Episode 5
AI Music: Do Robots Dream of Electric Guitars?
In this deep-dive episode of AI Evolution, we explore the intersection of artificial intelligence and music - from text-to-music generators like Suno to the emotional resonance of iconic albums. Alan opens up about how AI has changed his personal relationship with music creation, prompting an honest discussion about creativity, memory, emotional authenticity, and what we risk losing in the age of AI.
Is AI music good? Maybe. But is it great? That’s a much harder question.
Key Takeaways
1. AI Music Is Good — But Not (Yet) Great - AI can now generate songs that sound polished and radio-ready. But it hasn’t yet produced a truly timeless track. Most AI songs still lack the emotional depth or storytelling power of human artistry — think Dylan, Cash, or Bowie.
2. Creativity as a Process, Not a Product - For many artists, the act of making music is the reward. But if AI can generate a track in 30 seconds that’s better than something you’ve laboured over for months, where does that leave the creator? For some, it’s a demotivating reality.
3. Listeners Assign the Value - Whether music is made by a human or machine, it’s the listener’s emotional connection that gives it meaning. That means AI music could still become part of someone’s life soundtrack — even if it didn’t come from a soul.
🔗 Resource Links
- 🎧 Suno – AI Music Generator
- 🎵 AudioBlanket on Spotify (Alan’s AI music project)
- 🤖 Fake Drake – AI-generated track that went viral
- 🎤 Eternity – AI K-pop band
- 🧠 ChatGPT’s Deep Research Mode (OpenAI)
- 📀 How to Get Your Music on Spotify Without a Label
- 🎨 Tom Morley – Artist/Musician Using AI in Fine Art
- 🎶 Lo-Fi Beats YouTube Channel Example
- 📰 Indian Newspaper Adopts AI for Editorial Production
- 📚 AI Music & Copyright in US Courts
Transcript
And I don't think I've yet heard anything generated by AI that I would go, wow.
Speaker A:Okay, now that's actually great.
Speaker A:Well, welcome back to AI Evolution.
Speaker A:Today we're going to be covering the emerging and interesting subjects of AI and music.
Speaker A:I think there's an awful lot for us to dig into here.
Speaker A:I'm going to full disclosure, this is a real passion pet subject of mine and I've spent many a year sort of producing music myself, so I've got a sort of keen interest in where this is all going.
Speaker A:But before we do that, let's say hello to the guys.
Speaker A:Ben and Dave are here as usual, my usual partners in crime.
Speaker B:Hello.
Speaker A:How are you all doing, guys?
Speaker B:Yeah, good.
Speaker C:Yeah, good, thanks.
Speaker A:What's been going on?
Speaker A:What's been catching your eye in AI this week?
Speaker B:Go on, Ben, you got something.
Speaker C:I've.
Speaker C:From previous episodes, you'll know that I absolutely loved PI and I've finally jumped to Grok to give that a go over the last couple of weeks.
Speaker B:Oh, yes.
Speaker C:I've been trying the assistant and I absolutely love it.
Speaker C:The assistant is fantastic.
Speaker C:And you know, with PI, sometimes it would do its beeps and listen and then you get out of sync with each other and you start talking.
Speaker C:The Grok has really honed that and the assist, I can't remember, the assistants call it something like Ara or Aera, but it works really well and it's quite conversational.
Speaker C:The voice isn't as good as PI in terms of its inflections and subtleties, but the conversational back and forth and it, if you start speaking, it pauses and it allows you to interrupt.
Speaker C:And yeah, I've been, I've been really impressed with it actually, and I've just used it to riff some ideas where I've been driving back from school drop off and to record some thoughts for.
Speaker C:For videos on YouTube.
Speaker C:And it's worked really well.
Speaker C:I've then sent myself an email of the transcript.
Speaker A:Very good.
Speaker A:Yeah, I've had a play about with it myself.
Speaker A:I think I got a bit distracted, actually, with all the other personalities that.
Speaker C:You can use for Crocs.
Speaker A:I probably did.
Speaker A:Maybe I found.
Speaker A:I know which one you mean.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I think maybe the basic model then became a bit dull or something.
Speaker A:I didn't quite go back to it.
Speaker A:The one I do go back to, actually, because, like, you are the big fan of PI and it's, it's, it's, it's definitely difficult to use at the moment.
Speaker A:I find that I have to kind of try and use it three or four times before it actually works, so I sort of stopped using it.
Speaker A:But the one I do end up going back to all the time is the OpenAI voice assistant is very good.
Speaker A:The advanced voice mode in particular, I find.
Speaker A:Really, really good.
Speaker A:And again, you're able to kind of talk to it.
Speaker A:You can interrupt it.
Speaker A:I find the voice actually quite soothing as well.
Speaker A:Of all the voices AO voices out there, I think for me it's the closest one to PI.
Speaker A:It feels, you know, it's sort of got that.
Speaker A:That connection.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And when you flip it into the video mode where it can sort of see as well that that is unbelievably good.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:It blows my mind every time I use it.
Speaker A:I just think this.
Speaker A:This really feels like science fiction, actually, every time.
Speaker C:But does it have an unhinged assistant like Grok does?
Speaker A:It doesn't.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker C:Well, I'm just looking at the other ones.
Speaker C:Argumentative, romantic, sexy, unhinged.
Speaker C:I tried the unhinged one.
Speaker C:It really made me laugh, actually.
Speaker B:It's amazing.
Speaker B:I love it.
Speaker A:I can't cope with it.
Speaker A:I don't like being chased up that much.
Speaker A:It's fun for about a minute and then you're like, no, no, I love it.
Speaker C:I think if you're quite passive, it's good.
Speaker C:Good to sort of, you know, to riff with it and to practice with it.
Speaker B:Just ask it to, like, remind you that you need to exercise and that's what you need.
Speaker B:Go to the fucking gym.
Speaker C:What's your views on it, Dave?
Speaker B:Yeah, like, I mean, I've played around with it a little bit.
Speaker B:I tend to stick to.
Speaker B:I tend to stick to ChatGPT because I've set up a lot of projects and stuff like that in there, and kind of all of my history is in there now, which sort of locks you in, which is kind of interesting that there is a.
Speaker B:I think there is a bit of lock in that you'll probably get from some of these tools if you use them consistently over time.
Speaker B:But, yeah, I mean, there's so many to play with.
Speaker B:And obviously, you know, I've got the other podcast and I'm talking to people and companies all the time, and.
Speaker B:Yeah, the thing I wanted to bring up, though, today, just in my little newsy bit, is I saw an article yesterday or day before where in India, I think it was.
Speaker B:There's been an entire newspaper has been produced by AI, so.
Speaker B:And it's not like a new newspaper.
Speaker B:It's like their regular newspaper have said, no, we're doubling down and we're using AI for everything.
Speaker B:It writes our headlines, it helps us write our articles, helps us do our research, it helps us do everything.
Speaker B:They're like this entire episode is all AI and moving forward, they've basically adopted AI and embraced it to really help them, which I think we're going to see quite a lot.
Speaker A:You know, I know that's interesting.
Speaker B:I know some of the broadcast channels, like radio stations and things like that, are now looking at AI to do things like read the weather and the traffic reports.
Speaker B:Because the Voice is good enough.
Speaker B:All you need to do is send it the text and it can actually do a perfectly adequate job and probably, you know, may sound better and make fewer mistakes than a presenter would.
Speaker B:If.
Speaker B:If a live person was reading it and if they didn't tell you, you wouldn't know.
Speaker B:And so, you know, and then that can just automatically be fed into.
Speaker B:Into how they.
Speaker B:You know, how that stuff runs.
Speaker B:Um.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it's quite interesting.
Speaker B:I'm.
Speaker B:I'm quite keen to keep an eye on the.
Speaker B:On the journalism side as well, because I think.
Speaker B:I think there are a lot of interesting things that can happen there.
Speaker B:I don't know if I mentioned it on one of the previous ones, but there was a.
Speaker B:At the AI Summit last year, there was a lady, I think, from the Telegraph, and she did a presentation about how they tested AI in writing there.
Speaker B:Oh, no, she was from Press Authority.
Speaker B:I think she was from pa and how they used AI to write headlines, but that the editors liked the headlines better.
Speaker B:And so it wasn't quite there yet.
Speaker B:When she came off stage and she was over on the side, I caught up with her afterwards and I said, I'm curious, did you actually test the headlines in the real world versus the ones that the editors like to write?
Speaker B:And she said, yeah, the AI headlines were better by 71%.
Speaker B:So the data shows that people and readers actually like the AI headlines better.
Speaker B:But the editors didn't like them, I think, because they felt that they needed to do it and that a human was better when in actual fact, a human is not better.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's.
Speaker A:That's really interesting.
Speaker A:Well, I think often when we get into the music, I think that's perception as well.
Speaker A:Yeah, you know, without a doubt.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's your preconception that you come to something with.
Speaker A:Affects how you receive it, how you hear it.
Speaker A:We'll dig into that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:The thing that caught my eye this week, actually, but it's not really a new thing.
Speaker A:It's Been around for a few weeks now, I suppose, really, since Deep Sea came along.
Speaker A:But my mum's not had the best week actually, and she's had some high blood pressure issues and things like that.
Speaker A:And one of the things I wanted to look into was timing of when she takes her blood pressure tablets.
Speaker A:So I thought, I know, I'll go into GPT 4.5, which is freshly, freshly available for plus users.
