Did Bandcamp just make the biggest mistake of the platform's entire existence?

Hi, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the Internet's sleepiest music nerd. Let's talk about Bandcamp. You know me, always looking for an excuse to yap about Bandcamp, especially given that one of the biggest and most talked about news stories of last week came straight from them: the announcement that the platform was basically going to be outright banning generative AI music there. You're not going to be finding any Suno or Udio slop making its way on Bandcamp, climbing its way up the sales charts, or outdoing and outperforming any of the human artists on the platform.

Now, for the most part, across the sort of music spaces that Bandcamp tends to cater to, this story was received super positively. However, recently, there has been some pushback from notable creators questioning whether or not Bandcamp's approach here is a bit heavy-handed.

Enter one Holly Herndon, whose music I have covered on the channel a couple of times, even talking about the ways in which artificial intelligence intersects with Holly's music. In fact, to Holly's credit, her incorporation of AI in her music came long before the whole craze that we know now. And she's also been very particular about how she uses AI in her music and super open about her process, working on her own AI models, having them trained on or create music based on compositions and sounds Holly has generated herself.

Given all this context, here's what Holly has had to say:

"I understand why Bandcamp is taking this measure, but it's a tourniquet. The human / AI binary is not going to hold, and will become a matter of superficial optics. I already have more authorship in my models than most pop stars do in their songs. People will already be using models to generate songs they then put a human filter on. Artists will integrate generated passages into works they orchestrate, and will soon train their own models. Another protection might be to flag accounts that post an inhuman amount of content, but that may seem too retrograde. We live with infinite media now."

Quite the statement there, and the more I read it and the more I think about it, the more it just sort of perplexes me. It feels almost like a threat more than it does, I don't know, an idea as to how to go about things more efficiently or fairly.

Bandcamp, regardless of what you do, the AI takeover is coming. This is just a bandaid.

Even her suggestion to curtail posters from essentially spamming with endless amounts of AI slop is amended with the mention that we just have infinite content now and even enforcing or instilling some limitation, that could be problematic, too.

Okay, so then what is your suggestion here? Because there has to be some kind of option that is preferable to forcing users to suffer by making them waved through waves of AI slop that go up to their chest. And I'm sorry, like, we don't actually have infinite media now. While it may seem like that because there is so much media on the planet currently that you could never watch or listen to all of it before the day you die, this stuff still has to exist on a physical data center somewhere. And from reports that we're seeing come directly to us from streaming platforms, a greater and greater and greater amount of this server space is becoming taken up by all of this endlessly generated AI crap. So while on some level, maybe Bandcamp's motivations here are kind of self-interested because, are they partially doing this out of worry that if they continue to let the AI scourge run its course, that they'll have to double their server space in order to make room for it?

Yeah, maybe that's what's happening here. But frankly, that's a completely valid reason to limit generative generative AI from your platform. Who wants a bunch of brainless losers spamming your site with a bunch of fucking bullshit that they themselves didn't even bother to listen to several times over? Why do they expect to generate money off of it and have other people listen to it when they themselves don't even care that much about it or aren't invested in enough to engage with it beyond the process of uploading it to the platform, only to then go back to the generative AI minds?

Fuck people that do that. They're losers. They're not artists. Holly Herndon continues saying:

"I encourage platforms to be more curated, but enforcing a hard human AI binary is not the right way to address this long term. If an expert uses AI to help them write an article they otherwise would have not had the time to complete, it will not be of less substance than a non-expert with time on their hands writing something by hand. A practice or reputation of thought and work developed over time is the best filter. The contemporary demand for 24/7 content from people is the problem."

Holly, I'm not really sure that is the problem, because a lot of these slop merchants are creating more slop than people even have time to listen to. Just looking at the reaction from people reading this Bandcamp decision, most of them are pretty happy to see this change. There's a significant amount of the music listening audience that doesn't want to have anything to do with this stuff. And just because there are some people who will mindlessly consume this stuff, doesn't mean their willingness to do so needs to be prioritized. Because if they'll listen to AI, frankly, they'll listen to anything. Just have them listen to a human artist and get that person paid instead.

The problem isn't the demand for 24/7 content; the problem is that most people are using this technology to cut corners and put out the most low-grade, lowest common denominator crap. And we currently live in an age of record low media literacy. So frankly, most people are fine with consuming it. While Holly does suggest here that Bandcamp should curate for spam, again, while that's a sensible suggestion in theory, how exactly are they going to be deciding the line between what's spam and what's not?

Personally, I just find a lot of this very disappointing to read because for a long time, I have very much respected and found very intriguing the ways in which technology has worked into Holly's music. But unfortunately, she is using that uniqueness and that creativity to run cover for people who are just essentially uploading fucking crap. Crap that's not just low-grade, but is very clearly just laundered plagiarism, taking and stealing very blatantly, lyrically, and sonically from an untold number of musical works that a lot of these models, a lot of these platforms allowing users to generate this stuff, did not get license or permission to copy.

And while, again, I do respect the fact that Holly has put in way more time and effort into understanding and developing this kind of tech than your average AI "artist", I can't help but wonder whether or not that is contributing to a bias in this conversation.

Like for one, Holly is actually a part of an AI startup that currently has millions of dollars in investment into it. So on that front, it is very much in her best interest for this AI wave to succeed in some way, shape, or form. And in addition to that, looking at past comments she's made on things like NFTs, for example, and various stuff related to Web3, blockchain technology, you have to wonder whether or not there isn't a tech grift that she won't 100% endorse the moment it hits the market, because who in their right mind is buying a fucking NFT right now?

The fact of the matter is, at the end of the day, even if Bandcamp's decision here is a little bit heavy-handed, their platform in this decision is just a drop in the bucket when compared to the greater scene of music consumption on the Internet right now. I mean, literally the biggest music stream platform on the planet, Spotify, is the number one place to go to succeed if you want to be an AI artist who ends up on the charts, apparently. With Spotify on your side, how much more support do you need? Are you really going to sit here and whine and cry about how you can't put your music on Bandcamp?

I'm sorry, but I don't feel bad for you.

While I'm under no delusion that AI music is going to be disappearing from the Internet anytime soon, I welcome any efforts from any platform willing to create spaces where people can just get away from this stuff. I don't know, think of it as a hotel that allows smoking in some rooms, but not in others, maybe. But there's a not insignificant amount of people that just don't want to be inundated with this crap or have it actively shoved in their faces everywhere they go on the Internet. And I think that's a demand worth respecting, especially when it comes to the sanctity of the art of music.

Those are my thoughts. Let me know yours down in the comments; I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano, Bandcamp, Forever.