Episode 24: AI Part 2

Exploring AI's Disruption in the Music Industry - Face Your Ears Podcast Episode 24

In Episode 24 of the Face Your Ears Podcast, hosts Rich and Justin once again dive deep into the impact of AI on the music industry. They discuss the exciting new assistive tools in DAWs like Logic Pro and Ableton Live, including stem splitting and virtual session players, and introduce the generative AI tool, Suno, which can create songs based on text prompts. The conversation touches on the philosophical implications of AI-generative music, including concerns about devaluing human artistry, the potential for AI to flatten cultural expressions, and the changing landscape of musical talent. The hosts offer thoughtful reflections on the balance between innovation and tradition, and the future of music creation with AI.

00:00 Introduction and Podcast Updates
01:28 Diving into AI in Music
02:14 Assistive AI Tools in Music Production
03:50 Generative AI and Its Implications
11:54 Philosophical Questions on AI and Art
27:05 The Future of Talent in an AI-Driven World
29:59 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

For Production Services, Coaching and Lessons, visit:

www.rjbmusicproduction.com

For help prepping your songs/voice for the studio:

www.bozicvoicestudio.com

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Transcript

Rich 0:10

Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of the face your ears podcast. Episode 24. I'm here with my partner in crime. Justin Hoschella. How you doing, buddy?

Justin 0:23

Hey, hello. I am doing quite well. Thank you. Just a heads up to you and our listeners. If you hear some banging and cursing and so forth in the background, that's because I have some contractors here doing some work on my studio.

Rich 0:38

Exciting.

Justin 0:38

Yes. It is very exciting. But for now I'm sequestered upstairs in a makeshift studio Recording this podcast. So just a heads up but Doing well very excited to say that we have 1, 000 over 1, 000 downloads. So thank you to everybody For helping us drive that number up and up. We hope to keep that growing So, please share with your friends your family Enemies. Whoever.

Rich 1:07

get one listen out of an enemy, maybe.

Justin 1:09

Yes,

Rich 1:10

But it all counts.

Justin 1:12

absolutely. We're on all the platforms, all of them that matter. So if you like what you hear, give us a rating too. That would be awesome. We appreciate any kind of feedback and interaction from our listeners.

Rich 1:29

A few episodes back Justin, we had brought up the topic of AI and how disrupting it was to the music industry as a whole. And I think we had talked about the possibility of coming back to this topic. I think Today is the

Justin 1:46

Yes, here we are full circle. Come back to AI once again.

Rich 1:50

What's new in the world of AI? What are we going to dig into

Justin 1:54

Yeah we've seen a lot of really big developments in both the technological space and in the philosophical space. That's where we're going to be digging in today is to unpack some of the cool technologies and our thoughts and some of the industry's thoughts on those changes.

Rich 2:14

So I've heard some recent innovations in the world of Dawes with AI. Can you talk about that a bit?

Justin 2:21

Yeah, so there's some really cool assistive tools like in Logic Pro 11. There's something called a stem splitter, so you can actually put a full song into Logic Pro and it will split out things like the vocals, the bass, the drums, and then other instruments.

Rich 2:39

It's amazing. I actually just dabbled with that feature recently. I have a client. Her band is coming in to record, and they sent me a demo track. I popped the track into Logic, and I was able to split it up. And actually, Justin was with me when I was doing that. He was walking me through that, and man, I'm blown away.

Justin 2:57

So there's this, the stem splitting, there's also session players. in the past logic pro had the logic pro drummer which was like a virtual drummer in your DAW. And now they've expanded that to keyboard players and bass players. So it's like having a virtual band. In your DAW now, so they've expanded upon that. And there's some different plugins now that, that are far more advanced that lean on artificial intelligence and another DAW called Ableton live in their latest version 12, there's very similar tools where there's assistive technology to help you build drum beats or melodies or harmonies. And you don't even need to know music theory necessarily to leverage these tools. So there's a lot of really great stuff that's assisting the producer or the musician. And then on the flip side, there's also these generative tools that are blowing up and a really big one right now that's quite disruptive is called Suno. And so Suno is basically like the chat GPT of music. So it's prompt based. And what that means is. You can actually type in what kind of song you want and it will deliver that for you. So you can tell it you want a heavy metal song about coffee and you will get a heavy metal song about coffee. You know, You'll get like a metal singer and like guitars and all this stuff.

