How many years until we run out of original music? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 01:49:30 pm
content: At some point we will run out of original music. We are already running out of movies since it seems like every new movie is a remake or "reboot" of an old one usually a shitty old one. But as far as music goes at the current rate they are being copywritten how long until we run out?To make this solvable we have to assume that music has musical instruments playing chords and if it has lyrics the lyrics are made of words that form sentences. Random noise and notes doesn't count. The length doesn't really matter because you can hear only a few seconds of music to know if you have heard it before. So with these parameters how much music is left?

author: metrologist
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 01:54:41 pm
content: This seems similar to my question about copyrighted code for micros. At some point every usable permutation is used and copyrighted.However, in creative works, there are no physical boundaries and any crazy tangent can be injected.Oh, but you said music. This is interesting...

author: Deepak
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 02:01:07 pm
content: Quote from: Beamin on March 17, 2019, 01:49:30 pmI'm sure there's some composers, as well as Industrial bands that might not agree with your interpretation. But a simple question - is an instrumental drum set music?

author: Echo88
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 02:41:35 pm
content: Indeed, theres only about 21.3 years of original music left.And once you've read the dictionary, every other book you read is just a remix.Good thing you dont keep running out of original and clever questions.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 02:54:47 pm
content: Given what passes as music today I don't see it as a realistic problemQuote from: Beamin on March 17, 2019, 01:49:30 pmIf you really must know, there is exactly countable infinity of finite sequences from a finite set.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 04:06:47 pm
content: How long until we run out of meaningful forum posts?

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 04:09:49 pm
content: I think it's coming closer and closer to a point where "collisions" are possible. You hear of musicians being sued for copyright sometimes because it just happens their song sounds too close to another song. There is only so many possible ways to place the notes.

author: richnormand
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 04:25:01 pm
content: We have had music in several forms for over 2000 years this thread sounds more like the folks that wanted to close the patent office in the 1900s because everything that could be invented already had been......

author: WildMOSFET
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 04:37:37 pm
content: I think the problem comes from new methods of music production.Before, in the old days everything was done manually.Now with the music software all the originality is missing.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 04:48:33 pm
content: Quote from: Beamin on March 17, 2019, 01:49:30 pmHollywood follows the money.If those shitty action movies, super-hero reboots directed by Michael Bay full of CG-effects, if those movies fill theaters to the brims, what do you think movie executives will finance next time?Music follows a similar path

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 04:57:19 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on March 17, 2019, 04:06:47 pmWe did 5 year ago, after The Great Drought. Don't you remember?

author: vtwin@cox.net
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 05:00:34 pm
content: if I copyright a single red pixel as a work of art, can I demand royalties from everyone who publishes a picture containing a red pixel

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 05:02:27 pm
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on March 17, 2019, 04:57:19 pmI was biting my tongue (or should that be "biting my thumb" for this medium?) to stop myself from adding something along those lines to my earlier post.

author: Echo88
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 05:27:56 pm
content: The great drought?

author: John B
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 05:58:52 pm
content: As long as their is creativity: never. For starters, most music in the world is improvised and is therefore a living, evolving craft.But when you put a whole lot of arbitrary constraints on the matter, then you start to see what people refer to as "running out" of music.If you take most contemporary pop styles of music, they are equal tempered, diatonic, largely 4/4 and based around 2^x form arrangements. The same melodic fragment, even if played by 2 separate musicians on 2 separate instruments in different songs, becomes contentious under copyright. With these kinds of constraints, it's no surprise that you'd feel as though nothing new is being made. That coupled with the mass production/"song made in a week" type of approach to commercial music and things look dim.However, musicians have it better than ever with the advent of computer based DSP. You can construct sound right from the bottom up with component sine waves, filter, distort and shape to your hearts content. You can use whatever time signatures and chronological patterns you want, and different tuning systems are easy too. Then you get into the more conceptual stuff. Is a piece of music set in stone as a recording, or can it be a set of guidelines which a rudimentary program uses to generate a soundscape or piece of music? Or what if something scans your body and gives you a bespoke composition for you?Really, the possibilities are on the scale of "atoms in the universe". Get back to me once the sun has died, then we will re-evaluate things.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 06:23:10 pm
content: Quote from: John B on March 17, 2019, 05:58:52 pmComputer based music creation is nothing new! It dates back to well before affordable home computers reached 100MHz.https://soundcloud.com/msmad-lemon

