Pop Goes the Weasels
I was at PT on Tuesday and a pop music loop was playing.
These were extremely popular songs from the last few years. I recognized most of them, even though I don't listen to pop music.
What I noticed for the first time, though, because they were back to back to back, was how incredibly algorithm-driven they were. They all used the same elements with only slight variations. They all sounded incredibly artificial.
They didn't even sound like songs as much as an amalgamation of desirable characteristics as determined by analyzing other successful pop songs.
Lots of pop songs are like that, really. Not driven by the artist, but by the producer or the record label, with teams of writers providing lyrics. It's always been that way, but with the rise of sophisticated computer-driven production features, it's even more so now.
Everything gets fixed. Nothing is real.
That's when it hit me: this is where AI is going big.
Top pop songs already sound so artificial that using AI to create the entire song isn't going to sound much different from what's already topping the charts.
I'll put a stake in the ground here: within the next 24 months, fully AI-generated pop songs are going to be heavily represented in the charts. No artist to manage, barely discernible difference in quality, exponentially lower production cost--it's a record label's dream situation.
I, for one, doubt I'll be able to tell the difference unless the songs are identified as AI-created. I doubt many other people will, either.
Here's the other possibility, and I bet this is already happening: record labels feeding all their most successful pop material (and that of the other labels) into a custom LLM that then creates songs. If they don't want to say it's AI, they then hire someone to sing the song. Technically, that's not AI. Or is it? Who knows?
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