Rich 4:26

Yeah, the way I stumbled upon Suno was through YouTube, in the recommended videos. I saw a video where it was like titled something like newest AI music or whatever, and Went in there and the guy was going through and basically doing what you described, typing in text prompts and the AI was generating songs based on that. And I think what he did was he actually took a text conversation he had with someone and put it in as the lyrics and then the AI created the song. created a song out of it. And the thing that struck me about it was it was able to take the words and arrange them in a way with the music that made it sound like it was planned and composed a bit with the music. Obviously there were some parts that were not as good as others, but this is just the beginning of this kind of thing.

Justin 5:18

I think What's pretty amazing is the speed at which all of this is developing. A year and a half ago, this stuff was brand new and at least for consumers really. And just the speed at which all of AI has grown and evolved has been staggering. So we're seeing that in the music space for sure.

Rich 5:40

So you talked about the big categories of assistive versus generative what are your thoughts on that?

Justin 5:48

I've been reflecting on this, you know, in preparation for this episode. And, I think this is a very interesting space. lot of this Is very personal I think for you and me especially because we are musicians. We've spent a lot of time And money and effort and our lives frankly dedicated to the craft of music you know, we've suffered We've suffered for our art and so it's really challenging frankly when something comes along and sort of up ends this whole notion of struggle and toil For art you have something that is generative that we're Literally anybody can come along And produce something at fairly high quality. And like you alluded to before, we're in the very early stages of this and to hear the results that are generated today. It's pretty impressive, especially considering where we'll be in a year or five years or 10 years. It's almost unthinkable to reflect on that. I personally love the assistive tools, like the ones I described in logic and Ableton live. I've been using those. I was using them earlier this morning, actually working on some new music and they're incredibly helpful in terms of keeping that creative flow going. It's like having a virtual band member to sort of collaborate with. And have them come up with ideas and sometimes they're good, sometimes they're not, but it's, it just kind of keeps those creative juices flowing I think those are great. I think what gives me pause is with the the generative side of things. I personally just have a visceral reaction to, the generative side of music creation. And I think it's because I value the human ness of music. And I just, I feel as though, and this is my personal feeling. I feel as though this generative side, while there is some merit and some value to it, the thing that I just personally don't love about it is that it doesn't really cultivate humanity. There, there isn't that sort of struggle and toil and uniqueness. I think what's different about a human being being in the driver's seat is that it's their personal touch. It's their personal story, and it's not something that's algorithmically generated in a black box on a computer and then spit out. I'm not saying that you can't get quality music or cool music or whatever from AI. It's just that I personally don't value it as much as I do music that's created. By a person. So I think that's where I've come down on it.

Rich 8:35

yeah, you're not the only one. Recently there was a, Open letter put out, with a bunch of big names in the pop world Billy Eilish, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, a bunch of artists put out an open letter warning about the threats of AI and what they perceive as the threats of AI using AI to basically copy someone's sound. Mainly with these people, their voices because. Their sound has a signature sound. And there are people out there who are able to, I think there's a company out there right now that is actually in a spotlight for this. I can't remember the name of it right now. That is using this AI technology to scour the internet and. Kind of gobble up all the different sounds so that someone else could create a song. And if they like Taylor Swift's voice, they can create a new Taylor Swift song using Taylor Swift's voice. And as we talked about these are the early stages. Eventually this is going to get to a point of where it's going to be almost indistinguishable and very difficult to parse out the real person versus the AI. So a lot of artists have signed on to this. They're concerned. There are other people in the industry who are also sounding the alarm bell because this kind of technology is gonna kind of wipe out a lot of jobs. People who do jingles and things like that already are probably in danger. You know, If you can get the AI to create a simple song for you, for like, a commercial or something,