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 06:27:06 pm
content: There are plenty of good movies. The only reason for all those reboots and superheroes movies is easy cash. As soon as the number of people giving money to see that stuff dries up, those reboots will go away.

author: John B
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 07:37:51 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on March 17, 2019, 06:23:10 pmYeah I used quite a few trackers back in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Hell I've even seen the Fairlight CMI in person.Trackers were quite a revolutionary way of storing game music before MP3 compression was used, not to mention quite innovative.For example, the game Deus Ex, using the unreal engine and UMX tracker files was able to seamlessly go between combat and idle music by going between patterns. Because it was playing samples, the transition was seamless. Not to mention the quantity and quality of music exceeded what was possible and practical with MP3 at the time.However the stuff I'm talking about goes quite beyond sample players and has only been able to progress with the pace of computer performance. The generative soundscapes that I play around with easily max out a 2.4GHz CPU core, and utilising multiple CPU cores is notoriously difficult with quasi real time audio.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 08:16:13 pm
content: Quote from: ataradov on March 17, 2019, 06:27:06 pmAll that needs to be done is ban popcorn and coke at movie theaters. Then people will be coming to watch stories, not to eat and drink like pigs.

author: Deepak
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 09:21:55 pm
content: Quote from: Bud on March 17, 2019, 08:16:13 pmI think snacks have gone with movies pretty much since there were movies.

author: Fred27
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 10:08:40 pm
content: How long until you run out of stupid irrelevant questions to ask?

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 10:24:06 pm
content: Quotesource

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 18, 2019, 12:39:25 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on March 17, 2019, 06:23:10 pmFun fact: The "Beyond 2000" (an Australian technology series from the 1980's-1990's) opening and closing theme music was written and composed by a bloke in Sydney. I actually spoke to him about it years ago and he was telling me he composed it entirely on an Apple IIe (if I recall correctly). He sold the rights along with all the original master tapes to Beyond Productions who still exist.They have a tape library in Artarmon, NSW full of old TV shows on U-matic tape. For a fee, they will convert it to DVD for you.I tried to encourage them to release all the old Beyond 2000 episodes onto DVD but they weren't interested.

author: unitedatoms
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 18, 2019, 02:44:40 am
content: There always will be new things, because I keep forgetting what I saw or read. I rewatch all star treks every 5 years because I completely forget everything.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 03:38:25 am
content: Never! Remember music before electric guitar? What about before the advent of "scratching records", hip hop and drum machines? Those are but a tiny example... we cannot imagine what is possible. Don't forget also the many permutations of keys and scales, rhythms, instrumentations, sound effects and word intimations and other vocal sounds that can be combined. I don't think we are anywhere close to being at the end of our creativity... although many songs today sound similar due to our limited cultural experiences and commercialism.

