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556 points greenie_beans | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.923s | source
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legitster ◴[] No.42466978[source]
This article is fascinating. But what's on display here is less of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous Katy Perry with AI - instead we get to see something much more specific: a behind-the-scenes of how those endless chill/lo-fi/ambient playlists get created.

Which is something I've always wondered! How does the Lofi Girl channel on Youtube always have so much new music from artists I have never heard from?

The answer is surprising: real people and real instruments! (At least at the time of writing). Third-party stock music ("muzak") companies hiring underemployed jazz musicians to crank out a few dozen derivative songs every day to hack the algorithm.

> “Honestly, for most of this stuff, I just write out charts while lying on my back on the couch,” he explained. “And then once we have a critical mass, they organize a session and we play them. And it’s usually just like, one take, one take, one take, one take. You knock out like fifteen in an hour or two.” With the jazz musician’s particular group, the session typically includes a pianist, a bassist, and a drummer. An engineer from the studio will be there, and usually someone from the PFC partner company will come along, too—acting as a producer, giving light feedback, at times inching the musicians in a more playlist-friendly direction.”

I think there's an easy and obvious thing we can do - stop listening to playlists! Seek out named jazz artists. Listen to your local jazz station. Go to jazz shows.

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1. lubujackson ◴[] No.42477886[source]
Alternative take - this might not actually be the worst thing for musicians, to have a low effort, steady paying gig creating music. I am reminded of the documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" about the "Funk Brothers", which was an amorphous group of jazz musicians who did all of the backing tracks for most of the 100s of Motown hits.

Obviously, making ambient tracks is not quite the same as writing "Please Mr. Postman" and hearing your songs on the radio, but in the documentary the band talked about how they'd pump out songs during the day then go to a jazz club at night to make the music they REALLY wanted to make.

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2. motorest ◴[] No.42478995[source]
> Alternative take - this might not actually be the worst thing for musicians, to have a low effort, steady paying gig creating music.

I think this is a red herring to try to convince people that it's in their best interests to be force-fed content produced by major labels behind the brand {INSERT_ARTIST_NAME}.

Which incidentally it's the business model from major labels.

I mean, check any major labels artist. Each and every single hit song they release has countless writers and producers claiming a stake, not to mention the fact that some major labels artists don't even try to hide the fact they buy all their content from third-parties to slap their name over it.

Is this the state of affairs that's being defended?

Give me a procedurally-generated playlist that I can listen all day long, and skip the content I'm not interested in.

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3. tuna74 ◴[] No.42480447[source]
"I mean, check any major labels artist. Each and every single hit song they release has countless writers and producers claiming a stake, not to mention the fact that some major labels artists don't even try to hide the fact they buy all their content from third-parties to slap their name over it."

Do you think this is a bad thing?

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4. jfengel ◴[] No.42480931{3}[source]
It's too bad that stardom still generally requires being promoted by one of a handful of corporations. It's not impossible to get there without them, but the result is that we still end up concentrating most of the wealth on a tiny number of artists, while a vast number of equal talents go under-used and under-compensated.