Justin 10:06

sync licensing has been totally upended and disrupted because that's basically what you're talking about like jingles Television video games and so forth. So it's interesting to see how disruptive this has become Even so early in the development of this technology what's sort of ironic to me is that the complaint, if you will, is that it's basically showcasing that People are imperative are critical to music because what happens if you don't have a Nicki Minaj's voice or a Taylor Swift's voice, like if you fast forward enough in history and time, it's are we just going to have like robot voices? You know what I mean? Who are they going to be? Like, who are the, AI engines going to be copying if there aren't people

Rich 10:51

Think about this, think about how many voices have already been recorded. We're releasing millions of songs a day. There's a lot of information out there, man. The AI could easily combine stuff and mix and match and generate new sounds. People are still going to keep recording. There's gonna be more added to that pile. It's gonna keep coming. How it's gonna all change the landscape. I don't know. It's so new I don't know where it's gonna go

Justin 11:17

that's what's so mind bending about this is that It's so hard to predict what will happen because it's so unprecedented somebody I think described this moment as like the Napster of our time. Like it's that disruptive. It's even more disruptive than that because you can take artists voice or sound or whatever and mold it into your own thing or into something else. And that's just something that hasn't been possible until now.

Rich 11:49

Yeah, it's truly an industry disrupter.

Justin 11:53

Absolutely. I think that that's a good transition into the more philosophical aspects of this conversation. Like one of the big questions is what's the purpose of art? Is art here as a commodity or is it a reflection? Of humanity and of culture. And I think one of the risks that is out there is this risk of flattening culture in which things are sort of homogenized. You know, You look at social media and it's actually happening. This is a real phenomenon. There's an author who I saw on the daily show, he was talking about this concept. he was relating it to coffee shops, like literally coffee shops around the world, very similar aesthetics they have white subway tiling, they have those old Edison light bulbs. They have reclaimed wood furniture. They have succulent plants scattered throughout the shop. And it's like, wherever you go, that's basically the gist of like your coffee shop. And so I think that's a, that's one of the dangers that we have with music. And I think it's sort of happening where you go onto something like Tik and you're hearing a lot of the same things and personally I want to hear stuff that's wildly different. I think it's getting harder and harder, frankly, to hear wildly different stuff. Like I have to go to my barber, frankly, to hear like my barber is this awesome guy, and he will share the most eclectic, weird music with me. And it seems like it's an interesting topic that I think is relevant to this whole AI discussion.

Rich 13:34

songs have gotten shorter over time because of streaming and how streams are counted I think Spotify doesn't count a song until after 30 seconds of it have been listened to so People try to get you over the 30 second mark at least people who might view music as like a commodity I mean, everyone wants to have streams, but if you're a company where you're generating music, just to build up the streams just to I guess create revenue or whatever, you're going to just get over that finish line and then end soon after, but that's going to also make the masses do that kind of thing too, because they think, oh, this is how it's gotta be. If I have a nine minute song, that's not going to get as many streams as if I have three, three minute songs. I guess the reason we brought that up is these kind of industry standards that are brought into the forefront tend to shape the way things go. So with regard to AI, the more AI generated music we see or being used the more it's going to become mainstream and it opens up all of these philosophical questions that you're talking about

Justin 14:44

One thing that comes to mind for me too, is this idea that oftentimes people are making music to sound like a certain thing or to be accepted or to have people find it cool or it'd be popular versus. This sort of more artistic approach, which is, Hey, I'm the musician and I'm the artist, and this is what I wanted to create. And this is what I wanted it to sound like. That's the priority, not what other people think. It's what I think as the artist, there's a very fundamental difference in, in why people approach music. It's again, is this a commodity? Are you trying to make the next Popular toothbrush or dish soap. Is this just a thing you're trying to sell? Or is this an expression of your individual artistry and humanity?