author: electromotive
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 04:02:10 am
content: Quote from: edy on March 21, 2019, 03:38:25 amExactly.Take Christian "Flake" Lorenz from Rammstein for example... He plays keyboard, piano, organ, etc. but he's also credited with playing bass keyboard and bass guitar. When he was 16 or so, he was in a band with another fellow that later ended up in Rammstein as well. They wanted Christian to play bass guitar on occasion, but since he wasn't proficient at the instrument, he tuned his organ to produce the riffs they were looking for.Now look at guys like Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. One of his early projects, here in Ohio (Exotic Birds) was more or less absolute garbage, but it got him interested in tinkering more with a keyboard, and doing programming / synthesizing. He's now one of the most influential musicians on Earth, with NIN being a "one man band with hired help". He writes and composes basically everything himself, programs it, plays it all in the recording studio -- a virtuoso of sorts.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 04:03:03 am
content: Anyone who asks about "running out of" music, or written or spoken phrases, or computer programs, etc., need not worry.It is physically possible to map out the simplest of all of these; most of them do nothing. Gibberish and such. A few extremely rare cases have relevance to us: meaning, feeling.Anything with a length over a few hundred symbols will never be fully explored over the history of the universe.Alternately, we can already say that all original media has been exhausted. Consider:Write a '1' and a '0' on two separate sheets of paper. These will be our characters. (This is arguably the language of computers as we know them today, a perfectly valid starting point.)Create an interpretation of these characters, a language. In that language, if you read '1', it translates to something; if you read '0', it translates to something else. What that "something" is, is unique to the particular language used.There are infinite languages, therefore there are infinite interpretations of '1', and of '0'.We don't even need two characters, really; this can be done in unary, where reading the one character gives the presence of a statement, and not reading it gives the absence of a statement.Or we might make a very simple language, and express all statements through reading a sequence of '1's and '0's. We could even construct an infinite library organized by this system, mapping all original works, all translations, all covers and reinterpretations and critiques, and all gibberish, into a sequence of moves between buildings, floors, rooms, shelves and books. We would have the Library of Babel. I must warn you, though: it's a very boring place, where you'll wander your entire life having seen just a few complete words, never even a full sentence.Such is the nature of large numbers, numbers of hundreds of digits. These are numbers large enough to be dense in prime numbers, and yet difficult to factor (relevant to modern cryptography); large enough to encode meaningful phrases, or musical phrases; or computer programs, even (or especially!) recursive programs (a program that creates programs, whether as a quine or as a self-referential "strange loop", if you will). We can encode mathematical proofs in these numbers, and we can equally well encode contradiction (Godel's Incompleteness Theorem).Into the thousands, or millions of digits, we have quite complex numbers indeed, numbers that evolve -- genetic codes, codes that are also computer programs, which are running self-referential operations that will never resolve within our finite universe -- only propagate.Tim

author: rcarlton
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 02:05:36 pm
content: Never. People are infinitely creative.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 03:46:17 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on March 21, 2019, 04:03:03 amIt doesn't even take that much complexity to get to the point where mapping out all possible combinations starts becoming impractical. Take a look at this done with just some discrete logic on a breadboard:

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 04:45:56 pm
content: There's definitely a limited amount of combinations since music is limited in time.Four minutes CD audio (44.1kHz 16bit) would be 4*60*44.1e3*16=169Mbit and 2^169896000 combinations. That's a lot but most are noise and many would sound similar.OTOH with 8 notes and a diatonic scale (7 notes) you get only 7^8 = 5 764 801 combinations, that's not that many, most of which would again be noise. If only one in thousand sounds good, then there would only be roughly 6000 such 8 note sequences that we would call music. Of course, you could then combine those into longer sequences, and so on.I think collisions are unavoidable at some level, but the possibility for variations is clearly very large.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 04:47:31 pm
content: Quote from: rcarlton on March 23, 2019, 02:05:36 pmWell, but people are also lazy, and creating something original requires effort. (As witnessed by your not-so-original statement, which is all over the internet.)So yes, there will be more original music, no doubt. But in parallel, there will also be an ever-growing stream of re-hashes, produced either out of lazyness or out of the expectation of easy monetary wins via safe bets.

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 04:59:51 pm
content: “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 05:27:41 pm
content: A 19th century composer already stated that every possible chord was played.However that was after the "wohltemperiertes klavier"where we in the western world are stuck with, if you look at other cultures that do not have relative positioned tones, there are many more possibilities to explore.

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 05:58:09 pm
content: It will still be some limited number of combinations though. There are certainly not infinite possibilities. If we knew the true number of possible variations (of a certain length, that sound good to most people) I suspect most people would be surprised how low it was. (Though more than enough to keep us entertained.)

