It’s hard to overstate the absurdity of what’s unfolding in new music consumption right now.

Music streaming is being “enshittified” in exactly the same way as social video and image feeds. First it was curated music chosen by real human music experts (I used to call myself one). Then it became algorithmically optimized, but still based on real music. Now the platforms are being flooded with cheap, synthetic content generated at industrial scale, because it’s more profitable for everyone except real music creators and workers.

The development is accelerating at an alarming rate. 97% of listeners can’t tell the difference between real and AI-generated music according to a new study. Spotify has removed 75 million “spammy tracks”, but the platform is already flooded and they now seem to have thrown in the towel (i.e. voluntary labelling).

Attention and streaming time are finite resources, and every time an AI song is played, it’s a real work that isn’t being heard and a slim royalty check that gets even smaller.

If current practices continue, this will only get worse. At that point, I’m out as a music consumer and will have to find other ways of enjoying the human-made music I love.

The solution requires collective action. The music industry must stand unified and confront technology companies, demanding not only fair compensation but direct influence over how human creative labour powers their products. The UMG-Udio deal shows that solutions are likely to exist through hard-fought negotiations that establish fair compensation, licensing frameworks that give rights holders influence over business decisions and product design, and actual control over how creative labour is exploited. Walled gardens and establishing AI-generated music as its own clearly labelled content vertical (same Deezer/Ipsos-study found 80% of consumers want this!) can ensure it doesn’t compete directly with real music. But it requires rights holders to stand together, file lawsuits, engage in direct licensing negotiations and demand legislation that protects their intellectual property from being used as a free lunch for machines.

Breaking Rust is not topping the charts because of the inevitable march of technological progress. It happens because the system in its current, negotiated form allows it, incentivizes it, and because we as consumers have been conditioned to accept that any new technology introduced by big tech represents inevitable progress.

Rust Never Sleeps. Time to change the system.

Written in reaction to AI generated country slop topping the Billboard charts: https://www.nme.com/news/music/ai-generated-country-track-walk-my-walk-tops-us-billboard-chart-3908829

Illustration: Thomas Eakins Cowboy Singing, 1916 (public domain)