Rich 15:32

Hopefully all of this AI stuff will push people in that, direction. I don't know. I know this is an argument that's been around a lot for different innovations, I remember when MTV came out, everyone freaked out and was like, Oh no, this is gonna kill radio and things like that and MTV did shape the way people. Make music because they started putting it with video and now MTV is gone. But look, if you look at YouTube now, it's basically a continuation of that, but exploded and way bigger. I remember, I don't know why this sticks in my head. There was a queen album. that I was looking at back in the day and on the cover, it said, I can't remember which one it was. It said produced completely a hundred percent without synthesizers and that was like the marketing point of the album, right? Cause there was probably some intricate stuff, some intricate harmonies and things like that, touting like we did this all ourselves, no synthesizers. But then soon after that was all of the big synth wave in the eighties and look where we're at now. It was a battle that wasn't one I guess, ultimately. So I wonder if that's what we're about to experience with AI.

Justin 16:42

think we've talked about this before that over time, cultural values change and shift, so one point. I know what you're talking about. There was this sort of sense that synthesizers were evil. And would ruin music and all that nonsense. And so instead, what ended up happening is it was a disruptor. It just created new and different kinds of music. And so honestly, that's probably what ultimately is going to happen with AI. It's just, to me, what is so different about where we are now versus where we've been in the past is that it feels as though in the past we've lived through what I would consider more linear. Changes, right? So you think about you had a really crappy tape recorder and then that, that slowly became a four track recorder and then that slowly became like a digital tape recorder and then personal computers started getting more powerful that felt very linear to get to that point where you're recording on your computer at home, whereas what we're living through now to me feels more exponential. And so I just think human beings and our brains aren't really wired and designed to sift through exponential curves and change. I think it's just a very huge shift that we're living through in technology today. So it's going to be extremely disruptive. I think for that reason.

Rich 18:08

Question that comes to my mind is. About the human touch. You talked about that briefly earlier about the idea of human, a human being, being part of this process. And then it begs the question, does that matter? obviously I think it matters. I make music, right. But I'm posing the question. I are people Who think that human beings need to be the ones doing this? Are we now going to be the old fashioned thinkers? Also, another side thing with this is, does this create this new cult of the amateur does that matter? I mean before like you talked about people would toil To learn a skill practice for hours in a practice room learn all about composition learn about How to use all the technologies and how to record and how to listen

Justin 18:56

think these are really important questions. And in terms of the human touch, my sense is that the human will always be involved, how they'll be involved or to what degree will change over time. That's like with so many different things in life. Even grocery shopping 10, 20 years ago, it was unthinkable. Yeah. Yeah. To go onto a device order up your groceries and have them delivered an hour later in today's world That's very commonplace And so there's still a human being involved as there's you and the shopper, you know There's a couple people involved but like it's just fundamentally changed. my hope, is that there will always be people involved because music is such a fundamentally human thing. The cult of the amateur is an interesting question because I immediately thought about punk rock. That's the whole aesthetic. The whole idea of punk rock is that it is a bunch of amateurs. It is a bunch of people who are going against the grain, who don't care about rules and all of these different things. This sort of quote perfectionism that maybe more classically trained musicians care about, it's sort of going in the complete opposite direction. And so I think this just takes that punk rock aesthetic and applies it across like all genres where it's now there's like this idea and this notion that I can create this kind of music or this kind of music or mash these two genres together. And so it's like punk rock on steroids, at least in terms of the aesthetic. So that's what comes to mind What do you think?