Speaker A:And I use Deep Research.
Speaker A:So, so I did this and, and honestly, fantastic.
Speaker A:You know, this, it's gone through, it's dug into maybe 70 or 80, it took about 15 minutes.
Speaker A:It's dug into 70 or 80 different, you know, medical research articles, you know, proper, legitimate stuff, not nonsense that people have posted on Reddit, but actual, you know, validated, you know, clinical studies.
Speaker A:It's also asked me some validating questions as I've gone into the process, you know, about what, what type of, you know, medication, blood pressure medication, is it, is it ACE inhibitors, is it diuretics, is it, you know, so it's, it's making sure it's gathering and then it's gone away and it's pulled together, you know, a really comprehensive 3,000 word study for me, effectively into, you know, what this, what the things are, what is the best approach, what the considerations, you know, for the individual in terms of timing and their other conditions and how that might affect it.
Speaker A:Really, really detailed, really good.
Speaker A:And then of course, you know, if you want to summarize it into 200 words, you can, you know, just ask it to do that.
Speaker A:And then suddenly you've got this brilliant little summary that I could then show my mum because she's not going to read 3,000 words.
Speaker A:But at least I've understood the depth of the problem, of the issues.
Speaker A:I can then go to her and say, well, there's a 200 word summary that explains.
Speaker A:These are the kind of headlines and it's articulated those really well in a way that she can understand.
Speaker A:So I just thought, wow, you know, actually, what a useful thing.
Speaker A:And you know, five years ago, if you wanted to do that, you just couldn't even get close to it.
Speaker A:Could you, you know, turn it to.
Speaker C:A podcast for your mom on Google?
Speaker B:Yes, well, that's exactly what I was thinking is you could take all that, dump it into LM and say, make.
Speaker C:A podcast over a cup of tea and listen to her own personalized medical.
Speaker A:Report, a quick 20 minute on her blood pressure.
Speaker C:You could really spoof her and say, look, these guys are, you know, chatting to these guys in America.
Speaker C:They're going to chat about your, your medical condition.
Speaker B:I wonder if there'd be a way to set up a podcast where you could.
Speaker B:God, it'd be terrible.
Speaker C:Personalize it.
Speaker B:Sorry.
Speaker B:Yeah, personalized.
Speaker B:So, yeah, sorry.
Speaker B:What I was getting to is you could go to a webpage and you could say, hey, I'd really like to hear a podcast about this thing.
Speaker B:Thing.
Speaker B:You just put it into the field and, and say go.
Speaker B:And then the next day you have a podcast on that, published on that podcast channel, talking about it.
Speaker B:But that would be a disaster unless you had it really tightly controlled.
Speaker B:Cuz.
Speaker B:Cuz the topics that would come out of that would be horrendous immediately.
Speaker B:But if you could do it and maybe you, you know, maybe, maybe a human had to look at every single request, that could be really interesting because you could almost do something like that.
Speaker B:Have it go create, have one tool create a massive research project about that whole topic and then you could have it automatically create a podcast and publish that.
Speaker B:You could set all that up.
Speaker B:We should try it automatically.
Speaker C:We should try it.
Speaker A:In actual fact, how long will it be until you can just go into Spotify or podcast app or whatever and just, you know, there'll be a, you know, a button, this AI podcast.
Speaker A:You touch it and then you just speak.
Speaker A:You say, oh, give me a podcast, podcast about radiohead.
Speaker A:And within five minutes there's a 20 minute podcast about Radiohead or something.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's it.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's basically the idea.
Speaker A:The first time I saw Notebook Alan, that was the first thing that went to my mind is oh, like.
Speaker A:And actually I'm sort of surprised that somebody's not built that app yet.
Speaker A:That is just that simple thing.
Speaker B:You know, it's probably there, we just don't know about it.
Speaker C:The only other things that get a hat tip this week is I tried the UK version of Sora a couple of weeks ago when it came out last week.
Speaker C:It's okay.
Speaker C:Yeah, I mean, I sort of produce some assets for a video I was making just to test it out.
Speaker C:And the new Google Image editor is pretty impressive as well.
Speaker A:Well, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna challenge that because I had a play about with that as well.
Speaker A:And this idea that yes, you can go into it and say to it, make the sky red.
Speaker A:And it does that.
Speaker A:But, but my problem with it, I don't know if you've noticed, Ben, but it's not just making the sky red, it's actually recreating the entire image from scratch.
Speaker A:And if you zoom in on that image, the resolution is abysmal.
Speaker A:And so, for example, if you.
Speaker A:I had a picture of Emily paddleboarding out in the bay as my wife.
Speaker A:People who don't know who Emily is.
Speaker A:And when you zoom in on her on the recreated version now with clouds in the sky, unusually for Swansea, it was a clear sky.
Speaker A:So normally you'd be taking the clouds away, wouldn't you?
Speaker A:But there we are.
Speaker A:But I thought, you know, I'll add some clouds in.
Speaker A:And I zoomed in and, you know, she's.
Speaker A:You can't recognize her anymore.
Speaker A:So from the original photo, you zoom in, you can see clearly that's Emily.
Speaker A:You can see a face that features everything.
Speaker A:The AI generated version is just like a blob thing on a board.
Speaker A:So in terms of usability, for me at the moment, it feels like a kind of party trick and not much more.
Speaker A:You know, I can see where they're going with it, but I don't think the solution is recreate the entire.
Speaker A:It feels like you're throwing the baby over the baffle.
Speaker A:In order to change the color of the sky, you've got to regenerate the entire picture.
Speaker A:Surely you just need to change the color of the sky.
Speaker A:That's the only bit you need to touch.
Speaker A:So I think they've got a bit of work to do there before it becomes a really useful editing tool.
Speaker A:Because I would want the rest of the photo preserved at the quality and the original image that it was to.
Speaker B:Be really boring and technical.
Speaker B:I reckon that's probably strictly down to storage.
Speaker B:The AI images will be much, much smaller at that resolution and it'll be much easier for that to generate.
Speaker B:I think if you had it generating a 4K or a 300dpi, you know, photo quality image.
Speaker B:I suspect a, the storage requirements would be enormous for the.
Speaker B:For the amount of, you know, images that they're trying to create or the number of images they're trying to create.
Speaker C:And the processor power.
Speaker B:Processing power and the processing power to do that.
Speaker B:So I, I know that's the boring, technical answer, but I totally get what you mean.
Speaker C:But same with Sora, the sort of output from.
Speaker C:That's 480.
Speaker C:You know, it's very limited, isn't it?
Speaker C:It's got watermark.
Speaker C:So unless you upgrade to the next up from plus, I can't remember what.
Speaker B:You can use Google to remove the watermark.
Speaker B:So it's.
Speaker C:Even more so.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's.
Speaker B:That's the big story at the minute is that, you know, artists are complaining.
Speaker C:I know.
Speaker B:You know, because you can remove the watermarks.
Speaker C:Yeah, I know.
Speaker C:All the ones that people were showing with eyestock on it and they just say, remove watermark.
Speaker C:And it does it straight away.
Speaker B:Yep, Bang, done.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:But it does it at a lower res.
Speaker B:So back to Alan's point.
Speaker B:If you just want it to, you know, to send it, to post it on social media or something, to use it as a background on Instagram, then that's probably fine.
Speaker B:But if you're trying to use it for a broadcast quality or professional quality anything, it's not going to work.
Speaker C:Yeah, man.
Speaker C:Stock libraries are done, aren't they?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Well, I think.
Speaker A:I think there's still time, but, yeah, the trajectory doesn't look.
Speaker A:We're talking about AI evolution here.
Speaker A:It doesn't look good, does it?
Speaker A:You know, and even things like the SORA stuff, which is, I think right now, pretty basic, and you can create certain things in certain situations.
Speaker A:There were some people in the chat group, you know, who'd managed to create for a specific scenario, something that was pretty good.
Speaker A:But as soon as you get into trying to do a more wide range of stuff, you meet.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Arms, hands, feet, anything really.
Speaker A:You hit the rails really quickly, I think.
Speaker A:And, you know, I mean, I think we all saw the one where I tried to make a hamster jump off a cage and the thing was kind of morphing into two heads and spinning.
Speaker A:I mean, it's just horrendous.
Speaker A:There's a long way to go it.
Speaker A:But, you know, a bit like, I suppose when Mid Journey first came out, you know, and it was kind of horrendous.
Speaker A:Look where it is today, you know, and.
Speaker A:And it's.
Speaker A:And it's getting better still as well.
Speaker A:So I think this.
Speaker A:This thing, you know, it's gonna.
Speaker A:It's coming.
Speaker A:Is it?
Speaker A:We can all see what the potential is, probably so.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And the same with music.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, I think that does segue us nicely into AI music.
Speaker A:So for the.
Speaker A:Thank you, for the listeners.
Speaker A:For the listeners, I'm sure that's a public enemy, but for the listeners, yes.
Speaker A:Music is obviously something that I've spent my life obsessing about and I do create my own music.
Speaker A:I have created AI music as well, specifically my last album that I put out under the audio blanket moniker.
Speaker A:I used an AI system called Avia to do that, and that's a slightly different system to some of the systems we're going to talk about, because I think there's different things to Think about here with AI music.
Speaker A:There are all the text to music systems like the SORA and the UNO that we're going to talk about today.
