“I got to know tonight

If you’re alone tonight”

Gregg found Armin. Felice’s brother-in-law likes to live large. I was happy with Uber, until…

They stopped coming to the hills. If you could even get a driver, they’d drop you just minutes before they were supposed to pick you up. Uber used to be dependable, but now… As for those who are Lyft fans, Lyft’s in deep trouble, because they never diversified. Their market share and value is declining, even though I still check their prices, which are sometimes cheaper, but I wouldn’t even risk Uber in the hills.

And I have airport anxiety. I need to be there early. This came up at dinner the other night, I’ve never been late for a flight. But we almost missed our plane today, because halfway to Denver Felice realized she’d left her license and credit card in her ski vest. I keep my passport in my computer bag, and I’m not going anywhere without my computer. Yeah, you can operate on an iPhone. But if you want to type something, like this, even an iPad is insufficient.

But we turned around, and then someone drove the items to the Conoco station at Copper, and we made our flight. I’d like to tell you that Clear saved the day, but in truth the line for standard admission to screening was pretty short.

So I didn’t get much sleep last night, I was too wound up. And I tried to sleep on the airplane, but I only got about fifteen minutes.

Felice wanted to fly to Burbank, which is very low key. This is what people in the East can’t understand about Southern California. The baggage carousel is outside. I used to be shocked that schools had outside hallways. But it’s all de rigueur where it’s never cold and almost never rains.

So we had Armin picking us up. But he wouldn’t pick us up where regular people pick people up, right at the curb. You see he has a TCP license. You know, those little white numbers on the bumper of the Escalade…

That’s the standard black car these days. Lincoln stopped making its sedan, the standard “limo” of yore.

And I was pissed Armin wouldn’t pick us up right where we were and we had to schlepp our gear to his location, but it turns out with a TCP license you can’t drive up close and personal.

So we’re driving home. And I’ve always wondered the source of Armin’s music that is shown in the dash. Was it a mixtape (and don’t tell me cassettes are coming back, please), or SiriusXM, or…

Armin told me it was Spotify. He just punched in seventies and eighties, he loved that music.

So I started asking him about his favorite acts. The first person he mentioned was Lionel Richie. I like “All Night Long,” and I’ve come to love “Brick House” from weddings, but my favorite Commodores song is from when he’d already left, “Nightshift.” It’s all just too MOR for me.

But then Armin was mentioning a cornucopia of musical genres. And suddenly, nearly sotto voce, he told us he loved country music. The old stuff. And he had to play us “Rhinestone Cowboy.”

All these years later, it sounded really good. I hated it when it was overexposed way back when, but I can never forget Johnny Carson singing it while sitting on a horse on “The Tonight Show.”

And he’s mentioning acts from the past. But then Armin says his favorite artist is Garth Brooks. And then he mentioned Jake Owen. So I wondered, did he like Morgan Wallen?

OF COURSE! He said in the way of a dyed-in-the-wool hipster.

And as our luggage was being brought into the house, Armin told me his favorite band ever was Led Zeppelin.

I told him my favorite Led Zeppelin song was “Ten Years Gone.” He was flummoxed. So I pulled it up on Spotify on my phone and…he didn’t know it.

But then, when all the luggage was inside, he nearly begged me to come back to his car. He apologized for eating up my time. He just had to demonstrate his car stereo, it was so great.

Sure, I’ll come listen to your car stereo.

And he brings up “Ten Years Gone,” and boy does it sound phenomenal.

And then I saw him scrolling, and I saw “Ramble On,” so we listened to that.

And then he asked me if I liked the Scorpions. I said I loved “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” had hung with them back in the day, but they weren’t one of my favorites.

And Armin started searching for this one special Scorpions song to play me. Yet he couldn’t find it.

But as he’s scrolling, from the back seat, I see…

“Hysteria.”

“Pyromania” was the breakthrough. People will tell you they were into the previous album, but it got no airplay, Def Leppard was seen as somewhat lightweight. I remember when we were negotiating for Iron Maiden to play the first Rock in Rio, Rod Smallwood insisted that Maiden go on after Leppard, if Leppard wasn’t excised from the bill entirely.

But then came “Photograph.”

It was the harmonies, the Beach Boys element in aggressive rock, even if you couldn’t call it metal.

And then there was… F-f-f-“Foolin’.”

And “Rock of Ages.”

