Bob Dylan Says Streaming Has Made Music ‘Too Smooth and Painless’

[godofwealth]

Bob Dylan Says Streaming Has Made Music ‘Too Smooth and Painless’ - The Wall Street Journal

https://apple.news/AEVZbxNbOQnGFJKHEzeWOdQ

I recall in the mid 1980s when I started assembling a serious music collection, it would take considerable effort. As a struggling grad student, I would seek out record stores, such as the Princeton Record Exchange, where I would look for recordings on my precompiled list.

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Princeton Record Exchange is one of the leading independent record stores in the world. We’ve been buying and selling music and movies since 1980. We are located in historic downtown Princeton, NJ, about one hour from New York City or Philadelphia.

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Many bargains were possible, including getting large box sets of Haydn symphonies at prices even I as a struggling grad student could afford. The TAS HP recommended audiophile albums were usually priced beyond my reach. Inch by inch, over many years, I built my music collection, first on vinyl, and then on CD and SACD. The Penguin Record guides were invaluable as well, although as expected, they tended to favor British orchestras or European ensembles over American orchestras.

Vinyl still holds a favored place in my heart, even as I increasingly turn to streaming music, and streaming has of course brought enormous benefits to the variety of music I can sample sitting on my armchair. No more scrounging around in dusty alcoves of some record store or rummaging through flea market bins. It’s a brave new world, for sure. I do agree with Dylan: where’s the great music going to come from in this era of streaming? Is there a contemporary folk or rock musician who can compare with Dylan? A jazz composer who can compare with Duke Ellington? A classical music conductor who can compare with Fritz Reiner or Herbert von Karajan? A country music singer who can compare with Johnny Cash? A popular singer who can compare with Frank Sinatra?

We have gained enormous richness through the convenience of streaming, but will it help or hurt the creation of great music? As AI systems get increasingly powerful — witness the enormous interest in chatGPT over the past month — will music itself become a creation of AI software, perhaps the next generation of Roon like systems will use sophisticated AI technology not just to curate playlists, but to compose new music to your individual tastes in real time. Want to know how to combine Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with Eminem’s rap style, presto, AI-enabled Roon will do that for you. Where does this inexorable advance in AI leave human creativity in music and the arts?

Samuel Altman, the head of Open AI here in San Francisco that produced chatGPT, and is widely considered the most innovative AI research lab, has written an intriguing thought piece called “Moore’s Law for Everyone”.

Moore's Law for Everything

We need to design a system that embraces this technological future and taxes the assets that will make up most of the value in that world–companies and land–in order to fairly distribute some of the coming wealth.

moores.samaltman.com

Quoting from this article, he writes:

In the next five years, computer programs that can think will read legal documents and give medical advice. In the next decade, they will do assembly-line work and maybe even become companions. And in the decades after that, they will do almost everything, including making new scientific discoveries that will expand our concept of “everything.”

This technological revolution is unstoppable. And a recursive loop of innovation, as these smart machines themselves help us make smarter machines, will accelerate the revolution’s pace. Three crucial consequences follow:

1. This revolution will create phenomenal wealth. The price of many kinds of labor (which drives the costs of goods and services) will fall toward zero once sufficiently powerful AI “joins the workforce.”
2. The world will change so rapidly and drastically that an equally drastic change in policy will be needed to distribute this wealth and enable more people to pursue the life they want.
3. If we get both of these right, we can improve the standard of living for people more than we ever have before.

Are we prepared for this AI enabled revolution where AI combines with streaming technology to put musicians out of business?

Just a few thoughts on New Year’s day. Happy 2023!

 

[Hydrology]

Bob Dylan ceased to be relevant about 40 years ago. I have no desire to read his opinions on the state of music.
But thanks for sharing anyway!

 

[Gregadd]

I am a Bob Dylan fan. Not to worry Bob. Your music has always been revered more for its lyrical content than thee sound. I always tell the kids," You go to serve somebody." When you bang out a few chords on your guitar and sing in your raspy voice that is loosely described as music, you can rest assured. not even the algorithms at Tidal can fix it. Note- I am too polite to refer to your music as painful.
tI too wonder if the music being streamed is too good. No, problem Bob, there is plenty of bad music on Tidal.
I am not sure what artificial intelligence has to do with streaming. Henry Ford at the beginning of the modern assembly line era seemed to understand that a consumer is more important than a laborer. They have to have money in their pocket to buy his Model T. See if those robots can buy any products.