Speaker A:And then there are things like Avia where you're effectively using AI generated stems.
Speaker A:So you're taking, you know, an AI generated violin sound and then you're using that in a, in a more traditional kind of composing structure.
Speaker A:And so everything you hear is AI generated.
Speaker A:But the, the person creating that music is still, is probably constructing it in a more traditional way, should we say more akin to what people might do in sort of tradition music editing suites, you know, so whereas obviously text to music is a very new thing.
Speaker A:This is where somebody's simply saying to an AI system, I'd like a song that sounds a bit like this and describing some elements of that song.
Speaker A:You know, it's got drums and it's a bit country and it's a bit funky and I want someone singing.
Speaker A:And here, you know, can you create some lyrics for it?
Speaker A:I want it to be happy and off it goes and it tries to create something based on, based on those instructions.
Speaker A:So those are two very different things.
Speaker A:So I don't know about you guys.
Speaker A:I've been playing about with some of this stuff for a while.
Speaker A:The reason we sort of came to this, I think for this particular episode was because a few weeks ago Dave was doing a podcast on James Bond actually of all things, and the fact that the franchise had been sold off and we won't open that rabbit hole too much but to Amazon and he said, could you do an AI sort of like a Bond theme chain?
Speaker A:I thought, well, yeah, I probably could.
Speaker A:And at that point I had two options.
Speaker A:I could either go to AVI and try and stress my brain and see if I could effectively compose using AI sounds a Bond theme tune.
Speaker A:And I thought that's going to take me a long time and a lot, a lot of work.
Speaker A:And I don't even know if I can do it actually, because that's quite a thing to live up to.
Speaker A:So I thought, well, I'll give Sora a go.
Speaker A:Not Sora, Suno a go.
Speaker A:They sound too similar, don't they?
Speaker A:Sora?
Speaker A:As soon as.
Speaker A:So I give Suno a go and I have used, you know, quite a bit as well.
Speaker A:So it wasn't, was, you know, this wasn't my first rodeo, Suno.
Speaker A:And so I went into it and I first was a bit, well, yeah, create me a James Bond sounding theme tune, you know, and it came out with something that's not really what I'm looking for.
Speaker A:So then I thought, well, maybe.
Speaker A:Maybe what I don't need to saying James Bond isn't going to get me there.
Speaker A:All right, that's not going to work.
Speaker A:It doesn't quite grasp it.
Speaker A:So then I thought, well, what does a James Bond theme actually sound like?
Speaker A:You know?
Speaker A:So then I started to describe what it should sound like.
Speaker A:And it should be start.
Speaker A:Quiet at the start.
Speaker A:It should build.
Speaker A:There should be string sections coming in.
Speaker A:There should be a big crescendo.
Speaker A:The vocals should start off, you know, gentle and build as well.
Speaker A:So I kind of described how I imagined this song would sound, basically.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I think in the final prompt, I didn't even mention the word James Bond.
Speaker A:It wasn't.
Speaker A:He wasn't even in that.
Speaker A:And it did get me there.
Speaker A:And the good thing about this system is it will do two versions and if you like one of them, you could ask it to remix it to maybe try and tweak it to get it closer.
Speaker A:Or if you don't like them, just keep going.
Speaker A:And even though you put the exact same prompt in, you will get a slightly different output each time, so you don't get the same thing each time, even with an identical input.
Speaker A:But I think on about iteration five or six, we ended up with a version that I think was pretty good.
Speaker A:Dave, you heard, it was on your podcast.
Speaker A:In the end, what did you think of it?
Speaker D:When the night falls cold and the silent screams A world of secrets Tears at the seams through the smoke and flame I walk alone A fractured heart carved out of stone the clock is ticking the end is near A whispered promise drowned in fear But I'll rise again where the ashes lay for the game I play won't fade away.
Speaker A:On.
Speaker D:The edge of shadows I stand and fight A ghost in the darkness still in the night when the skies turn red and the truth unwinds I'll face the storm With a load in mind Let the walls come down Let the thunder ch the edge Till the heavens fall In a maze of lies the stakes run high the traitor's kiss Beneath the crimson sky Every step I take the past ignites A dance with death in the fading light the gun is steady the trigger's mine A fleeting shadow lost in time through the chaos I'll carve my way the hunter's vow won't break today on the edge of shadows I stand in fire Ghost in the darkness Stealing the night when the skies turn red and the truth of the wise I'll face the storm With a load in mind Let the walls come down Let a thunder cold I'll chase the edge Till the heavens fall hold your breath the tide will turn in the fire the soul still burns A thousand scars a single name through the ruin I'll stake my claim on the edge of shadows I stand and fight A ghost in the darkness Stealing the night when the skies turn red and the truth unwinds I'll face the storm With a loaded mind Let the walls come down Let the thunder come I'll chase the edge till the heavens.
Speaker A:Okay, and how do you feel about that?
Speaker B:Yeah, so I loved it.
Speaker B:I thought it was amazing and so did the.
Speaker B:I, I had a friend of mine who's a film producer on to talk about that and, and he's Emmy and BAFTA nominated and he loved it as well.
Speaker B:He thought, man, that's amazing.
Speaker B:And he was absolutely shocked at how good it was knowing that it came from AI.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean it's, it's.
Speaker B:I mean I, I don't know who's going to do better.
Speaker B:I mean, which is pretty, which is pretty shocking, you know, if somebody didn't know I played it and I said to my wife, I'm like, she didn't know.
Speaker B:I just said, look, this is what they're saying is going to be the new Bond theme.
Speaker B:And she was like, wow, sounds really good.
Speaker B:I was like, didn't even know.
Speaker A:Yeah, maybe this goes back to what we were saying a while ago.
Speaker A:It's, it's people's preconceptions probably alter how they hear these things.
Speaker A:So here's the thing then.
Speaker A:And by the way, for those listening to the show, the theme music at the start was AI generated as well.
Speaker A:And that's going to be our new theme scene for this show.
Speaker A:And we created it specifically because we're doing AI today, AI music.
Speaker A:But we're going to run with that going forward.
Speaker A:And actually when I created that, I was trying to create something that sounded kind of computery digitally.
Speaker A:I was thinking binary basically in my mind.
Speaker A:So when I described it to Suno, what am I trying to do here?
Speaker A:I was talking about I want something that sounds like bytes and digits and binary and numbers flying, rushing past and you know, so, you know, so it had that kind of feel.
Speaker A:And again, it was version five, I think in the end was the one that I thought, yep, that's, that's the one for me.
Speaker A:But the other versions which you, I think you guys all heard as well were, were also pretty good.
Speaker A:But here's the thing right it's pretty good, but is it great?
Speaker A:And this is.
Speaker A:This is where I get stuck now.
Speaker A:So I'm on the fence where I use it because I think on the one hand, yes, it can create something that's this, you know, as we said with the James Bond film, really good.
Speaker A:And if you play it, somebody go, yeah, yeah, that's all right, actually.
Speaker A:But is it great?
Speaker A:And I don't think I've yet heard anything generated by AI That I would go, wow, okay, now that's actually great.
Speaker A:That's not, you know, that's not just wallpaper music.
Speaker A:That's not just another pop song, you know, that's Bob Dylan, that's Radiohead, that's the Beatles.
Speaker A:That's, you know, And.
Speaker A:And I think this is where we're getting a bit stuck at the moment with AI Music.
Speaker A:I'm.
Speaker A:I've not seen a breakout hit around the globe anywhere.
Speaker A:I've not heard anything that makes me sort of stop my tracks and think, well, that's it, then we're done.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:As I pack up and go home.
Speaker C:There is the K Pop Band, isn't there?
Speaker C:Is it Eternity, which is total.
Speaker C:All.
Speaker C:All five, or I can't remember how many members are.
Speaker C:Are generated by AI the five women.
Speaker C:All the music's generated by AI and the person that set up the band has a tech company to.
Speaker C:To create music and bands.
Speaker C:So it's not just music.
Speaker C:They're creating a whole brand, a whole band, you know, that you can interact with.
Speaker C:And that's been very successful.
Speaker B:That's interesting.
Speaker B:I think, Alan, there's a deeper question here, which is, what do people at the minute?
Speaker B:What are people using AI for and why are they using it?
Speaker B:And I think most of the people that I talk to sort of agree with this statement.
Speaker B:I'll be interested to see how you feel about it.
Speaker B:But the question isn't, is it great?
Speaker B:The question is, is it better than I could make?
Speaker B:And that's why people use it.
Speaker B:Because most people go to AI and on 95% of the things that they ask it, it gives a better answer than they could do themselves.
Speaker B:And so they're like.
Speaker B:People think it's amazing because people can't play music and they can't write their own song, or they think they can't.
Speaker B:Maybe they could, but they don't believe that they can.
Speaker B:So they go there and they go, hey, do a song that sounds like this.
Speaker B:And then they tweak it a little bit and they come out with this thing and they're like, that's amazing.
Speaker B:It's the same with videos, it's the same with images.
Speaker B:It's the same with books.
Speaker B:It's the same with everything.
Speaker B:It's, it's, it's better at the average person on everything.
Speaker B:And the question is, is, is that good enough?
Speaker B:Because that's what's powering it at the minute.
Speaker B:It's not better than an expert at any given task.
Speaker B:If you've, you know, if you're a PhD physicist, and I think I've said this before, if you're a PhD physicist, it's not better at physics than you, but.
