exercise, where I mostly want upbeat music that keeps me moving and sounds good.

For the 10% I prefer humans, for the 90%, if the AI music gets good enough, I'm afraid it will do the job just fine.

As an anecdotal statement, I do not want a connection or care about the artist. I also don't connect (or want to) with directors, writers, actors etc in TV shows and movies I view.

Music is just another consumable form of entertainment for me, and if I like the song I don't care who made it.

A while back there was an article circling about how Spotify has their own contract musicians and how they are pushing "fake" bands made up of these musicians in their playlists. Same reason. With AI they don't even need those musicians.

Most musicians I know would love one of these Spotify jobs. Writing and recording for a salary, rather than spending 75% your time on (mostly futile) promotion for a wildly unpredictable return?

With Spotify earning only 30% what’s their incentive to not push for generating and getting 100% if the people will listen.

(Keeping in mind actual artists see a small amount of that 70% anyway so it’s more an argument about paying labels)

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