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 06:51:07 pm
content: The thing is, it doesn't need to be original. We can have a lot of fun with re-imagining music, playing it in different styles. Or if a few accord has been played somewhere else, who cares. Also, performing it mixes it with your personality. So if 400 years from now people will perform the Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up with the current style... So be it.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 10:54:26 pm
content: Quote from: apis on March 23, 2019, 05:58:09 pmSure since the spectrum is limited to 22kHz there is always a limit to the number of possibilities.Luckily 90% of the possible combinations are not sounding nice.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2019, 06:51:15 am
content: Quote from: apis on March 17, 2019, 10:24:06 pmVsauce reads my posts! I should ask more questions

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2019, 07:39:05 am
content: Ever since I got into atonal music and all subsequent forms of ever more esoteric music, I'm not worried.Steve Reich is pretty accessible I think:Then you can make very compelling music with just percussionYou have the truly modernOr the avant garde from half a century agohttps://youtu.be/VtMnDo7NItUOr something really stunninghttps://youtu.be/bU1hyzl8UJ4Or just masterful

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2019, 12:25:46 pm
content: I have board routing to do tomorrow... I know what I'm going to be listening toTim

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2019, 01:09:27 pm
content: You mean this?

author: Awoke
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: March 25, 2019, 06:30:45 pm
content: Never. Just the other day I heard about country rap... that's apparently a thing. Someone is probably coming up with physics blues right now.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2019, 01:30:34 pm
content: Someone earlier in the thread mentioned we could generate every possible sound and show that it is not infinite (obviously) but finite. However, we can calculate for all practical purposes it would exceed the lifetime of the universe.For example, let's approximate that 2 to power 10 (1024) is about 10 to power 3 (1000). So 2^10 ~ 10^3 roughly. If you continue this, 2^20 ~ 10^6 and so on, 2^30 ~ 10^9, etc... So whatever the power of 2 is, the ratio of the exponents to get to power of 10 is 10/3=20/6,30/9, etc...Ok, now assume a fairly crappy 22050 sample rate, 1 second worth of sound. We already figured that the number of possible combinations of sound would be 2^22050 (combinations of 0 and 1's in a 1 second sample). By way of power of 10, given the ratio of exponents if 10/3, 22050/x = 10/3 or 22050 *3/10 = 6615. So 2^22050 is roughly about 10^6615. Correct so far?Now let us assume correctly so that the VAST MAJORITY of these combinations is nothing but noise to our ears. In fact.... Let us assume that the ratio of "good" sounds to the number of "bad" sounds is the same as the ratio of 1 to the number of atoms in the entire known observable universe!!!!! According to Google, on the high end the number of estimated ATOMS in the known universe is about 10^82.By this analogy, we have 10^6615 / 10^82 and by the rule of exponents it becomes 10^(6615-82) = 10^6533. Ok, so we have now eliminated a HUGE number of possible 1 second samples that would sound like "noise". That still leaves a huge number left.The age of the observable universe in seconds is about 10^24. Let's say you needed a group of people listening to the remaining 1 second samples every single second since the beginning of the universe. How many people would you need to listen, or how samples (in parallel) woudl you have to listen to every second to get through them all? You would need to play 10^6533 / 10^24 = 10^(6533-24) = 10^(6509) samples simultaneously since the beginning of the universe to listen to them.OBVIOUSLY we cannot even appreciate the SCALE of these numbers. They are just TOO LARGE to fathom.Let's try something even more simple. Let us take a sample that is not 22050 samples per second but 8000, which is around telephone quality (probably less than modern phone systems). We still encounter the same problems. 2^8000 possible combinations, in power of 10 we get 10^2400. The known number of atoms in the universe around 10^82. For fun, let us say we have 1 MILLION TRILLION universes... that's 10^16.... so total number of atoms in 1 MILLION TRILLION universes is 10^100... now if we even had only 1 possible atom out of all the atoms in 1 MILLION TRILLION universes worth of 1 second samples of 8000 sample rate, we would still have 10^2300 samples that *may* be music? And even if you listened to them all, without ever repeating one sound, since the beginning of the universe, you would have only listened to 10^24 samples because that's how many seconds there have been since the beginning of the universe... so you would still have about 10^2276 samples left to listen to.I'm not sure if my math is flawed somewhere but even a rudimentary calculation like this shows that approaching music by creating all possible combinations of samples leads you to ridiculousness. Not only can you see that even with the crappiest sample qualities you still get gigantic numbers, but even selecting down by a huge number you still end up with too many options to be able to manage. Imagine using 44.1kHz audio? Remember it goes up exponentially for every extra sample in that second (you multiply again by 2).... so it is ridiculous. Not to mention that in the above examples we didn't even account for repeating 1 second samples... and music is very repetitive and structured, and the huge number of permutations of the ORDERS of those samples, to make up phrases, etc..I rest my case... It is to all intents and purposes INFINITE because it vastly higher than the age of the entire universe by many many many orders of magnitude, even having eliminated most by many many many orders of magnitude as well.