Speaker B:And if you're a professional musician, it's not better at music than you, but it's certainly better at music than me.
Speaker B:And so for me, that may be good enough.
Speaker A:So I think, I think this is, I mean, with music, I think this is probably more startling and you know, so if you, if you talk about writing, for example, with, you know, LLM, is it better than me at writing?
Speaker A:Yes, probably now, but I'm still quite capable at writing.
Speaker A:But for music, for most, most people aren't capable of creating their own pop song, are they?
Speaker A:You know, it's what this came along.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker A:So it's always good.
Speaker A:It's always going to be better than most people in music now in terms of the.
Speaker A:And that's why we have pop stars and people pay lots of money because they can do this thing that most people can't do.
Speaker A:So, so what about the idea then that these pop stars, is it as good as them?
Speaker A:Now, my answer to that isn't it's black and white, because I think it is actually.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And I'll explain why.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:It's not always as good as them.
Speaker A:I think when they peak, when an artist releases an album, there's normally two or three tracks on the album that are like standout tracks where they're a decent artist.
Speaker A:But there are very few albums that have 10 tracks and 10 standout, you know, 10 tracks and 10 standout tracks.
Speaker A:So, you know, typically if you listen to them, there's probably two or three tracks that the ones you go back to perhaps more than the others.
Speaker A:And you would see that in streaming services that they're stream way more than the other, the other songs.
Speaker A:So I think that where we are with a.
Speaker A:At the moment is it's not as good as the standout tracks, the great tracks, but it might be as good as the other filler tracks.
Speaker A:Yeah, so.
Speaker A:So, you know, so.
Speaker A:So when when, you know, Paul McCartney is not having a purple patch day with the Beatles and he's writing something sort of fairly mediocre.
Speaker A:Maybe AI is as good as that.
Speaker A:Maybe that's.
Speaker A:That's where it's at.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So now I sort of started thinking about this a bit more.
Speaker A:I think, well, why would that be?
Speaker A:What's going on there?
Speaker A:And maybe this is part of the problem.
Speaker A:When they've trained the models on these, right, they've presumably trained it on everything.
Speaker A:They've not gone, let's train it on the best songs.
Speaker A:They've just trained it on all the songs.
Speaker A:Yeah, they've just shoved the whole lot in, basically.
Speaker A:And maybe what you need to do to get an AI to create great music is train it on great music.
Speaker B:Great music.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah, maybe.
Speaker A:Maybe the.
Speaker A:The training data, because it's looking at the game.
Speaker A:Well, there's these, and.
Speaker A:And the.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The amount of average songs will far outweigh the amount of great songs.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:By definition, if you look at the charts at any moment, you know, there's probably one or two great songs in there.
Speaker A:The rest of it are probably, you know, you'll never hear again, you won't care about in 20 years.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So someone, I feel needs to go and just basically just train, you know, if you want to do classical music, just go and train on Mozai and Beethoven and Chopin and Tchaikovsky and, you know, and just ignore the rest, basically.
Speaker A:You know, Wagner maybe, you know, but just get, you know.
Speaker C:Yeah, no, I just think.
Speaker C:I mean, the way we can.
Speaker C:That the generation below us consume music is very different than the way we can.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:When we got an album, there was a.
Speaker C:It was a product with a story that, you know, song three was always, you know, one of the best songs.
Speaker C:And then the slower one, there was a whole narrative to an album which, you know, now you have Spotify.
Speaker C:You know, kids listen to 30 seconds of a song playing Fortnite, or they don't tap into music in the same way that we did when we were growing up.
Speaker C:And it was quite an important process for us.
Speaker C:And I think maybe some of that generational change will.
Speaker C:That, you know, younger generations will be happier with AI produced music.
Speaker C:But some of the music that really resonated with me, like Jolly Cash, for example, was because who he was, the narrative, the storytelling that he told.
Speaker C:And, you know, I read his autobiography when I was about, or Biography when I was about 12.
Speaker C:I didn't read anything like that just because I adored this guy.
Speaker C:So it was more than just about the music, it was about the story, the way he made me feel.
Speaker C:His voice, you know, it wasn't a highly produced, amazing studio sound.
Speaker C:It was, you know, his croaky voice and lyrics, talking about wonderful folk songs.
Speaker C:And I think AI is not going to replace that resonance with an artist.
Speaker C:Maybe it will.
Speaker C:Maybe it will for the younger generation, but certainly not for me, it won't.
Speaker A:Yeah, I 100 agree.
Speaker A:It's that it's the context again, and the story that.
Speaker A:The backstory, if you like, behind the artist and brings that extra, extra emotional depth that doesn't exist with an AI if you hear an AI singing something emotional and, you know it's an AI, you know that there's no emotional context to that.
Speaker A:But if, you know, if you hear, you know, Joy Division singing something, you know that Ian Curtis was in pain basically, when he was writing those songs.
Speaker A:And, you know, and so you feel that then coming through the music.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But that is a case of understanding, isn't it?
Speaker A:But what if you didn't know?
Speaker A:What if I presented you a song and said, well, this is Dylan, right?
Speaker A:This is an unknown song by Dylan that's been.
Speaker A:Been uncovered, you know, and would you get the same emotional impacts?
Speaker A:Because you would then yourself almost like imbue that emotion into it.
Speaker A:So is the problem with AI they're not the music, but creating a way that people can connect to it in a similar way that they do with humans, finding that way around it.
Speaker A:Or.
Speaker A:I mean, Gorillaz did this thing, didn't they, years ago, where they sort of created this band that wasn't an AI band, but it kind of could have been.
Speaker A:You know, it was.
Speaker A:You know, they never performed live on stage.
Speaker A:Well, they did, but they were behind the screen.
Speaker A:But what people went to the concert saw were these kind of, you know, anime sort of characters dancing around.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But they did create a kind of story, an emotional story around those characters.
Speaker C:The abba.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:So I.
Speaker A:I wonder if it's.
Speaker A:I wonder if they are.
Speaker A:Then maybe part of the missing piece is.
Speaker A:Is how do you.
Speaker A:How do you recreate that?
Speaker A:And maybe that's not possible, at least not in the current world.
Speaker A:I want to pick up on the point where you said about people listening to music differently as well, because you.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:102 years ago, my.
Speaker A:My niece walked into the.
Speaker A:Into.
Speaker A:Into this very room I'm sitting, actually, and the record players over there, and I was playing a record.
Speaker A:I think it was a Bowie record, but anyway, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker A:And she walks in she kind of stared at me.
Speaker A:I was sitting on the sofa behind me here, and she sort of said, what are you doing?
Speaker A:I was like, what do you mean, what am I doing?
Speaker A:And she went, you're just sitting there listening to the record.
Speaker A:So it looks at me quizzically for about five to 10 seconds.
Speaker A:You're just listening to a record.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And she couldn't sort of compute that, because in her mind, you don't do that.
Speaker A:Like, if.
Speaker A:If music's honest because you're on your phone scrolling or you're doing something else, you wouldn't just listen to a record, you know, So I think maybe we do.
Speaker A:Janet, we do connect in a different way perhaps, to that music, because it isn't wallpaper for us.
Speaker A:It isn't kind of a background theme tune lives.
Speaker A:It's actually.
Speaker A:This is an activity.
Speaker A:This is something meaningful.
Speaker A:And I'm.
Speaker A:I'm not just listening to the music.
Speaker A:And when I'm listening to that, I am thinking about Bowie.
Speaker A:You know, I am thinking about other.
Speaker A:And I'm thinking about how that music affected me at different points in my life as well.
Speaker A:There's a.
Speaker A:There's my own personal connection to that music as well, isn't there?
Speaker A:Because it's been there for.
Speaker A:For decades.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:I saw.
Speaker B:I saw posts on Instagram earlier, actually, this morning, and that's why I was looking down.
Speaker B:I was actually looking to try and find it because I was gonna.
Speaker B:I was gonna see if I.
Speaker B:If I could read it, but I can't find it.
Speaker B:But I will.
Speaker B:Essentially, the.
Speaker B:The point of it was, is.
Speaker B:Is the.
Speaker B:The guy was talking about how today people aren't connected to things in the way they used to be.
Speaker B:And it's exactly what you're saying.
Speaker B:And the example he gave us, he heard an interview by a woman who said, you know, she used to.
Speaker B:She saw the Doors live and, you know, she used to love the Doors and stuff until she realized it was just music.
Speaker B:And he was like, what we used to do is.
Speaker B:Is we attached emotion and we attached all sorts of things to music and.
Speaker B:And going to a concert and seeing a band, and there was a feeling that went with it, and there was a.
Speaker B:A moment that we kind of attached to that.
Speaker B:And what we've lost is now it's just music.
Speaker B:And we.
Speaker B:People don't.
Speaker B:Not us.
Speaker B:Like, but the big us Society has lost that connection to things like that now.
Speaker B:Like, you go to a concert and everybody's just there filming it on their phone.
Speaker B:They're not actually watching it, they're looking at their phone to make sure that they got the shot right and that they can put it on Instagram and it's, they're disconnected.
Speaker B:You know, even Coldplay, he has to sit down on the stage and say, can everybody just put your phones down for a minute while we play one song?
Speaker B:I mean that, that pretty well sums it up.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:So to build on this whole conversation, I don't know that it matters whether music is AI anymore because people don't assign the same importance to it and kind of connection to it that they used to.