And if you had the album and played it, which so many of us did, there was “Too Late for Love.”

And then came the car accident, and a start with another producer, and it was three and a half years before the release of “Hysteria.”

You see the special sauce was Mutt Lange. Pronounced “Lang-eh” if you’re overseas, not like the ski boot, as we do in the good ole’ U.S.A. Word was Mutt could make the albums all by himself. Stayed in the studio after everybody had left and perfected the sound. And “Hysteria” was released in August of ’87 and…

I bought it the day it came out. It was different from “Pyromania.” As in all the tracks somehow sounded the same, they blended together, but the first track that jumped out was “Animal.”

And “Hysteria” wasn’t an instant hit. The first single, “Women,” underperformed. It was followed by “Animal,” which was a smash when it was released first in the U.K., but someone in the U.S. overthought it and put out “Women” first. And “Animal” did better than “Women” in the U.S., but man, the sheen was gone, Leppard looked like has-beens to the general public, a band that could not follow-up its success.

And then came “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”

Credit MTV. Leppard was fresh-faced as opposed to the grizzled veterans of the hard rock scene. And unlike so many of the hard rockers, women LOVED Leppard.

And the rest is history.

There were endless singles. The album sold twelve million copies in the U.S. Leppard was bigger than any act today, they were ubiquitous, part of the culture in a way that even Drake and Taylor Swift are not. That might be hard to believe if you’re a youngster, but you didn’t live through the MTV era, the eighties, when if it was on MTV, it was truly everywhere. Radio took its clues from MTV. World domination was still a thing. If you made it on MTV, you could tour the entire planet.

Now “Hysteria” is sixty two minutes and thirty two seconds long. That might sound average today, but not yesterday, when CDs still hadn’t peaked, when you had to fit all the music on the vinyl album, which I purchased first.

Meaning…it took a long time to digest.

I loved “Armageddon It.” And, of course, “Rocket.” And the closer, “Love and Affection.” But as time passed, a song that never registered previously started to emerge, to the point that the title track is now my favorite, that’s right, “Hysteria.”

“Hysteria” is subtle, it doesn’t have the in-your-face sounds of “Photograph.” It sneaks up on you and then you’ve got to play it incessantly, to be in the groove, to be in the mood.

By this point I had the CD, so that’s what I did, put it on endless repeat.

“Out of touch, out of reach, yeah

You could try to get closer to me’

But it’s not about the lyrics at this point, but the guitar riff, played over and over and over again.

But then Joe Elliott needs to know…are you alone tonight?

“Hysteria” is personal. Not for everybody in an arena. You hear it and think you’re the only one listening, it boosts your mood, to make an approach…

And then that hypnotic guitar figure once again.

And “Hysteria” is nearly endless, it’s five minutes and fifty four seconds long, which is an eternity for a pop number. And that’s what “Hysteria” is. It’s definitely rock, but it’s poppy.

It breaks down in the middle. There’s essentially a brief drum solo. And then the guitars truly begin to wail. Remember when we had guitar heroes? And everybody knew who they were? Before people thought playing fast was everything, before rock was eclipsed by hip-hop. Actually, all over America there are kids playing this music, not only at the School of Rock, just go on YouTube, not only guys, but girls. They replicate the classics of yore.

And after more singing, there’s another guitar solo. But subtle, it doesn’t beat you over the head. And Joe exclaims in the background. And then it fades away, and all you can ask yourself is…WHAT WAS THAT?

It’s like a train, a mirage, a fantasy, came rolling down the track, pike, road, you were mesmerized, and then it rolled right past you. You couldn’t let it fade away, you had to catch it, you had to play the track again. And again.

Not that you could explain the magic. It was a feeling. Sure, the rock critics of yore, with their leather jackets and skinny jeans, couldn’t endorse “Hysteria,” it wasn’t noisy, it wasn’t thrashy, it wasn’t cut in New York, it was edging on slick when rough was exalted.

But the public didn’t know all this. And the public won this war, not only on “Hysteria,” today critics are meaningless.

And “Hysteria” sustains.

And I’ve got to say, Armin’s system in his Escalade was top-notch. The music was plenty loud, but he’d turn down the peaks, as if I couldn’t handle it, I may be seventy years old but…TURN IT UP!

