Totally agree with you on the copyright aspect: that was not an area I touched upon in the post, so thank you very much for pointing it out, since other readers may certainly want to know. Yes I am on Spotify, but that's more because it seems like its the only viable way to even share my stuff with friends-and-family given how completely it's become the base mode of distribution! Certainly haven't seen a $ from it, nor will I ever.
In general, I actually thought the entirety of your comment was totally on point and I'm very glad you made it. Look I know I'm not "making music" in any sort of traditional manner and I know how it's perceived. But it is something I've been devoting more time to, and getting a lot of pleasure out of. Ultimately I want to pass the inside of my brain on to other humans, and feel like this is a process that might help me do that given the particular circumstances of my genetic lottery (that is, vs using my vocal chords to sing or my fingers to play a violin). But I know this whole endeavor sounds a bit fake/slop... still I'd rather not put up euphemistic descriptions of my "new band" on twitter/insta but rather call it what it is. After all "songxytr" is pronounced "songshitter."
And thanks for your handle... I had missed that. Given I was sitting in Goa *yesterday... EDM is very much the mood.
>> Man pushes slot machine lever 5,000x and edits together best slot machine sounds to make song. Proceeds to beat chest about being a music maker.
While you may have meant that as a criticism, I don't think that is an inaccurate description of the process and do hope my post describes it as such. Yes sampling from the latent-space is an exercise in curating and harnessing randomness.
>> ...the mental justifications in the blog post are painful. I think you may find musicians bristle at your claim that all art is circular,
Yes I many/most do. This is not a method of "making music" that could have been contemplated 5 years ago (harnessing randomness = learning an instrument for 10+ years = wtf!!!??). But it exists today, and there are a lot of folks like me who are enabled by it. There will be some among us (not me!) who come along who are far more talented, and when this tech is shown to enable their talent, then I think the bristling will lessen.
>> [various issues about copyright]
I write my own lyrics from my meat-brain, so I may own the copyright to the words (maybe?). But I've chosen to release the words out into the world with no expectation of keeping that. And yes I understand I do not own the copyright to the songs/music/etc (I have read Suno's rights and recent Udio/UMG deals etc). In any case, I don't much care about that, nor am I looking to make $$$ off this. I wrote (words) for a long time... and can now put them to music. If there are any others of you out there who would like to do that, I would suggest you try these paths as well.
Just try not to push the button 1x... do it 5,000x! It's the effort and vision that keeps you from "slop" - and maybe you'll be the one who'll make it great fucking art!
Well I do believe it is "music" but whether it's any "good" I guess idk! I do enjoy the process though and believe there would be others who would as well.
Love the passionate replies!
I think I especially agree with this comment:
>> think that soon, some very accomplished musicians will learn to leverage tools like Suno, but they aren't in the majority yet. We're still in the "vibe-coding" phase of AI music generation. We saw this happen with CG. When it started, engineers did most of the creating, and we got less-than-stellar results[0]. Then, CG became its own community and vocation, and true artists started to dominate.
Hey its likely not going to be me, but let's be real - any user of this technology who has gone beyond the "type in a prompt and look i got a silly song about poop" stage will probably agree - someone's going to produce some bangers using this tech. It's inevitable and if you don't think so it's likely you haven't done anything more than "low-effort" work on these platforms. "Low effort" work - which a majority of AI swill us - is going to suck, whether its AI or not.
And while I have the forum, I do want to make another point. I pay more for a month for Suno than Spotify ($25 vs $9). Suno/Udio etc: do what you need to to make sure the artists and catalogues are getting compensated... as an user I would pay even more knowing that was settled.
Tools like Suno are fundamentally enabling. I'm about 40 years old and never "had the music" - not for lack of trying (music lessons at a young age)... but could never carry a tune or keep rhythm. I suppose its what being dyslexic feels like. If I were educated in a culture where music was fundamentally as important as reading or math, I suppose would have spent enough hours on it to eventually be passable... but I got frustrated, the music lessons stopped. But that doesn't mean I stopped appreciating or wanting to make music!
And then comes Suno (and OpenAI's jukebox before that), and it felt like my brain exploded... like the classic scene in a superhero movie when the power was given to me. Is my music good? No - but I spent years writing and fashioning poetry and all of a sudden can put that to music... hard to explain how awesome that feels. and i love using the tools and it's getting better and it's been fundamentally empowering. I know it's easy to say generative art is generative swill... but "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar".
Written poetry all my life, of varying badness. Have never had the ear or the talent for music though and – unfortunately – always felt I wanted to write “songs” not “poems.” Since 2017, I’ve been trying to “set my poems to music” using the machine. Started with my own algos in 2017, got going in earnest in 2020 with openAI’s jukebox; then last year a friend turned me to Suno.