author: John B
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2019, 08:47:05 pm
content: Quote from: edy on March 26, 2019, 01:30:34 pmThe maths is all fine, but some of the axioms or presuppositions are wrong in that music isn't random or noise. I know, I know - there's tons of jokes to be made about whichever style. But music in general has intention and pattern, and patterns formed by constraints.While randomly generated samples will eventually create something that sounds like music simply by the infinite monkey theorem, it would still lack the conscious awareness of what it is.Humans are very good at exploring the boundaries within constraints, and by changing only a few, completely different creations emerge. The problem I think with "pop" music is that it is ultra constrained.But even a few minor tweaks in tuning/temperament or rhythm could result in whole branches of new music.Really there's nothing to worry about in terms of material. The sun will engulf us first.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2019, 03:37:20 am
content: Yeah, it's important to note / understand that natural communication (whether language, music, social interaction, etc.) is very modest entropy.It's peculiar I guess, that modern digital communications are -- quite intentionally and usefully -- high entropy. These advantages probably apply to natural systems as well, but maybe on lower levels, neurological perhaps? The apparent (high level) product -- language, music and so on -- is decidedly lower in entropy though.Consider the average pop song: repetitive melody and structure throughout. Some of that is driven by simple pattern recognition: a familiar pattern isn't necessarily a low-entropy one, but an obvious pattern one is very likely to be. So I guess it stands to reason that even-numbered rhythms (4:4 time being most traditional), and stacks thereof -- roughly fractal structure with recurring sequences of the same length (4 beats, 4 bars, 4 phrases..), or what have you -- are likewise very common.Very low entropy music is definitely a thing, take some slow meditation pieces for example. It's decidedly..... not exciting, but when well executed, that's certainly beside the point. High entropy music is there to some extent (look up "black MIDI" sorts of compositions, I guess?), but simply put: the more complex a piece becomes, the harder it is to understand, until it's eventually an onslaught of nearly-pitched white noise, and you can't tell what's going on at all. (Or perhaps -- you can tell what's going on sometimes, and you're welcome to interpret that however you like, but that interpretation is likely to be as inconsistent, as noisy, as the composition it's supposedly derived from.)So, in information-theoretic terms, we can rule out a large fraction of possible songs based on unintelligibly high entropy. This isn't merely percentagewise for a given range of song lengths, this is a huge difference -- many orders of magnitude. If we stipulate on repeating patterns as well, several orders of magnitude yet. Still, what's left is a very big number indeed, one the universe is very unlikely to exhaust!Tim

author: metrologist
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2019, 12:15:53 am
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on March 27, 2019, 03:37:20 amAdmire your posts, I do. If only I was an artist...I found this creative and related.Quote

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2019, 04:33:26 pm
content: Heh. Sounds rough, a bit undertrained I would guess (or reduced quality to make that more feasible to begin with), but seems to get the form right.But will RNNs be able to come up with myriad new and obscure subsubgenres of metal automatically as well?Tim

author: KE5FX
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2019, 05:40:12 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on March 23, 2019, 10:54:26 pm"Sounding nice" is all in the context. For an extreme example, scrub this video to 2:30 and stop it at 2:50:Now go back and listen to the whole thing from the beginning. In this example, the duration of the "context" that differentiates horrible racket from the centerpiece of an interesting work is measured in minutes, not beats or seconds or samples.Human attention is an exhaustible resource, so it doesn't really matter whether music or literature is. Like Tim says, you'll drop dead of old age before you ever see a fraction of the Library.