AI is the latest iteration, but financial predators targeting musicians with false promises is kind of an institution at this point

Oh btw this has nothing to do with the topic; I like having visuals in my blog posts, you'll have to forgive all the cats (or ignore the text entirely and scroll down for more cats)

To get the important part up front: you cannot in any way engage in good faith arguments with people who adhere to the "music production is more democratized for the people now that AI is here" because in order for them to take that position, they have to:

1. Willfully ignore that people have been writing bangers with shit equipment and purely word-of-mouth marketing for your (whoever is reading this) entire life.

2. Fail to understand that there is nothing class-conscious about paying tech bros a licensing fee to steal content from those who came before while cooking the environment with server energy costs so you can play-act at being a musician, especially when low income demographic areas are most likely to be negatively impacted by the impending climate collapse.

3. Misunderstand that tech bros selling you "Now you can stick it to the elites¹" is just another fucking bonkers scam that others have tried peddling for decades with purely financial interests surrounding making money off would-be rock stars.

Bespoke business models built around "how do we suck resources out of people who aren't going to actually follow through" have existed for a long time in every industry, but for music specifically since I was a kid learning how to play guitar in my room at my parents' house (much to their and my sisters' chagrin) I've noticed these....shall we say "phases" of the "democratization of music production!!!" claims that almost always serve to financially benefit someone who is not the musician. Some of these may even have variants that are good in nature but it's important to find the fine line between "someone offering a legitimate service" and "someone preying on the fresh blood".

Let's look at a few of 'em:

(Stay with me on this one because it's not gonna seem scam-adjacent at first)

The earliest I can remember was the proliferation of intentionally marketed knockoff instruments; cheaper, more mass produced versions of "your favorites played by your heroes" often from the major producers with the intent that you could buy a cheap version to "look the part".

This isn't that bad by itself since it does actually get completely functional tools in the hands of people with less means, but because the old adage of "fake it till you make it / act the part you want to play" are instilled early on in musicians, the need for "having pro gear" gets conflated with "is actually a good band" and the follow-up portion of this marketing was instilling the inferiority complex at the cultural osmosis level.

Sure you could have a music career on these 'starter' instruments...but ultimately you weren't supposed to. Pop culture at large would mock the knockoffs because they weren't "the real thing", the poorer kids with the Squiers² weren't taken seriously so they'd be recklessly encouraged to invest in a Fender, even at their own financial peril.

As a fun sidenote, this is the first electric guitar I ever owned (which I still use to this day); a Lotus brand Fender stratocaster knockoff that cost less than $100. I did countless modifications on it over the years, literally hot rodding this thing but then it was stolen by a UPS employee and sold to a pawn shop in Utah in 2005. That I got it back via Ebay is a wild story of its own lmfao - point is shit gear can be used to make great music goddamnit

So the instruments are now "in the hands of people" and it feels like a logical progression to look into a what a young band starting to play shows would face:

A promoter or booking agent with ties to a local club would offer newer artists with more or less nothing under their belt a dream opportunity: an opening or primetime slot at a music venue generally outside of their reach...provided they can sell the tickets.

Again, that may not feel super sketchy at a glance but they do this by making the band buy the tickets in advance, the scam being that a newer band is absolutely not gonna be able to sell that many tickets and they'll be at best drained of their finances but more likely in actual debt, but the promise of "you get to play at the cool venue where the bigger bands play, your name up in lights", "you'll network with more important people" etc is what drags these artists along. The promise of "now YOU can be the big band" because again, "act the part until you have it" is sold to every musician.

It may only work once with a particular artist, but the money has already traded hands at that point and the shady promoter moves on to the next mark.

Note: There's also an iteration of this known as the infamous 'Battle of the Bands' scam that involves some kind of incentive prize (A booking agent deal, tour slot, opening gig for a major act, etc) getting as many young bands to pyramid scheme their high schools / workplaces etc with presale tickets so they can win a popularity contest after playing 2 songs at a 10+ band event, with most of the money going to the promoter. It's less "power to you, the musician" branded but it's in the ballpark.

This is Selmers. She'd never take your money and run.

So the band or artist identity exists, has some music written, maybe recorded a demo - what next? Time to get the word out - and the vultures start swarming.