Speaker B:So if it is just ambient music playing in the background to anywhere all of us go, it's not the soundtrack to our life anymore like it was for us.
Speaker B:It's now just something that happens in the background.
Speaker B:Then I, then I fear for all of the music industry because it will literally all.
Speaker B:Just because there's no need to have anything better than AI because it's just background music.
Speaker C:The one exception to this, I would say is 8 to 12 year old girls and Taylor Swift.
Speaker C:Yeah, it is becoming, it is becoming the background story to their lives.
Speaker C:And my daughter started collecting vinyl because of Taylor Swift.
Speaker C:She's eight.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker C:She's got a pink vinyl, blue vinyl and she has a little record player in her room and she'll sit and listen to Taylor Swift and she'll know.
Speaker A:And I'm 54 and I've got five Taylor Swift albums.
Speaker A:I think she's brilliant.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:But, but what I'm saying is there are.
Speaker B:God help us if Taylor Swift saves the music industry.
Speaker C:I know she's introduced my daughter to vinyl.
Speaker C:She gets excited by the product.
Speaker C:She listens to the whole album.
Speaker C:She loves the storytelling.
Speaker C:She, she connects to it.
Speaker C:And you know, she's 8 years old, so there is, you know, it's not totally lost, I think, you know, is.
Speaker A:This a question, is this a question of time then?
Speaker A:Because.
Speaker A:So let me propose this idea then.
Speaker A:So when I, when I listen to something.
Speaker A:So Dave sent me a Pink Floyd thing the other day and you know, to do with.
Speaker A:I was listening to Wish you wish you were here recently and listening to that and thinking, well, you know, when I'm listening to that music, I'm not thinking about the fact that when they wrote that, you know, that they were singing about their former band member who went kind of do lally and left very early on, which is what, what the album was about.
Speaker A:I think he took too much acid, basically.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:On a trip and then went on a trip and never came Back?
Speaker B:Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker A:But, you know, when.
Speaker A:When Waters and Gilmour are making that album, that's.
Speaker A:That's what they're thinking about.
Speaker A:But when I'm listening to wish you were here now because.
Speaker A:Because of time, Because I listened to that, what, in the.
Speaker A:In the sort of season.
Speaker A:My memory is sitting in a park near Oxford on a swing, camping, and, you know, just being drifting, going as high as I could on the swing and listening to these sounds and just, you know, on my Walkman and just being.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:So I hear, wish you were here.
Speaker A:That's what I hear.
Speaker A:So, okay, so then that's a question of time, then memories, isn't it?
Speaker A:So AI's just arrived.
Speaker A:Music has just arrived.
Speaker A:What if there's lots of AI music over the next decade, and then in 20, 30 years time, somebody hears that song that they heard 20 years ago and it just takes them back to that place?
Speaker A:It's not about the song anymore, it's not about the artist anymore.
Speaker A:It's just about their personal memory of where they heard that and what was going on in their life at the time.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker A:You know, it's the same with empathy.
Speaker B:It's the same with empathy.
Speaker B:This is my argument for empathy.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:I can have empathy because empathy is from the person who feels the empathy.
Speaker B:It's not by the person who gives it.
Speaker B:And it's the.
Speaker B:So that's exactly what you're saying, is the person who hears the music that makes an impression on them at the time, and then when they hear that music later, it's.
Speaker B:It takes them back to that spot.
Speaker B:It's exactly the same.
Speaker B:In my mind, that's the same thing, right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Bowie used to say, famously, you know, that people just ask him, what does.
Speaker A:What does this mean, these lyrics mean?
Speaker A:You know, and he said, I don't know, what does it mean to you?
Speaker A:Because he literally used to just write down random phrases, cut them up in bits of paper, scatter them on a desk, and however they landed, that was the order of the lyrics, Right.
Speaker A:There was no more to it than that sometimes.
Speaker A:Right, so.
Speaker A:So any deep meaning that you've, as a listener have found in it, he didn't put it in there.
Speaker A:It just, you know, you found your own meaning in it.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So there's no reason why you couldn't do that.
Speaker A:All right, so that brings me to the next thought discussion, which is this.
Speaker A:What if you are, you know, say, Bowie because he's not around anymore.
Speaker A:What if you are Ed Sheeran, whoever, right?
Speaker A:One of the big artists of the day.
Speaker A:What if you are working on that album?
Speaker A:What if you are six tracks into that album and you're struggling on track seven, you've written two verses, you can't quite get the final verse sorted.
Speaker A:What if you went to ChatGPT and said, here's the first two verses.
Speaker A:Write me a third verse, please, and it writes it for you.
Speaker A:Are you going to tell anyone?
Speaker B:No, no.
Speaker B:And also, everybody's doing that already.
Speaker B:Anyway, we had Tom Morley, who was the drummer, Riscriti Polity, on my podcast, and I've also talked to Daniel Bedingfield on.
Speaker B:On my show as well, and both of them use AI extensively.
Speaker B:As soon as it came out, they started using it for ideation, they started using it to help them, you know, if they got stuck in a particular part.
Speaker B:So exactly what you're talking about, I think all of the artists are probably using it.
Speaker C:Open about it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And they're.
Speaker B:They're open about it.
Speaker B:I mean, Daniel Bedingfield talked about it on stage at the AI Summit last year and said, you know, he uses it.
Speaker B:He'll just be sitting around the house and I'll go, I wonder what, like, drum and bass and bangra together would sound like.
Speaker B:And he just goes and asks AI to create some samples.
Speaker B:And the AI goes and creates it.
Speaker B:And he goes, yeah, that sounds cool.
Speaker B:I'm going to work on that.
Speaker B:And then he goes off and does his thing, but he uses it for the creativity and to.
Speaker B:To do all of that.
Speaker B:And I imagine film, you know, Ben, we're going to do the same thing.
Speaker B:When we're working on videos and film, it's, you know, you can start to pull together trailers for stuff, you know, very, very early, sort of sizzle reel, trailer type stuff that would have taken hours before.
Speaker B:If you can just get it right, you can feed it in and it.
Speaker B:You can get the vision of what you want.
Speaker B:That saves days, weeks worth of work.
Speaker A:And for the artists, they get the credibility, don't they?
Speaker A:Because no one really knows, Right?
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker A:We don't know if Ed wrote those lyrics in the end, then, do we?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Have you guys?
Speaker B:Do I care?
Speaker B:I don't care.
Speaker A:Fake Drake.
Speaker C:I mean, he got millions and millions of listens, absolute millions, until he was taken down.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And there's AI, Oasis as well, which I listened to before this.
Speaker C:And it, you know, people.
Speaker C:Some people are raving about it.
Speaker C:I thought it sounded pretty naff, to be honest, compared to the sort of rawness of the Gallaghers, but it's There are AI versions of bands out there already.
Speaker A:Well, they were just copying the Beatles anyway, so, you know.
Speaker C:Well, and what they did with the Beatles is they've created tracks with a younger sounding voices.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And yes.
Speaker A:Well, then and now is it the Beatles track that came out?
Speaker A:That was.
Speaker A:They did exactly that, didn't they?
Speaker C:So I guess at some point, you know, there's gonna be an artist that licenses their voice to AI, makes money off it.
Speaker C:And when that happens, there'll be a lot of people following suit, I think.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker A:What about going the whole hog and just doing an entire track but.
Speaker A:But not releasing it.
Speaker A:So imagine you're Ed Sheeran and you, you go, I can't come up a final song for the album.
Speaker A:Yeah, it doesn't need to be the greatest song ever because I've already got written the three great ones, but I need a filler for the album.
Speaker A:Would they go to.
Speaker A:I'm not saying specifically it's young, because maybe he wouldn't.
Speaker A:But would.
Speaker A:Would an artist go to Suno, type something in, get a song, go.
Speaker A:Actually, that does sound a bit like me.
Speaker A:I'll go and actually I'll just record that myself.
Speaker B:They're doing it.
Speaker B:They're doing that already.
Speaker B:They're doing that already with music.
Speaker B:And that Tom Morley, the drummer guy that I had on, he's also an artist.
Speaker B:He has a fine arts degree from university, actually.
Speaker B:And he was not a musician to start off with.
Speaker B:He became a musician later.
Speaker B:And he makes, he hand makes ceramics and he does all sorts of art, watercolors, all sorts of things.
Speaker B:And when he gets commissioned to do something like, he'll get a big.
Speaker B:And again, he's talked openly about this, so I'm not giving away any secrets, but he's come up with a specific way.
Speaker B:So what he'll do is somebody will come to him for a commission and he will go to AI and he'll have it create 200 versions of.
Speaker B:Of an image.
Speaker B:It could be, it could be like a hotel chain comes and says, look, we need, you know, we need 150 different images for hotels that are going to go all across the world.
Speaker B:We want them in watercolor.
Speaker B:We want them with these, you know, here's our color theme, blah, blah, blah, can you come back to us with some ideas?
Speaker B:And he'll literally go and get AI to create 500 different versions of images.
Speaker B:And he curates that down to the ones that are the good ones.
Speaker B:He then says, here are some ideas for you.
Speaker B:They then further go in and select and say, okay, we like these ones, these ones, these ones.
Speaker B:And then he goes and physically paints the ones and then goes through the normal process to take that.
Speaker B:He makes it into an actual painting.
Speaker B:They then go and make prints from that and then they go through the normal process to do it.
