by fao_ | 2025-08-06 12:45:40+00:00
> if it was presented on Spotify or some other platform and not advertised as AI generated, would you still be able to tell the difference? Would your target audience?

These are all fair questions but this one is a good bouncing off point to circle to the whole of it.

So, I can yes, because the instruments sound wrong. I would expect an audience of people who mostly listen to stuff I make to also catch this vague "off" feeling with the music. But regardless to that there's kind of, two things to this, which is that - someone who is making AI-generated music is fundamentally too lazy and too broke to bother with a) paying an artist for the cover (i.e. the cover is likely to be also AI generated and weird), and b) building any kind of audience or relationship with other artists in the scene (it would be very, very difficult to do that without giving up that you're also using AI, and subsequently getting shunned in the industry, too).

Like something I perhaps failed to communicate in the last message but, ok so context is- I used to move in indie dev circles (notably the Ludum Dare IRC and indiedev twitter) as a wee bab -and although I wasn't like, great at networking or whatever, and frankly wasn't very good at producing anything of merit because I was a dorky little teenager with ADHD lol, I still managed to build personal connections with people in those spaces because I just, like, interacted with them.

The majority of sales that you see right off the bat for any artistic product are likely to be not from your own audience -- if you're new to it you probably don't have an audience yet -- but instead from the audience of other artists who you have vague relationships with, who look at your work and go "wow, holy shit, this is so cool" and then share it. Like, realistically Spotify isn't going to be a fantastic moneymaker because of both visibility and how stingy they are with paying out. What can become an incidental money maker are the relationships you build with artists, game devs, etc. in the scene, and eventually the relationship you build with your audience. It's literally just "talking to people" and going "hey i fucking love that piece of music" and having a cool enough profile / website / whatever that eventually someone gives it a click, that's your foot in the door, and it's enough to build from.

In addition to bluesky/mastodon/soundcloud/bandcamp/etc. there's also specific subreddits for people to advertise themselves to game developers, and for game developers to go "hey I am looking for xyz type of music". That's another foot in the door. It's very, very slow "work", but making friends is always slow -- and like, because we're on the VC-brained hacker news I feel I have to explicitly say -- don't approach it like Networking(tm), approach it like making friends. Join communities, find people whose art you appreciate, post about your own art (everywhere you can think of). All the shitty WIPs and whatever, that's still usually interesting enough for people to go "wow this is interesting" and follow you over it, and interact with you over it.

The trick to the modern web is literally "authenticity", and nobody making something with AI has that. The difference between someone who pops off on tiktok and someone who doesn't is often literally how authentic their video feels, and ""consumers"" are getting increasingly good at spotting someone who just wants to get clicks and views, versus someone who is passionate at creating and wanted to share something they made. Between all the weird AI slop, all the corporate-produced shit, everyone on the web right now are absolutely starving for unique, "cool" people who just do what brings them joy.

You don't want the people who click on something on bandcamp and go "eh it's free might as well use it for my game", you want the game developers who are even slightly discriminating about their tastes, who have a set idea and want to hire someone who makes music that fits that taste, and who is respectful and "gets" the themes, subject matter, and artistic expression of their game. Someone typing "dark moody music guitar bass punk rock short loop" into an AI-generator isn't that, and can never be that. Art tells a story, and AI has no perspective from which to make that, it's the same problem with AI writing.

> To clarify, I never intended to make it my full time job. I like electronic music, saw a lot of artists on Bandcamp selling albums and doing music for games and figured hey, I think I can do that and maybe supplement my primary income a wee bit...you know, because here in the US, rather than fixing the predatory economy, we just push everyone into turning every hobby into a side-hustle.

Honestly I absolutely understand that. My first internship was around twelve years ago now, and I fell out of it due to health problems, I recovered from those a little and was lucky enough to get another tech job while I was homeless in 2022, and I gradually became so, so ill in the place I was staying that just like the first job, my performance cratered about 6 months into the job. So now I'm kind of stuck here being incredibly capable at my job, but unmedicated (with the NHS refusing to diagnose me) and probably the single worst CV in the entire world. I've spent like, 3 years recovering from all of that and now I'm at a point where it's like- shit, what do I do now?! and it looks like the answer to that is making art and primarily Writing, which... lol, I always tried to avoid art being my primary money-maker because getting to a point where you can sustain yourself off it is very, very difficult, if impossible.

> To your point about why I am engaging in a hobby where motivation is so easily lost, well...I will need to chew on that a bit. I am the type of person who enjoys trying different things to learn what I like and what I don't before investing in it more. I also wonder if there's a difference in the fact that I make electronic music with, well, electronics (into a bit of circuit bending, as well), versus someone who plays a guitar or oboe, which takes significantly more dedication and practice than what I enjoy doing.

This is great!! Being discerning and discriminating about what you're investing your time into is a great quality to have IMHO. And nah, I can do music with physical instruments, but I've been poking at electronic music for like ten years and never really got anywhere satisfactorily because you have to come at it from a completely different direction lol.

I really do wish you luck!!!