Then I thought about listening to this music via earbuds. It wouldn’t work, you’d miss the flavor. Oh, you can buy headphones that overemphasize the bass, but then you’ve got inaccuracy. And that’s not what Mutt was selling. He was presenting precision, you could turn it up and it didn’t distort, it just got louder, took over your whole life.

And Armin is in the front seat beaming, he starts to testify about “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”

Which I know by heart, all of us who lived through those years do.

So I figured I’d had enough, we’d peaked, we’d bonded. And I opened the door to get out. But Armin rushed out of the driver’s seat. To meet me by the tailgate, before I went into the house. It was like he’d met a long lost brother. He held his fist to his chest. Then he put it against mine.

He said some words, but I don’t remember them, I just remember the connection, the feeling.

And I walk into the house and tell myself what I lived through was real. It was not like today, where there’s music, but it’s part of the machine, it’s sales, not art.

Of course there are exceptions, but it’s akin to what it was like prior to the Beatles.

And there are people who say the seventies don’t compare to the sixties. And that the eighties are a joke. But compared to today…

In the sixties they told us rock and roll would never die.

In the seventies they beat it into our heads.

And the eighties were a victory lap. The sound was everywhere.

And you put on certain records and…

“It’s such a magical mysteria

When you get that feeling better start believing

Because it’s a miracle…”

That’s rock and roll.

And today it reached ninety four degrees in the Coachella Valley.

When I lived in Utah, I was stuck in Utah. I could get in my car and drive twelve hours to Los Angeles, but flying was out of the question, and long distance phone calls were expensive. You left town and never heard of your friends thereafter, unless you returned to town. You instantly lost touch with your college buddies.

But that was then and this is now.

The world has shrunk. And it’s only going to get smaller. People get on planes just to see a concert. You never lose touch with anyone you’ve ever known. And you never feel at your limits, like you’re in danger, no matter where you are. Happens all the time, unprepared hikers call for rescue on their cell phone. Furthermore, if you’ve got a new iPhone, you can SOS via satellite, from everywhere. And except for a few places, like the top of Mount Everest, a helicopter can land and pick you up. I’m not saying you cannot die out in the elements, but that feeling, of freaking out, in the danger zone, it doesn’t happen that often anymore.

Today it was twenty degrees and windy at the top of Vail. And I mean WINDY! Dan said he felt like he was being blown backward. I loved it. I love being in the elements. It makes me feel alive. Especially in a snowstorm, when it gets so quiet.

I never went to Florida or Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands on school vacations. Those were for skiing, for going to Vermont. But at some point, the season would end, the snow would disappear, and you’d have to wait until November to ski again.

But if you’re in the west…

The west used to be exotic. Going to Colorado or Utah, never mind Wyoming, to go skiing! Wow, most people never did. As far as Mammoth Mountain in California, open to July 4th, that was nearly unfathomable. You heard about it, but information was scarce. There was no internet, never mind cams.

So when I graduated from college I wanted to go west.

That was when you were afraid of rednecks, when you didn’t want to drive with long hair south of the Mason-Dixon line. But I’d cut all my hair off back in ’71. I’m a contrary. I don’t want to be a member of the group. I don’t want to be judged just like everybody else in the group.

And now there isn’t even a group. Except a very large one, the baby boomers. But like that old Kinks song, I’m not like everybody else. I chalk it up to my father. All the lessons a dad teaches his son, about fitting in, being a member of the group, holding your tongue, girls… My father was not that person, whatsoever. He’d talk about money, getting ripped-off, how the world worked. He taught us how to stand up. But he never taught us how to be a cog in the system. Get along to keep a job. It’s natural to most people, but not me. Hold my personality back? Make friends just so I can move up the ladder and get another job if I get fired? I had no idea. As a matter of fact, I kinda believed the world ran on merit. What a crock. The world runs on relationships. Unless you are unique and have merit beyond the usual suspect, but you still need relationships.

I also thought my path was forever. Those musicians who now work straight jobs… I’m gonna pursue my goal until I die, even if I starve along the way. Isn’t that what life is about, pursuing your dream? Going all in? I remember my shrink asking me about a fallback position. I told him THERE IS NONE! And if there is one, you’re never going to make it. Because that’s how hard it is to make it. But people don’t know this. People would prefer to live on the outside, sans risk. Go to the show, but not become an equal with the artist, never mind being friends with them. And most people don’t want to know how the world works. Because it’s too disillusioning and they feel bad about themselves. They tell themselves they could have made it if they wanted to, but they didn’t want it that bad. But they don’t know how bad you have to want it, like in that old Don Henley song, not bad enough.