Speaker B:But he's like, I can create 500 different versions in 30 seconds.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Using my prompts.
Speaker B:And it becomes a curation exercise.
Speaker B:So there are exactly artists doing exactly that.
Speaker B:And I would bet you money that there are certain artists out there who are probably getting AI to ideate 10 or 20 or 30 different versions of a song and then going, yeah, okay, I like that one.
Speaker B:And then that's the one that they then take into a studio and start to demo with.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:One of the questions I had for today was, you know, when do we think we'll get the first big AI hit?
Speaker A:You know?
Speaker A:And when I say big, I mean, I'm thinking like, near the scale of like Daft Punks Get Lucky or something like that.
Speaker A:A truly global, you know, moment where around the world people are listening to this song and it's just a massive, massive, massive hit that, you know, every time you get into the car for the summer, that's what you're hearing.
Speaker C:I think it will come off the back of an advert.
Speaker C:I think a lot of big organizations are using adverts now, and I think a AI piece of music will be written for that and that will.
Speaker C:That will then go on to be a sort of.
Speaker A:So do you think in the next couple of years, or do you think it's further?
Speaker A:Because my, my.
Speaker A:We asked this in a group and I think the general consensus was around two to three years, but I felt it was longer, personally.
Speaker A:And the reason I.
Speaker A:I'm going to D Hill was that I don't think the record industry will push it.
Speaker A:And I think you need that to happen for.
Speaker A:For a truly global hit to.
Speaker A:To break out in that way.
Speaker A:And because there's no artists behind it, because there's no thing to promote, there's nothing to go on tour, which is where the money is being made a lot.
Speaker A:A lot of the times these days that they just won't get behind it in the way that they would, you know, a traditional artist.
Speaker A:And so that could slow that.
Speaker B:That from happening down, you know, unless they do it.
Speaker A:Unless they do it.
Speaker B:I think the big challenge is also going to be in the.
Speaker B:In the copyright, I think, in the U.S.
Speaker B:well, in the U.S.
Speaker B:in the last week, I think it's now gone to federal court where the federal court upheld the idea that if it's created by AI that there's no copyright claim.
Speaker B:So you don't own the ip, you don't own the copyright of it.
Speaker B:So I think that will probably make record companies and book companies and anyone else and film companies and everything else hesitate.
Speaker B:More than anything else it will be the fact that they won't be able to claim any ownership over that.
Speaker B:But again, for normal people, doesn't matter.
Speaker B:Normal people don't care.
Speaker B:They're like, doesn't matter.
Speaker B:I just want a funny image to put or I want some good background music to put on my Instagram post and I don't care.
Speaker B:Yeah, and I suspect, Ben, to build on your idea that it will probably come from something like an Instagram post where somebody's done that and they've just.
Speaker B:Or Instagram has a.
Speaker B:Create some music for me to go in the back of this, that's, you know, something's going to happen, it's going to go viral and then everybody's going to want to hear that song.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:A big breakout one of these silly songs you get on TikTok that suddenly become used.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker C:I think you're right, Dave.
Speaker C:I think this is where the image generation, the video generation, the music generation is great for people that want to do projects that five years ago wouldn't be able to afford to do it.
Speaker C:So I think back maybe 10 years when we used to hire a musician and a composer for a big set of DVDs or a course and we'd probably spend a couple of thousand pounds getting him to produce a Vivaldi esque piece of music where he rises and you'd have a dramatic montage of people shots and you know, and we did that a lot and those are still much better than the stock music we download or the AI music.
Speaker C:I mean, I go back to some of that stuff and think even though it was a few thousand pounds, it was still quite low budget relatively compared to bigger projects.
Speaker C:The quality of that is amazing and emotive and it, it went to what we were editing and we were able to go back and say actually, you know, the edit slightly, you know, craft it.
Speaker C:And now I just, we, I can't remember the last time a client said to us, we've got £500 for music, we got a thousand pounds of music.
Speaker C:What can you do?
Speaker C:You know, it's like $50 from premium beat.
Speaker B:It's a race to the bottom.
Speaker C:And you know, and some of that stuff Is great though.
Speaker C:You know, we subscribe to various music sites and you get stems and beds and you know, get short of it and you know, you can still do a little bit craft.
Speaker C:It's not the same.
Speaker C:It's not the same as having a composer, but for corporate work or some of the jobs that we do that are seen by 200, 300, 400 people or internal, it' good enough.
Speaker C:And I think just there is a bit of a race to the bottom, but it also allows people at home who wouldn't have done some of this creative stuff in the past to access, as you say, that middle ground of reasonably good quality stuff, good assets, good music, good templates, and be able to produce something quite slick.
Speaker A:It's definitely democratizing stuff, isn't it?
Speaker A:And same with photography, with the image stuff.
Speaker A:I mean, one thing I have noticed with the music generation is there are certain types of music seems to do quite well and others that it sort of struggles with quite a bit or just doesn't do very well.
Speaker A:So the example to give you is like with hip hop, rap music, it seems to be really good, really good at that.
Speaker A:Like, I can produce on Zuno stuff that, you know, I think, well, if you got that, if you got Stormzy to record that, it would be absolutely killer.
Speaker A:You know, without a doubt.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's really good.
Speaker A:And even actually the vocal performances on Zoono are, I think, you know, terrific.
Speaker A:You know, you can get stuff that really sounds like Eminem or whatever.
Speaker A:Whatever you're going for.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:But you try and do sort of prog rock, it's just like, oh my gosh.
Speaker B:Like.
Speaker A:Yeah, this is so cringy.
Speaker C:So little of it to be trained on.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:It's just like Spinal Tap or something.
Speaker A:It's like, oh my God, this is so embarrassing.
Speaker A:It can't take music certain.
Speaker A:Certain genres.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:It's just when I made the.
Speaker A:The last album, there were elements of classical stuff that I put into it and quite a few of the songs.
Speaker A:And actually the classical stuff was.
Speaker A:Was.
Speaker A:Was really good and really easy to do, actually.
Speaker A:Easier than, you know, you would think.
Speaker A:Almost counterintuitive.
Speaker A:You'd think pop would be easier than classical, but it's almost the other way around and.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know, but trying to get the kind of.
Speaker A:I suppose there's something intrinsic about good rock that is very difficult to get a machine to understand or capture.
Speaker A:What is the.
Speaker A:The nuance between it being good and embarrassing seem to be quite close.
Speaker A:And that.
Speaker A:That fine line is really difficult to.
Speaker C:Atdt, you know, brilliant and embarrassing.
Speaker C:You know, cannons on stage, you know, I can't imagine AI putting cannons into something.
Speaker B:It's not going to make Jethro at all.
Speaker B:No, but like, no one, no one could have come up with Jethro at all like now.
Speaker B:And AI would probably just burn out if it's like trying to understand that.
Speaker C:Or Tom Waits or, you know, any of the.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Here's a question for you, al.
Speaker C:So you've probably the most experienced on here about creating music.
Speaker C:Do you ever listen to your own creations?
Speaker A:Mainly when I'm recording it and producing it.
Speaker A:But once it's done, not really.
Speaker A:You know, occasionally it pops up on a kind of playlist on in the car or something, you know.
Speaker A:You know, on Apple you can say like, you know, just play my music, whatever.
Speaker A:And it just pulls everything from this on your system, basically.
Speaker A:So occasionally one of my tracks comes on and my wife generally hits fast forward.
Speaker A:Yeah, she's in the car.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But, you know, not really, no.
Speaker A:It's something I listen to at the time when I'm producing it.
Speaker A:And for me, the reason I make it, it was saying I sort of got into actually just a threat to heart failure when I was 37 some years ago now.
Speaker A:And it was a sort of cathartic thing to do.
Speaker A:I couldn't do much at that point.
Speaker A:I was a bit, you know, I could.
Speaker A:I could wander about a bit, but I was pretty immobile for a while.
Speaker A:And yeah, it was something that I could sort of be creative and do and get the brain busy while I was sort of in recovery and then sort of, you know, I really enjoyed this and I never, never stopped doing it then.
Speaker A:But for me, making music is about the process of doing it.
Speaker A:And actually, you know, I suppose in the end, AI has kind of killed that a bit for me now because I.
Speaker A:I've not made an album for two and a half years now.
Speaker A:And if you think about that, you know, that pretty much lines up with, you know, the arrival of AI and part of the reason for that now is it's too easy.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And basically I could now produce sonic in Sune, which is probably better than anything I could have ever produced using my other methods before.
Speaker A:In a few seconds that would have taken me a few weeks.
Speaker A:And it sort of loses the point to.
Speaker A:It's gone, you know, why would I even do that?
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And also there was a point.
Speaker A:Well, there's also a thing where, you know, 10 years ago, if I create something and paid it to somebody, they'd be like, wow, that's really good, Alan.
Speaker A:You know, and so there's some kudos there for me, isn't there?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:In a sense.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You know, of being honest about it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:But now if I create something, they go, oh, did you use AI?
Speaker A:Yeah, it took five seconds.
Speaker A:It sort of made it a bit pointless and a bit worthless really.
Speaker A:So in a way, I don't know if I'll ever make any.
Speaker A:I mean, I might do the odd little thing like I did for here, for this, for our theme tune or for, you know, the bond thing, shits and giggles and stuff, but to actually sit down and think, I'm going to spend six months working on an album and creating something, I don't know, I, I need to, I actually don't know.