This one has many forms but a great example is PR: someone with ostensibly a better rolodex than the musician would reach out to burgeoning, up-and-coming artists and present themselves as able to help the band bypass some of the middlemen by charging a hefty sum to shotgun the music to all of their contacts; in radio, in publicity etc...and most likely nothing would happen because the band is absolutely not ready for that yet even if the music is good. When nothing comes of it, the band could be approached for a second "campaign" with a different angle, which basically amounts to pulling a slot machine with worse odds.

This was more common before the 2010s and has evolved into to things like Electronic Press Kit platforms (EPK) where the same idea applies; younger bands pay a fee for effectively the opportunity to be added to a list on one these sites, under the guise of "we're putting you in direct touch with the decision makers! You don't need a record label or a fancy PR firm" (fine print of "we obviously don't make any guarantees you idiots, you absolute rubes"). The opportunities could be something like a slot on a tour, a 'guaranteed' soundtrack placement, an album review by a music journalist or hell even just a music blog writeup.

Some recipients of these arrangements (music bloggers, festival promoters, etc) started to do exclusive deals where they would only take submissions from these ecosystem...and when you consider that the platforms charge not only for the artist's membership fees but also per-submission for the individual "opportunities", the finances do not look on the up and up.

Selmers would also never promise you radio play with your unmixed demo

There have always been predatory capitalists with little or no interest in music looking to capitalize off of naïve musicians who want to "hit big". It just seems like the industry has moved on from young, inexperienced bands and solo artists...to people who've never penned a lyric, never touched an instrument, never programmed a beat...and instead of those people being encouraged to just fucking try any one of those things on their own and feel the joy of creation...they're being sold the "dream of AI".

But to answer the question above we have to consider what "democratization of music production" actually means:

It's almost always pitched against the idea that music has to be created in a recording studio with premium gear, mixed and mastered by highly paid engineers³, produced to be "radio ready" and then sold in record stores - and more importantly the notion that none of the above was possible for the average person to do without a record deal or industry contacts (nepo babies, etc)

That was always kind of a myth but since the idea predates the internet, predates iTunes, predates streaming etc - we've reached a period where from a technology standpoint, it is fully possible to create a home "studio" on a budget and release work to the masses with minimal effort.

I say "studio" in quotes because you don't need to sound treat a room. You don't need to buy an expensive dedicated audio computer. There are many free DAWs available that run on middle of the road computers or even tablets, there are plenty of free youtube tutorials on how to learn music theory or make beats, free digital instruments and sample libraries for almost any orchestration imaginable, free writing resources available for lyrics and music, cheap instrument rentals from shops, reasonable one-time fees to distribute an album to every major digital sales and streaming platform - that is the democratization of music production.

Possum will absolutely drop an entire album using a stage mic for vocals

People with the time to learn a craft and make an entire album without ever leaving their room - that's what the promise of "anyone can be a musician" is. Hell one of the largest websites for collating these resources is called the Bedroom Producer's Blog⁴.

Granted - there's an entire economic portion of this left out where people who have financial security will always have the head start; if your literal survival isn't dependent on working retail or a 9-5 for health insurance (or you have someone else paying your bills) you're clearly gonna have more time to spend on music in that room you never leave, but that's like a side conversation.

The AI barons are targeting people who think the idea of being a musician is cool and either do not want nor care to actually learn how to be a musician - which works out because when you expand that pool of suckers, you make more money.

Smokey appreciates person-made art and judges you for considering AI

At its best, generative "AI" as we know it right now is a plagiarism machine that cooks the planet while only providing benefit for the model-owner's shareholders.

It has no place in art, and its use should be openly shamed out of existence. It will not result in more people bypassing oppressive structures of music industry capitalism, and instead will flood the already-saturated market with subpar waste that will either drown out actual artist's attempts to reach people (Spotify's whole "our only competitor is silence" shit) OR result in confusing lawsuits regarding work being stolen and the courts being woefully unprepared to determine how to handle it.

Also again I stress, the whole climate collapse thing.

This next sentence will feel like an even weirder pivot than some of the above scam examples but there's this kind of bonkers band anime from 2019 called Carole & Tuesday that's worth mentioning; created by Shinichirō Watanabe and Studio Bones (Cowboy Bebop, Fullmetal Alchemist, Eureka Seven, the list goes on), the premise is it's set on Mars in the future and two musicians who write their own music without the help of AI (GASP) flip the music industry on its head because in the setting, that's fucking unheard of. Hate it when anime is burdened with the gift of prophecy. It's worth a watch (on Netflix in the US) even if it has some deeply stupid moments.

Anyway, Snowapple says good morning.