I listen to “The End of the Innocence” constantly. And I sing it in my head. It makes so much sense. But that was about Reagan, and Reagan is deep in the rearview mirror. And no one wants to hear what oldsters have to say about anything, so the oldster artists stop producing. Yet oldsters run the government, how does that work? No wonder today’s youth are disillusioned. If you have to explain to the person how a computer, or a smartphone, works, you know they’re over the hill. There are no instructions, you have to learn by doing. But these are the same people who don’t know how to work their televisions. It’s a steep learning curve, but once you get over the hurdle…

I’m thinking about all this, because tomorrow is my birthday. A milestone. A number that no one can say is young. I’m old. How did this happen?

I look back and realize I lived all those years, I had all those experiences, but somehow I thought there was more. But there’s not. My brethren are passing. It’s downhill from here. You can try to deny it, but you can’t beat father time. You live, you die, that’s the way of the world.

So I’m riding up the gondola two weeks ago and the woman across asks me how old I am. She’s the same age I am. And she looked terrible. So how did I look?

The youngsters look at me different. I feel no different, but they perceive me differently. I’m old. Like my parents. So many try to deny it, with hogwash about sixty being the new forty and crap like that.

But I wouldn’t want to repeat it all, it was too hard. I don’t want to go back to high school. Nor college. Going back to school? Never!

I don’t want to be twentysomething going to the bar, trying to meet someone, unsuccessfully.

Man, life is tough.

It’s easier if you jump through the hoops, but how much fun is that?

So my goal is to ski on my birthday. Vail isn’t open every year on April 22nd, but when it is, I’m here. I’ve also gone to Mammoth on my birthday, because this is who I am. If I ski on my birthday, I’m still myself. I haven’t given in, or given up. I’m still me. I haven’t lost a step in my mind. I don’t care what others think.

And when I’m in the elements…

I like that best. The aforementioned quiet in a snowstorm. A stormy day or a sunny one. It makes me feel alive. My mantra is you walk out the front door and you never know what will happen.

And that’s what life is about.

Two weeks ago it was in the fifties. Now it’s like the middle of winter, although the sun doesn’t set until after seven. It’s like Christmas is around the corner.

Really, it’s like late October, early November in Vermont. A terrible season. When it’s cold, sometimes bitter, and it snows, but then it melts. You know something is coming, winter. I like the summer, but winter is my favorite. I’d rather be cold than hot. And today I was wearing Under Armour 3.0 underwear and down mittens and…

It felt good to be alive.

The modern skis, with their sidecut. You lay them on edge and they turn. It’s magic. You get a feeling, that isn’t quite as good as sex, but it’s in the ballpark.

So tomorrow I’ll get back out there. I go every day, it keeps me regular. Even if I don’t want to go. Because I’ll be riding the chair in a mediocre mood and then something will happen. The sun will come out, I’ll have that one special run, the perfect turn.

That’s me.

And the fact that it’s snowing out…shows there are no rules anymore. It’s not that it never happens at this time of year in Vail, but we’ve got global warming, it didn’t snow in New York City and they’re partying at Coachella and…

I’m trying to party in my mind. This birthday is scary. But it’s just one day, and then it will be past. I’ve got one special day, where I can eat crap and everybody has to defer to me and…

On too many birthdays I’ve been bummed out and missed it.

I’m going to try and enjoy tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

Tune in Saturday April 22nd to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

You got a lot right here. It’s just sad that the gimmicky sound-a-likes is what people’s first impression of AI is. A few examples of tech’s disruption in music:

1. Beatles/Abbey road and the 8-track, and then mellotron (first sampler IMO)
2. Herbie Hancock breaking the rules and using synths in jazz mid 70s with the Jupiter 8
3. Drum machines early 80s putting drummers out and people panicking.
4. CDs mid 80s and changing the feel from vinyl
5. Late 80s sampling which so many people called “not artistic”
6. 90s computer tracking replacing tape which echo’d a lot of above
7. Autotune in the 2000s and its implications
8. Plug ins and minimal prices (or subscription) that mimic any instrument to the common.
9. 2010’s Distribution available to all that allows anyone to get their art to the world
10. 2020’s Bandlab and iphone apps that bringing competitive recording to everyone with a smart phone.