Take the first poem talked about in OP’s article and one of the comments: “humans working hard to prove that they can make art that’s somehow even worse than AI slop.” I see this sort of comment a lot and I’m not saying that’s wrong at all – undoubtedly the vast vast majority of AI “content” is truly “slop.”
But I’ve also believed that genAI could be thought of like an instrument. Most music played on a piano or a synth or a guitar is slop; but it undoubtedly allows for music to be made that would otherwise not exist. I hope the same can be said of Suno (or whatever – hopefully opensourced alternative - follows).
My understanding is that this is a (somewhat) open-source project that does music generation. I haven't read the license to see how permissive it truly is, but being someone who has been involved in this space for a while, I can say that we definitely need more open-source projects. Suno is great but completely walled off.
So yeah YueAI team... if you're really going to keep this project open... don't listen to the haters and keep going.
Shouldn't the "sonic boom" here provide good data as to the existence of dark matter (akin to the Bullet cluster)? Anyone on hn with good background care to comment? Don't see anything in the article about it, but would think is one of the most significant experimental goals from detecting these sorts of collisions.
Yes! Difference is the current-gen EREVs are in a different league of performance with the advancement in electric powertrain and software. Think change between a Model 3 and a Chevy Bolt...
I would note that "hybrids" in China (where plug-in-hybrids have gone to 16% of market share, up 700bps y/y) is a fundamentally different architecture than hybrids in the west. In China (see Li Auto [1] for example) hybrids are Battery Electric vehicles (ie no gearbox, fully electric motor) with a small gasoline generator and tank to recharge the battery. This is "best of both worlds"... you get the electric motor, which is much more efficient / cheaper than an ICE transmission. Then the gasoline generator is just tuned to maximize efficiency (~44% efficiency to electric, vs the mid-30s on an ICE motor) so the net efficiency of the hybrid is far superior to a Prius-plug-in type structure. These are termed Electric Range Extender Vehicles ("EREV"s), which is type of a Plug-in Hybrid since you can charge by plugging in the battery or by filling in gas.
Really surprised haven't seen these EREVs in the west, although Hyundai is supposed to launch in US in 2026. Could be game-changer when that happens...
That does sound very high. Not sure where you are, but guessing you are in the US at least.
As a comp, SunRun puts out detailed cost estimates for their residential systems each quarter[1]. Their average system cost was $5/watt, but with 50% of their installs having batteries. So for an 8Kw system (if you were buying outright) you should have gotten a quote of $40k with a "half-sized" battery. After US tax incentives, your cost should be <$30k including battery.
But yeah, if you're not in a region where they do a lot of installs, you won't get that price...
Yes, the cost of GENERATING electricity will undoubtedly be cheaper at the industrial scale level than on your rooftop.
But that generated electricity is likely to be a region very far from your (or someone else's) consumption - needing a lot of money to lay transmission and distribution lines to the end consumer.
Co-locating with consumption makes the difference in total costs far closer.
Very location dependent, but please don't dismiss offhand without considering the very real transmission costs.
Find your statement fascinating as well, but could also provide another haha-but-serious explanation that I personally like... which is that there are universes with an infinite permutation/computation/value of state variables, and our one could only be "simulated" within the one universe where these sort of limits exist.
At this point, utility scale solar projects have reached scale in the supply chain, and cost estimates tend to be quite accurate once you break ground and start construction. Yes items such as solar panels tend to be procured upfront and costs locked in (so even if a 2020 style supply chain crisis hits, the extra cost tends to pass down the chain... even though, of course, that sort of crisis will always balloon costs.) The main risk on cost slippage in this sort of project would come from 2 areas:
1) pre-breaking ground (i.e. pre Final Investment Decision)... going through regulatory/licensing/permitting. This is exactly when you can't lock down long-lead time items and are subject to market prices.
2) the transmission line: unlike utility-scale power plants, these tend to be one-off projects and also face a lot of social challenges once construction starts. That price/time could definitely balloon, even after breaking ground/FID.
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I think mutable is generating an auto-wiki of your repo.
Separately - would like to know if wiki can be auto-generated from a large corpus of text. Should be a much simpler problem? Any answers would be much appreciated!
In general, I actually thought the entirety of your comment was totally on point and I'm very glad you made it. Look I know I'm not "making music" in any sort of traditional manner and I know how it's perceived. But it is something I've been devoting more time to, and getting a lot of pleasure out of. Ultimately I want to pass the inside of my brain on to other humans, and feel like this is a process that might help me do that given the particular circumstances of my genetic lottery (that is, vs using my vocal chords to sing or my fingers to play a violin). But I know this whole endeavor sounds a bit fake/slop... still I'd rather not put up euphemistic descriptions of my "new band" on twitter/insta but rather call it what it is. After all "songxytr" is pronounced "songshitter."
And thanks for your handle... I had missed that. Given I was sitting in Goa *yesterday... EDM is very much the mood.