Rich 20:37

I was reading in the article they were talking about the idea of devaluing music that now there's going to be so much more music pumped out at such a rapid pace because, there are no barriers to entry anymore. Like literally it's just a matter of typing in some prompts that something. That was already struggling to stay afloat and there was already enough people enough artists Struggling to make a living or to be able to get their music heard That it's just gonna dilute it even more and it's gonna devalue it even more and that's something that I'm a little bit torn about a bit because who am I to tell someone? No, you can't take that poem you wrote and pop it into the AI and generate a song so that you could enjoy it in the privacy of your own listening. Who am I? To tell someone they can't do that or why should it be reserved only for a certain group of people to be able to be the songwriters or whatever. So that's like where I'm torn but I also see it from the point of view of people who It's their livelihood and it's what they do to put food on the table, but also who are good at it. Who are just people who are really gifted people and really good songwriters and producers. Cause now if you write something amazing, someone can always say, Hey uh, you used AI to create that, didn't you? It's just too good that you could have written that. That has to be AI. So it calls into question now everyone, So that's kind of like a bummer.

Justin 22:10

Yeah, it is sad. I think it does make me sad that it's going to inevitably, I think, devalue music. And I think music has already been incredibly devalued by streaming because it's so ubiquitous. It's so accessible. I kind of had this idea in mind, even when the iPod came out like 20 something years ago, this thought occurred to me that like, what's going to happen when you have literally thousands and thousands of songs at your disposal, what's going to happen to the music? Won't that make the music less interesting or special? And here we are kind of saying that, yes, basically having access to all of this does devalue things. It's like, you know, you go into a grocery store, you have access to like literally hundreds of different types of cereal. Is that really a good thing? Like at the end of the day I don't know. I think we live in this world of, having this problem of choice. And when you have that, it, it does devalue things and it puts you in a place where you can take things for granted.

Rich 23:13

Or could It be that maybe now the choice will be more limited because now the listener will just want hear songs that are lyrics about a specific topic, because I could just create that myself, or I want to set all the love letters from my sweetheart to

Justin 23:30

Yes, I only, this is my hippopotamus playlist.

Rich 23:33

Or I just do instrumental music that's all about the hippopotamus. that's the thing I is it more choice? I don't know. Is it gonna make people more in a bubble with regard to what they listen to? I've heard the, concept thrown around that this all could be slowly spelling the end for the idea of a pop star Maybe you'll have people rise up every once in a while who create something and people like oh, wow, this is amazing but think about what on, even on the level of recording, like people used to go to recording studios, a big fancy wooden room with the booths and the sound engineer and Soundproofing And then as technology came about where you could do it more at home, You got a lot more people now able to do a lot more things on their own and it it's making those studios slowly go away and irrelevant.

Justin 24:22

that makes me think about the process does the process matter? So things like toil and struggle and perseverance, like those things still exist even in like punk rock, right? Like even punk rock musicians have toil and struggle and perseverance. Through their craft and their art. And so now it just seems as though we're removing those aspects, which are very fundamentally human aspects. And to me, those things are what foster personal growth. it is the challenges it's overcoming obstacles. It's having. Defeat after defeat and failure after failure. And then finally you know, having that success. And so my question is like, what happens when those are removed? it can seem like on the surface, something that's very, very good, but is it you know, like ultimately longterm, is it good that people, May not experience this toil and struggle because to me that's part of what makes you and I value music Is this idea that isn't something that's very easy to do You know, there's a special Sort of quality about it. There's a craft to it

Rich 25:36

Sure. The late nights trying to think of that perfect lyric to complete the song chasing after a melody and trying to craft that melody to fit. all of those kinds of things. I think that's part of. the joy of making music is that stuff, the

Justin 25:52

Right. That's the key isn't it is like in order to have joy in anything You have to have discomfort whatever the opposite of joy is, you know what I mean? It's like, you can't have light without darkness and you know, it's the same with music. You can't have joy in the musical process unless there are, contrary and feelings and emotions to that. the toil, the struggle,