Hard to see anytime people reverted back with the exception of the vinyl boom. Sure it’s fun to occasionally record on tape or other. Personally I think we’ll have another creative boom when technology advances and you can record into a computer (or other) without needing a screen (combo of voice commands and AI) which will unlock all perceived screen/grid oriented boundaries.

Embrace tech, enjoy the disruption, even a little chaos, and get ready for the next boom and creative breakthroughs that makes the music industry the best industry.

Mike Caren

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Like when the Mellotron first appeared. The musician’s union tried to ban it, thinking that orchestras would be put out-of-business. Which would have never given us “In the Court of the Crimson King”.

Rich Nisbet

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Preach Bob! You are absolutely right in this analysis. When Lucien demanded the DSP’s remove AI tracks a few weeks ago, I laughed out loud. This is tantamount to standing in the middle of a rainstorm yelling at the sky for the sun to come out. The genie is out of the bottle and we can’t put it back. I hope the industry reacts the way you describe- embrace it, leverage it, license it. I remain dubious.

Tom Truitt

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Re AI music, Seen this?

Very interesting article in the Guardian…….

“We got bored waiting for Oasis to re-form’: AIsis, the band fronted by an AI Liam Gallagher”: https://bit.ly/41O98LB

It sounds great, but now I can go and see an artificial ABBA, listen to an artificial OASIS……

I dunno man……..

Should I be excited or scared??

I Really don’t know……

Alan Pell

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You’ll like this:

“Liam Gallagher says AI version of himself sounds ‘mega’

“We’ve heard a lot of stories about artists and labels complaining about AI-generated music recently. It’s about time we had some good news AI stories. Well, while Drake might not like hearing himself re-voicing tracks by other artists, Liam Gallagher thinks he sounds “mega” on a new – and entirely fake – Oasis album purporting to be a lost recording from the late 90s.

“Billed as being by AIsis, ‘The Lost Tapes Vol 1’ is the creation of musician Bobby Geraghty. It’s actually a collection of songs written and recorded by his former band Breezer. He then trained an AI on Liam Gallagher’s voice and replaced his own vocals with new ones created by the AI technology. Aside from the fact that it often sounds like Gallagher is singing with a mouth full of wool, it’s pretty convincing.

“Asked for his opinion of the album by a fan on Twitter, Gallagher replied: ‘Mad as f*ck. I sound mega’.

He told another that ‘it’s better than allthe other snizzle out there’.

So, it seems there’s one big name artist sold on the AI revolution. He’ll no doubt be glad to hear that there’s a second volume of AIsis tracks ready to go.

Listen to ‘The Lost Tapes Vol 1’ here: https://bit.ly/3KU5x7U

 

Jake Gold

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I think I sent you this link from Steve Blank before, but here it is again.  The entertainment leaders never get tired of claiming that new technology will hurt the industry.

An excerpt of the article from 2012 follows:

Why The Movie Industry Can’t Innovate and the Result is SOPA

The Movie Industry and Technology Progress

The music and movie business has been consistently wrong in its claims that new platforms and channels would be the end of its businesses. In each case, the new technology produced a new market far larger than the impact it had on the existing market.

1920’s – the record business complained about radio. The argument was because radio is free, you can’t compete with free. No one was ever going to buy music again.

1940’s – movie studios had to divest their distribution channel – they owned over 50% of the movie theaters in the U.S. “It’s all over,” complained the studios. In fact, the number of screens went from 17,000 in 1948 to 38,000 today.

1950’s – broadcast television was free; the threat was cable television. Studios argued that their free TV content couldn’t compete with paid.

1970’s – Video Cassette Recorders (VCR’s) were going to be the end of the movie business. The movie businesses and its lobbying arm MPAA fought it with “end of the world” hyperbole. The reality? After the VCR was introduced, studio revenues took off like a rocket.  With a new channel of distribution, home movie rentals surpassed movie theater tickets.

1998 – the MPAA got congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), making it illegal for you to make a digital copy of a DVD that you actually purchased.

2000 – Digital Video Recorders (DVR) like TiVo allowing consumer to skip commercials was going to be the end of the TV business. DVR’s reignite interest in TV.

2006 – broadcasters sued Cablevision (and lost) to prevent the launch of a cloud-based DVR to its customers.

Today it’s the Internet that’s going to put the studios out of business. 