Speaker A:I need to get some thought as to whether I'll ever do that again.
Speaker A:I mean, I've made like seven albums and maybe, you know, maybe it's done.
Speaker C:You know, so come back to Alan's comeback tour.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:No one knowing these.
Speaker B:But I think that that pretty much sums up, I think, what we were trying to uncover in the conversation.
Speaker B:I mean, that you're not, you will not be the only person who feels like that.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And you will not be the only person who, you know, starts to look at it in it and, and is quite a.
Speaker B:I mean, that's, that's quite sad in a way.
Speaker A:It is.
Speaker B:And a bit depressing.
Speaker B:You know what I mean?
Speaker B:Not like sad in the truest sense of the word.
Speaker B:Like, you know, because you, you had something that you were doing, AIs come in and it's like, it can probably do it better and it's.
Speaker B:What it's taken away is your desire to continue to do the thing that you like to do.
Speaker B:And that's the saddest part of it.
Speaker B:And I think that's, that's, I think that's a really interesting insight, first of all.
Speaker B:And I think that's what.
Speaker B:Maybe, maybe you've expressed it in a way that I haven't heard anyone else express it, but that's what's happening all over the place.
Speaker B:It's the same in film, it's the same in art, it's the same in photography, it's any of the creative type industries, for sure.
Speaker B:But it's also more than that.
Speaker B:It's like it.
Speaker B:Because it becomes easy, everybody just like, what's the point of even.
Speaker B:What's the point of writing a research paper now?
Speaker B:Because you can just get AI to do it.
Speaker B:Well, the point of writing the research paper is the study and the research that you need to do to.
Speaker B:To physically write the stuff.
Speaker B:And that's how you learn.
Speaker B:But that's now kind of become just like, it's a moot point.
Speaker B:Like, you don't even need to do that.
Speaker B:So that's going to be one of the unintended consequences.
Speaker B:I think we're going to see 20, 30 years down the road is that's what's really gonna.
Speaker B:That's what's gonna eat away at society.
Speaker A:And we're gonna see that a lot, aren't we?
Speaker A:I think with, you know, in literature and other areas, I mean, when AI eventually spews out the Great Gatsby, then what, you know, then.
Speaker A:Well, then what do you do if you're a writer, you know, if.
Speaker A:If you can put a prompt in and it's going to write the Great Gatsby, you know, okay, you haven't got the escort, Fitzgerald's backstory of all the toil and personal torment that he was going through.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But for the average reader, they're probably not even aware of that anyway.
Speaker A:They're just reading the story.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:And for the music, you know, the listener, you know, who listens to a song that I can create in 15 seconds now using Suno, their experience of that isn't any different if they listen to the stuff I did 10 years ago.
Speaker A:Exactly, the music.
Speaker A:But for me, the personal journey and the highs and lows and the experience of creating it and the frustrations and then the successes and being happy or unsatisfied, that's what it was about, you know, and that's just.
Speaker A:That's gone.
Speaker A:It's just gone.
Speaker A:Completely gone.
Speaker A:You know, it's.
Speaker A:It's sort of.
Speaker A:It's sad.
Speaker A:It is sad.
Speaker A:And, you know, I'm obviously a huge AI advocate.
Speaker A:I wouldn't be doing this if I wasn't.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But there are definitely effects to that.
Speaker A:And yeah, for me, it's kind of.
Speaker A:It's sort of.
Speaker A:Yeah, I.
Speaker A:I'm on pause, and I'm not saying never, never, but at the moment, for me, it's kind of like, you know, I.
Speaker A:I can see the point.
Speaker C:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker C:I agree.
Speaker C:That is a.
Speaker C:It is.
Speaker C:There's a sadness to that in a way.
Speaker C:And I think.
Speaker C:I think one of the big problems is it takes quite a long time to get good at something, you know, Takes a long time to get good at drawing or painting or music creation.
Speaker C:And I think if you.
Speaker A:For.
Speaker C:For me, for example, drawing.
Speaker C:I don't I'm not talented at drawing, but I really like doing it.
Speaker C:If I was going to sort of retire and spend, you know, 10, 15 years or however long I had to learn to draw, I'd still probably be quite average at the end of that.
Speaker C:And I think, think is that that sort of area where you feel quite disenfranchised to do something where you're not going to be amazing at something you're not going to be great at, but there is still a value in.
Speaker C:In learning to do something and to struggle and to.
Speaker C:So I think we might have to re.
Speaker C:Evaluate how we approach some of those things.
Speaker C:It's not necessarily about the output all the time.
Speaker C:Obviously you want to get better, but that there is a journey in.
Speaker C:In hard work, getting better at something for yourself as well.
Speaker A:Well, yeah, I think you're actually right.
Speaker A:Look, if I was.
Speaker A:If I was Tom York from Radiohead, right, I wouldn't be going, oh, that's it, then I'm going to give up, right, because, you know, incredible talent, right?
Speaker A:But I'm not an incredible talent.
Speaker A:I'm an average music producer, right?
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So what started at the start, you know, his AI is very good at doing the.
Speaker A:The average stuff.
Speaker A:It can create the fuller tracks, I create the fuller tracks, right?
Speaker A:So it can.
Speaker A:It can.
Speaker A:It can do that with ease.
Speaker A:You know, if I'm Tom York, I'm going to think, well, or whatever, but I'm just going to carry on doing what I'm doing because there's still value, because that's another level and AI hasn't got there yet.
Speaker A:Yeah, but what if it did one day?
Speaker C:But like I was saying earlier, I still think we resonate with people's creativity, people's story, people's live performance, the journey we've been on with them, you know, sitting through Kid A and thinking, oh, will I get this one day?
Speaker C:No, probably not.
Speaker C:You know, there's.
Speaker C:You know, I don't.
Speaker C:You probably could say to AI produce something as esoteric as this, but, you know, you've been on that journey with Radiohead all those years, so that.
Speaker C:That's still going to be there, I think.
Speaker A:Okay, so Redhead have always bent the rules and the boundaries and they were the first band, I think, to do an Internet release album, weren't they, and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker A:So they've embraced technology.
Speaker A:So what if Tom's currently in the studio doing something with AI and they come out and they release an album.
Speaker A:They say, this was all AI generated, actually.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:We've Been involved.
Speaker A:But it's AI generated.
Speaker A:But it's Radiohead.
Speaker A:We're going to perform this live, we're going to play it.
Speaker A:You can come and watch us do it.
Speaker A:But it's AI generated.
Speaker B:What if they do it and don't tell you?
Speaker A:Does that work?
Speaker A:Well, okay, but.
Speaker A:So if they don't tell you, you won't know, presumably.
Speaker A:So then it's just Radiohead, but they tell you later.
Speaker B:Let's say they go and do a whole tour and the whole trick to it is, is that they come out with a new album, they go and do the tour, everybody loves it, they play Glastonbury, they're playing the new songs, all the stuff.
Speaker B:And then after all that's done and they've done the big thing on it, they come out and they go, actually, that whole thing was AI generated.
Speaker B:All we did was we just learned how to play the music that AI generated and we took that and we did the performance.
Speaker B:Would you feel differently about it?
Speaker C:I mean, it's hard to say without listening to it, isn't it?
Speaker C:Obviously the album would be called Kid AI.
Speaker C:Sorry, bad joke.
Speaker A:Yeah, well, there you go.
Speaker C:It's a good question, Dave.
Speaker C:And I think it's hard to say, isn't it?
Speaker C:Because there's.
Speaker C:I've been fans of, you know, bands over a 20, 30 year period and there's definitely patches where albums come out and just can't be bothered with that.
Speaker C:You know, U2 is a prime example.
Speaker C:You know, post Joshua Tree, I mean, I loved two or three albums around that and after that was just like filler albums or didn't resonate with me and, and then tuned back in again 10 years later and post Joshua Tree, Acting Baby Ben.
Speaker C:Yeah, no, you're right, actually.
Speaker C:No, you're right.
Speaker C:Acting Baby is absolutely amazing.
Speaker C:But do you mean there's.
Speaker C:There's.
Speaker C:Yeah, the last two or three albums I've been, you know, I still will.
Speaker B:Try, but is it any different than a book being ghostwritten that people don't know?
Speaker C:Yeah, I don't, I don't understand the process with ghost writing.
Speaker C:I know for, you know, some of these autobiographies and certainly high volume sales stuff.
Speaker C:But how, how many, like fictional novels are totally ghost written and someone just puts their name to it?
Speaker B:It don't know.
Speaker C:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker C:I don't know.
Speaker C:You know, and I guess I'm assigning qualities to some of this.
Speaker C:You know, whether someone, you know, Jordan releases her autobiography versus Dostoevsky, you know, I'm Not.
Speaker C:I'm not sure at what level.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, it was.
Speaker B:The Lee Child did it because his brother took over writing the Lee Child.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think the Reacher books and some of his other.
Speaker B:Maybe not Reacher, but some.
Speaker B:I think it's Reacher.
Speaker B:Some of the other stories.
Speaker B:But in the beginning, his brother was doing it and didn't.
Speaker B:They didn't tell anyone.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:So his brother was actually ghost writing the stories and they were going out under his name.
Speaker B:And then eventually he was like, yeah, I'm not gonna do this anymore.
Speaker B:You just go out under.
Speaker B:Yeah, he's still doing the stories, but, you know, that's a.