Rich 26:15

And I think that definitely I'm more in the assistive tool kind of AI camp, I think that with the stuff that I've dabbled in, that's a much more creative process. it streamlines the process more. it opens up the mind to new possibilities without taking out the composition element out of the equation. And the idea of I'm making choices here. I'm crafting something. The generative stuff, I think I'm, I'm, I'm bored with you. Like that, that is a little bit of a tougher pill to swallow, but I could see its use. I could see its use on a personal level if you want something quick that fulfills some sort of something in your life. But as for mass production of generative AI songs being released, I don't know if I'm on board with that. And if that's like what they're going to start putting out we'll see. One last thing that I want to talk about is what are your thoughts on how talent factors into this? we brought that up earlier just to flesh it out a little more. Does that matter? is there, a new form of talent coming that we are not seeing?

Justin 27:20

I couldn't help but wonder in this space, will there be a sort of Mozart of AI? Like somebody who has these like crazy prompts would, we wouldn't even ever think of. And it creates this music that is completely unreal and different than anything we've ever heard before. Who knows? Maybe. I don't know. it is interesting. Yeah, I wonder if it could potentially devalue talent. I don't know, somebody who's this virtuosic violin player, comes along and then somebody with a laptop and, plugins or something can create something just as real sounding, just as, complex and so on. So Is one better than the other? I don't know. I mean, again, it comes down to values. It comes down to context. would you pay to go to like Carnegie hall and watch somebody walk out with a laptop, open it up, click a button and hear this virtuosic violin playing, or, or would you, would you pay to see a person? actually doing that in front of you live. I think context matters

Rich 28:32

Probably not. But would there be others who would? Probably.

Justin 28:36

maybe again, it's context and values. Like if some people value that and they think that's cool, they'll go and pay for it and go seek it out. you and I wouldn't, but maybe some people would. I personally think it's more interesting to see a virtuosic musician do their thing, Like there's this visceral human connection. Like when I saw Ski Vai, like one of the most incredible guitar players living today. When I saw him live, it was just I was like Unbelievable, you know, just electrifying and it just is so incredible to see a person do that you, you have a sense like what it takes to do that. And it's a sense of awe, right? that's something that listening to recorded music and generative music and stuff like that, maybe can't produce as much, or, It's more challenged to produce a sense of awe. Whereas if you see. Steve Vai or, Yngwie Malmsteen play. Oh, my God. Like, It's, just a, an amazing experience.

Rich 29:39

Yeah. I tend to agree. I have a feeling this discussion is not over, my friend. I have a feeling we'll be back to this watering hole

Justin 29:48

Yes. Yes. It's, it's going to be fascinating to see how this evolves, because like I said earlier, there's just so much happening so quickly at an exponential rate. So this was a. great conversation and I'm sure we'll, continue this and probably create a. the whole new podcast just on AI and music who knows but We've talked about a lot today you know kicking off with kind of what's new in the AI music space digging into assistive versus generative technologies, we've talked about how, lot of artists are up in arms, about the potential disruption of AI And how I think we need to go into this a little bit more thoughtfully and intentionally, and we've talked about some of the philosophical questions about music and AI, which are things like what's the purpose of art? and does this human touch matter? In the music we create, could we potentially be creating a cult of the amateur? we also dug into, does the process matter? the toil and the struggle and so forth. And we wrapped up with talking about talent. how does talent factor in? are there going to be new AI related talents that we can't even conceive of today? and I think that, The human talents we're used to will still be, important, but, they're going to evolve and grow alongside some new, elements we haven't even thought of yet.

Rich 31:15

That's a great way to close this episode out, Justin. Thank you for the

Justin 31:19

yeah. Thank you, Rich. I enjoyed the conversation and I look forward to picking it up in our next installment on AI sometime in the future. Thanks everybody for taking a listen today. We appreciate it and we'll catch you on the next episode. Bye for now.