Sound familiar?

Why was the movie industry consistently wrong? And why do they continue to fight new technology?

Regards,

John Swetye

P.S. Lessons Learned

Studios are run by financial managers who lack the skills to exploit disruptive innovation
Studio anti-piracy/copyright lawyers trump their technologists
Studios have no concern about collateral damage as long as it optimizes their revenue
Studios $110M/year lobbying and political donations trump consumer objections
Politicians votes will follow the money unless it will cost them an election

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You’re so right Bob.  But like Napster before it, one of the REAL issues here is lack of control.  You remember that in the final negotiations, the Majors who were offered $1B and they STILL said no – for no other reason than it would totally usurp their control.

Ritch Esra

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I have been a computer programmer for almost 55 years, and change is constant, and not always in the areas you expect.

Ultimately we will transition to cyborgs (computer embedded technology – some people have the beginnings of it already). Then finally uploaded to the cloud.

Isaac Asimov wrote a story about this where finally all humans uploaded and merged with the master computer with the final task to reverse entropy.

And in Asimov fashion, the computer finally came up with the solution and ended the story with “Let there be light”.

Regards,
Dave Machanick

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Jackson Pollock famously said, “I deny the accident.”  In other words, the work he did that may have looked random to others was anything but.  The creative impulse originating in his brain and ending up on the canvas, was a culmination of thousands of moments, gestures, memories, visions – like throwing a lasso over and over until there ARE no accidents.  That is the humanity in the work.  AI might imitate a Pollock with imitative or random choices, store information about every square inch of every painting Pollock ever painted.

But AI will never paint a Pollock, and we all know it.

Liz Dean

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Nearly everybody is missing the bigger opportunity for creators with AI – applying the tools to our own content instead of relying on public web content. Imagine the power for a musician to upload all their work, released or not, to a proprietary database that they control. Then AI tools can help them to generate more music from their own existing work!

I did that with my writing. I created a database with nineteen years of blog content, over 1,500 individual posts plus six of my books and I use a closed ChatGPT interface. I can create new posts from my own work, summarize my own ideas, craft email responses based on my words, and much more. The future of AI is using it with our own stuff.

Where’s the Bob Bot? I can help you make it!

David Meerman Scott

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Great topic Bob! I signed up for ChatGPT and it is a great tool. However, that’s it. It’s tool! It will be up to all of us as to how to incorporate AI into our music creation processes. AI won’t replace us!

People have told me that I’m good at math. That is laughable! I am terrible at math, but really good at using Excel!

Cheers!

Sarra J-G

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Are you sure about that? Chat GPT 4 can already write AI Lob Befsetz exponentially better than it could a week ago. Give it a month and it will have you down pat. It’s going faster than we are able to catch up to.

Please listen to this from the people who created the social dilemma.:

The jaw dropping part here is that when polled 50% of AI programmers say there is a 10% chance that AI will destroy humanity. They ask, would you fly in a plane that 50% of engineers of the plane said there was a 10% chance of crashing?

This is society level changes at speeds we cannot deal with, by capitalists racing to just “see where it goes”

Sherry Kondor

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Imagine. Artificial Intelligence studies thousands of hours (within 12 hours) of Robin Williams or Richard Pryor or Joan Rivers, the passed-on comedians. Their characterizing-speech, intonation, jokes, laughter and timing etc, what could happen ? Their ‘characters’ could be brought back to ‘life’ with new jokes (initially just audio),  as AI would learn from a database of thousands of jokes which would be a Robin or a Richard or a Joan style joke. Those characters, all three, Williams, Pryor and Rivers would have been gleeful at their ‘return’, if they knew then what we know now !!!

On the music side, this is only the beginning of the unfathomable intelligence range that AI will accumulate. We, as a species, are on the cusp of having ‘forever’ artists and the first in the queue to join that will be the female artist called Madonna. She will absolutely LOVE having new songs she has written being released by her AI ‘artist’ in her classic style, impersonating her as a 25 year old artist when she is 80 !!