Speaker B:That's a famous example.
Speaker B:And I guess it's.
Speaker B:I don't know, man.
Speaker B:I just.
Speaker B:I think, you know, people go back and they look at old art and stuff and they realize, you know, the old masters were painted by the apprentices and they weren't actually painted by the person at all.
Speaker B:And it's, you know, it's that same kind of thing.
Speaker B:It's like.
Speaker B:I guess we're back around to, again, a background to the beginning with it or.
Speaker B:Or earlier in the conversation.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:The listener assigns the value and if the listings are.
Speaker B:If the listener loves it, then it's lovable and it's great.
Speaker B:And that's where the value comes.
Speaker B:And it doesn't matter whether it's AI or it's a human.
Speaker B:If somebody.
Speaker B:If somebody.
Speaker B:It touches somebody or it engages with somebody and it grabs them in whatever way, then it's done its job.
Speaker B:And I think it's just equally valid at that point.
Speaker C:That's a fair point.
Speaker A:I wonder if we need a Grok for AI music.
Speaker A:So what I mean is, obviously you've got these Grok models that will be very abusive, shockingly abusive, I've got to say.
Speaker A:Actually more than I was expecting.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But actually, one thing I have noticed with Suno and the rest of them is that you can't really create anything that's dark.
Speaker A:I mean, some of the stuff that I sort of made a few years ago under Audio Blanket, people can go and listen to that on Spotify or whatever, Apple music.
Speaker A:But some of it's quite.
Speaker A:There's sort of quite sinister, dark undertones to some of it.
Speaker A:You see that in Nine Inch Nails, you see that in Radiohead.
Speaker A:I have yet to get Sune to produce anything that's even close to Nine Inch Nails.
Speaker A:You know, already ahead, it just doesn't seem to be able to do it at all.
Speaker A:And it's not, not for the want of asking, by the way.
Speaker B:I think they tell it not to.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:So that's what I'm saying.
Speaker A:Do we need a grok for music that interesting?
Speaker A:Just get rid of the guard, get rid of those guardrails and allow us to make, you know, Black Sabbath or whatever it might be or really get into it, you know, because it feels at the moment what it produces is a very sort of sanitized version of music.
Speaker A:Music.
Speaker B:This is the problem with guardrails.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:In general is we get a very sanitized.
Speaker B:We.
Speaker B:We get a controlled view of everything by whoever makes that AI.
Speaker B:So right now all the AI responses we get for everything is controlled by the views of a few tech pros in California.
Speaker B:And what they're.
Speaker A:Tom York, I want to go to Google or whoever and say, give me.
Speaker A:Give me the version without the guard or else let me play about that.
Speaker B:And they may be out there.
Speaker B:We just don't know.
Speaker C:Yeah, what, what I'm interested in is, you know, what's to stop a Spotify or another streaming service creating an AI streaming service where it cuts out the record labels.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Personalized radio.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:It's got to happen, hasn't it?
Speaker C:I mean, you know, the record companies, if they don't do it, somebody else is just going to come up with.
Speaker C:And if that's copyright free and, and you can stream it everywhere.
Speaker B:Okay, so I didn't.
Speaker B:I wasn't going to mention this, but.
Speaker B:Because I keep talking about my own podcast and I don't like that, but we like it.
Speaker B:But you got the knowledge on it.
Speaker B:We just had an interview with a classical composer who, his name is Rene Gross, and he, one of his, One of his CDs was named in Robert Plant's top.
Speaker B:Robert Plant named it as one of his top things to listen to.
Speaker B:He is in the process of working on a way that will change the way music is produced, published.
Speaker B:And basically he's trying to upend the entire music industry from the bottom using bitcoin, not Bitcoin, blockchain and some other stuff to essentially get the, the music company, the, the big publishing companies out of the, out of the loop because the artists don't get any money at the minute.
Speaker B:And so they're working.
Speaker B:He and some other people are working on a tool to do that, to essentially rebuild the way the entire music industry works.
Speaker B:He talked about it a little bit at the end of the show.
Speaker B:So it might be interesting just because this is music focused and some other people might find it interesting as he gets a little bit further down the road though, we'll definitely get him back on to look into that.
Speaker B:But that, that is exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker B:It's more of a.
Speaker B:It will be a way for artists to be able to go directly but at a scale and also be able to protect, to sorry, protect their, their music and their IP using blockchain.
Speaker B:So everybody will be able to, to account for it better as well.
Speaker C:And you know, new artists that want to create an album but can't afford to can get people to nft, buy a chunk of it, you know, buy a percentage of the, the rights to the future of it and self fund without the record labels.
Speaker C:I mean people have been talking about that for a little while and you can get the right, a small bit of the rights to something to help your band that you love get, get going.
Speaker B:Was it Teddy Swims that talked about the record industry that did a social post?
Speaker B:I don't know if it's Teddy Swims or someone else, but they, they were outlining, you know, how it actually works.
Speaker B:And basically where the music business has got to at the minute is, is now apparently the big record labels won't sign an artist unless they already have millions of social followers.
Speaker B:And then it's kind of like, well, if you've already got yourself 5 million followers on social platforms and stuff, why do you need a record company?
Speaker B:Like just go and do it yourself.
Speaker B:And that's, that's the next step, right, is it's if you give them a different way to do it.
Speaker B:I think that a lot of those people will be like, well, you're not signing me until I've got millions of followers.
Speaker B:I've already got the millions of followers.
Speaker B:I don't need you anymore.
Speaker B:Here's a question.
Speaker B:That was the whole point of the record company was to get them to the point that they had had millions of fans.
Speaker B:But now you have to bring that to the table yourself.
Speaker C:So can I ask a question then on that?
Speaker C:And I don't know if you know the answer to this, but if you have millions of fans but you don't have a record company, can you still get your music on Apple Music and Spotify or are you prevented from doing that?
Speaker C:Yeah, you can.
Speaker C:So the record labels don't prevent you from.
Speaker C:No, no.
Speaker C:So anyone can.
Speaker C:A bit like we do with the podcast?
Speaker C:You can.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:Yeah, same.
Speaker C:Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker A:Yeah, there are organizations like Record Union and stuff, you can just kind of submit and your stuff.
Speaker C:Is that what you did, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:So you get stuff up there, straightforward.
Speaker A:It's pretty simple.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, be interesting to get him on here maybe in a year's time, see, see what he's done and be good to circle back to the subject.
Speaker A:Probably my final thought on this and is, you know, just going back to the Spotify thing is, you know, you can already with Suno, there's almost like a radio station version on there.
Speaker A:So you can go into the app and then say, you know, I want to listen to this kind of music.
Speaker A:And then it just, just creates AI music continuously, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.
Speaker A:It's okay, you know, if you put, if you're working, you're sitting, working on your computer and you just want some background music.
Speaker A:I've had, I've had it going.
Speaker A:Emily's walked in and out.
Speaker A:She's.
Speaker A:She's not going to go on.
Speaker A:What on earth that.
Speaker A:You know, it's.
Speaker A:Yeah, if you heard it on the radio, you wouldn't bat an eyelid.
Speaker A:You know, it's just there, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah, there's people making 30, 40 grand a month on YouTube by just having a sort of lo fi channels.
Speaker B:You've probably seen them.
Speaker B:But you know, it's just that lo fi music that just plays like in that they're doing it.
Speaker B:I'm listening to it now.
Speaker B:It's on in my office.
Speaker B:It's what I have on all day time.
Speaker C:All the time.
Speaker C:Lo fi beats.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah, have it on all the time.
Speaker A:You can get around all the, you know, we used to see those stickers on pubs, you know that the music rights people, you know, live performance or whatever.
Speaker A:Yeah, but if you're just playing AI music, there's no rights.
Speaker B:Right, exactly.
Speaker A:You can.
Speaker C:Yeah, we used to call in the office in Brixton all the time by PRs saying, Do you have a license to play music?
Speaker C:And we're like, we don't play music.
Speaker C:We're just editing all day with headphones.
Speaker C:Well, yeah, but if you play us, if you play the radio, you need a.
Speaker C:So yeah, just get around that with lo fi beats.
Speaker B:I used to work for the newspaper licensing agency and they used to call up and strong arm people and say, do you ever make a copy of any, anything in the newspaper?
Speaker B:It's like, yes.
Speaker B:Okay, well, you can be sued for copyright infringement if you, if you've like literally said taking a Metro article, made a copy of it and given it to someone, then you have to pay copyright, you have to pay a fee.
Speaker B:For that.
Speaker B:So what they do is they call you.
Speaker B:It's the same thing, right.
Speaker B:They call you up and say you have to pay a license for that.
Speaker B:And yeah, I stopped working for them eventually because I just totally didn't agree with the way they were.
Speaker C:Do you remember that campaign in the 80s?
Speaker C:Home taping is killing the music industry.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:When actually it was just feeding it and making it bigger here.
Speaker C:Yeah, there we are.
Speaker A:Right, well I think we've probably gone on long enough on this one, haven't we?
Speaker A:So the wreck we've.
Speaker A:We've come to the end of the record.
Speaker A:It's time to change the size.
Speaker A:My needle drop moment.
Speaker A:There we are.
Speaker A:Lovely.
Speaker A:Well, thank you both very much for.
Speaker A:For the time today and indulging me to talk about AI music as well because I say it's a bit of a passion.
Speaker A:Really enjoyed it obviously that's.