 

[Ovenmitt]

Bob Dylan ceased to be relevant about 40 years ago. I have no desire to read his opinions on the state of music.
But thanks for sharing anyway!

Whoa.… and he won the Nobel Prize for literature when? I assume you don’t really know. Let me save you a google search. It was 2016. A whole seven years ago.….. and BTW, his latest album is pretty awesome.

 

[tima]

In the next five years, computer programs that can think will read legal documents and give medical advice. In the next decade, they will do assembly-line work and maybe even become companions. And in the decades after that, they will do almost everything, including making new scientific discoveries that will expand our concept of “everything.”

Just as today there are lousy doctors, second-rate lawyers and corrupt hedge fund managers, there likely will be lousy, second-rate and corrupt algorithms. Once they start creating themselves, we may be lost.

I am not ready for our new AI overlords.

 

[ddk]

Samuel Altman, the head of Open AI here in San Francisco that produced chatGPT, and is widely considered the most innovative AI research lab, has written an intriguing thought piece called “Moore’s Law for Everyone”.

Moore's Law for Everything

We need to design a system that embraces this technological future and taxes the assets that will make up most of the value in that world–companies and land–in order to fairly distribute some of the coming wealth.

moores.samaltman.com

Quoting from this article, he writes:

In the next five years, computer programs that can think will read legal documents and give medical advice. In the next decade, they will do assembly-line work and maybe even become companions. And in the decades after that, they will do almost everything, including making new scientific discoveries that will expand our concept of “everything.”

This technological revolution is unstoppable. And a recursive loop of innovation, as these smart machines themselves help us make smarter machines, will accelerate the revolution’s pace. Three crucial consequences follow:

1. This revolution will create phenomenal wealth. The price of many kinds of labor (which drives the costs of goods and services) will fall toward zero once sufficiently powerful AI “joins the workforce.”
2. The world will change so rapidly and drastically that an equally drastic change in policy will be needed to distribute this wealth and enable more people to pursue the life they want.
3. If we get both of these right, we can improve the standard of living for people more than we ever have before.

Are we prepared for this AI enabled revolution where AI combines with streaming technology to put musicians out of business?

Just a few thoughts on New Year’s day. Happy 2023!

You know they’re lying when they hide the negatives and not mention all the evil AI will bring to the world, our fundamental rights to freedom and pursuit of happiness are specially at risk.

david

 

[Gregadd]

Google recently sent me an email. I had traveled to North Carolina and Georgia for the Labor day. My expenses were paid by a family member. My smartphone was with me. I temporarily used my GPS . Not only had Google tracked my entire itinerary including every restaurant and hotel I stayed at, they had even tracked my morning coffee run at home. Somehow they thought I should be happy that they had done this without my permission.
Imagine the day when Google decides I cant afford a trip. Or my health is not good enough and my doctor would not approve my trip. Thrn block my access.
Welcome to the Brave New World.

 

[wil]

Streaming music has done nothing but enrich my music experiences and exploration. But I suppose it could have a negative effect on the masses of people who mostly just use music as wall paper anyway. I don't really see it as any more insidious than the brainless commercial radio we've had for decades.

If you're a music lover you'll find the music whatever technology you're using. If you're a passive wallpaper music consumer it will remain the same for you.

 

[Solypsa]

1. This revolution will create phenomenal wealth. The price of many kinds of labor (which drives the costs of goods and services) will fall toward zero once sufficiently powerful AI “joins the workforce.”
2. The world will change so rapidly and drastically that an equally drastic change in policy will be needed to distribute this wealth and enable more people to pursue the life they want.
3. If we get both of these right, we can improve the standard of living for people more than we ever have before.

1. Yes
2. True
3. Highly unlikely

 

[godofwealth]

Streaming music has done nothing but enrich my music experiences and exploration. But I suppose it could have a negative effect on the masses of people who mostly just use music as wall paper anyway. I don't really see it as any more insidious than the brainless commercial radio we've had for decades.

If you're a music lover you'll find the music whatever technology you're using. If you're a passive wallpaper music consumer it will remain the same for you.