I can totally see that happening, very soon, with new contract clauses being added to include the AI ‘formatted’ artist catalogue as part of the ownership of the major label, if it hasn’t been written already. You being a lawyer may know that more than most…

There needs to be an alternative universe for the new music era other than the Big Three because they’ll just embrace anything that returns a profit for their shareholders, irrespective of the need for creative musical growth for the next generation. The Beatles or Prince didn’t start off being brilliant, they grew into those shoes, I Wanna Be Your Lover to Purple Rain took some learning time as did I Wanna Hold Your Hand to Let It Be. Really no company should be allowed to own music for life. Melody is, after all, our first communicative language globally. Think about that – how you were communicated with as a one day old baby until a year old. Loving tone (melody). Whether you were Chinese, French, Indian, African, American, Italian and whatever religion…

Also, hold onto your record collection folks, that’s where the real stuff will still sound amazing. Will there be a Bob Lefsetz AI newsletter arriving in our emails in the future? I have hundreds stored, no doubt others have too. Could your Intelligence be Artificially created too Bob !!  Who knows….

Eddie Gordon

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Hey Bob, hope you’re well. Couldn’t agree with you more.

Please check out this article on a song that is the talk of the country in Israel, showing how a great song combined with cutting edge AI, is making such a difference.

https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/all-news/article-739367

Video: https://youtu.be/7ND1Pw6QD_0

MICHAEL MICHEL

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It’s not Napster redux, but it’s an effective opening line. You say lots of accurate things and some that miss the point. Copping people’s voices without their approval or compensation is just plain wrong, against copyright and right of publicity precedent. Laws upon which m living depends.

Can we stop the technology? Nope, and we’re not trying. As you say, it’s never worked, and never will. I get it. Can AI be of help to creatives? Of course.

But should a streaming service be able to post something that is not what it says it is, whether it is created by AI or by real people using old school real techniques? I don’t think so.

And is the stuff that AI is creating right now actually pretty bad? Pretty much, everything I’ve heard. Low common denominator brown food product, devoid of flavor, ultimately unsatisfying. Might not always be that way.

Your licensing concept makes a certain sense on paper, co-opt it, don’t try to kill it. But, when it’s a voice or a likeness, what if the AI entity says something in a way the scraped artist doesn’t like, libelous, slanderous, or simply unbecoming? Or is it in violation of an exclusive contract? Don’t  they have some say in what goes out under their name? Especially when they had eff-all to do with its creation other than to exist?

Can I make a fake Lefsetz Letter, pass it off as you (not as a cop or a parody or satire) and say a ton of really bad inhuman off-the-charts uglyuglyugly baaaaad stuff? But, hey man, it burnishes your brand, you’re worthy of being imitated, people really like you. Sorry, buddy, it’s wrong, and if I did it, I would deserve to be sued by you, and shut down. Hard.

Should labels have AI departments? Of course. Does AI music have a place in the market? See my brown food product statement above. Will these end runs keep happening. Or course. We’re looking at the wild west until some true actionable guidelines are laid down by the USCO, or the CRB, or some other detested government agency.

But back in the earliest days of sampling, sampled songs and records weren’t being credited or compensated. Now they are. The same thing applies here. Get permission, get a license, give credit, and PAY US.

Drake and The Weeknd, or Eminen, they had no say in their voices being scraped, and that ain’t right. There was no disclaimer, no “in the style of”, just the letters “AI” in parentheses. And the reason people are doing it is because they can. Or they might profit from the use of something someone else owns. Not right.

What if there was a technology that allowed me to copy your house key just by pointing a beam at your front door. What if I just wanted to see if could do it, give copies to my friends, be a big shot. And what if one of my friends actually used it. That one is easy, right? There’s no reason why this one should be hard.

We’re not going to kill the tech, we don’t want to. I ain’t afraid of the future, we’ve had this conversation before. It wouldn’t work anyway. But I will fight for the rights of artists to not allow their work to be copied, deployed and monetized without permission and compensation. To fight for free speech while prohibiting screaming “fire” in a crowded theatre.

Responsible, actionable guidelines. Not the wild west. That’s what I believe

Dan Navarro

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For the last 40 years I’ve been asking for a ‘computer program’ that you feed 1000 number one songs into and see what it comes up with

Chris Stein

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At the risk of sounding snarky, I mean no disrespect to these artists, but AI easily generated credible copies of them because their music is already computer generated. Computer beats, computer sounding voices, little or no melodic structure or chord changes. Mumbled lyrics.

Let’s hear a credible AI-generated Beatles song.

Steve Schalchlin

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For years, artists have used technology (autotune etc) to sound robotic.
For robots to use technology now to sound like the artists is just fair game.

Aloha
Steve London