Agreed. Streaming makes it possible to sample an enormous variety of music. It’s a bit overwhelming of course to be given a library of millions of tracks. One has to pick and choose. And most of us will end up sampling a very tiny sliver of the available choices.

But I worry about the long term stability of the streaming companies. Qobuz and Roon are here today. Who knows if they’ll be around in 5 or 10 years time?

I’m not getting rid of my large physical library. In my long experience over 35 years, it is hard to beat the reliability of long-term storage media like optical discs and vinyl records. The US Library of Congress did a study of the best medium for long term storage. Surprisingly vinyl records came out on top! I have CDs that I bought in 1985 that playback perfectly. Hard drives from that era? They’re like 5” floppy disks, 3.25” floppy disks, which you can’t use any more. I have a whole closet of non-working hard drives. The bigger the hard drive, the faster they fail in my experience. SSDs and newer storage media are just as unreliable, and prone to overheating, particularly NVME drives.

Cloud storage might be more reliable, but it’s subject to the vagaries of the internet and the companies that maintain it. Will Dropbox be around in 10 years?

 

[bryans]

But I worry about the long term stability of the streaming companies. Qobuz and Roon are here today. Who knows if they’ll be around in 5 or 10 years time?

We can say this of any company. How many "Audiophile" companies have bit the dust over the years. And now many will not survive the next 5 to 10 years. This has always been the case. If Qobuz/Tidal/Roon or whoever vanishes, we will continue with something else.

 

[bryans]

Somehow they thought I should be happy that they had done this without my permission.

I'm pretty sure you gave Google permission. The issue is If you are like most people you don't read all of the crazy amounts of agreements.

You can turn off location on your phone. But you are still tracked. Your ISP is tracking you right now.

 

[godofwealth]

You are tracked constantly, down to each and every second. Remember that old song from the rock band Police: “every breath you take, I’ll be watching you“. That’s the society we live in. There’s no turning off tracking. The only way is to get off the grid, and that’s harder than it sounds. Roon tracks every track you play, when you listen, what you listen etc. Your car tracks everything you do — my Tesla certainly does. Use Chrome? You are under a microscope. It’s the most intrusive browser ever made. Your phone constantly monitors everything you do. Have an Alexa in your bedroom? Well, it listens to everything you do. I think the CEO of Sun Microsystems put it best a few years back: ”there’s no privacy. Get used to it.” And that was before the really intrusive monitoring began. We all signed up for this technology. There’s no way out.

 

[Gregadd]

It was brought to my attention recently how much Gogol knows about me. Right down to bank accounts and passwords. i gave it to them. Sobering.

 

[marty]

It was brought to my attention recently how much Gogol knows about me. Right down to bank accounts and passwords. i gave it to them. Sobering.

What should worry you is that if Google knows these things about you, the Chinese Gov't knows them as well.

 

[Gregadd]

I prefer not to deal in racist fhetoric
Thank you.

 

[Tim Link]

I can relate to what Bob is saying there. I find it requires a different kind of discipline to appreciate an album in it's entirety when with a simple click I can move on to something else. The fact that computers are multi-purpose machines is distracting. If I read a book while listening to a record, nothing I do with the book changes what's going on with the record unless I throw the book at the turntable. With a computer it's making it's own sounds that can come through the same speakers, the content I'm reading is full of links, often to videos that I suddenly might want to watch, interrupting the music. There are too many choices and options immediately at your fingertips. It takes a new discipline to have some attention span. I can see why some people prefer a dedicated streaming machine. I'm not convinced they actually sound any better than using a general purpose computer, but they're far less distracting.

 

[Gregadd]

So, Bob was saying we lack object permeance?

 

[Tim Link]

So, Bob was saying we lack object permeance?

That's the impression I get. There's no commitment - no investment personally made to help one focus on the value of what's at hand. I'm thinking of Joni Mitchell's Dog Eat Dog
"Land of snap decisions
land of short attention spans.
Nothing is savored long enough
To really understand"

You know, I was just listening to Roy Orbison while typing this when the music suddenly quit. I checked the computer and it was prompting me to restart for an update or put it off till later.

 

[Gregadd]

It is no wonder I dent understand Bob Dyland. He does not know what he is talking about.