Ten Bucks
Sunday morning. Quiet, mostly. I just read an article in Rolling Stone: Inside Suno AI, the Start-up Creating a ChatGPT for Music. Great. The entire article is filled with jaw-dropping statements, but this stands out:
Rodriguez sees Suno as a radically capable and easy-to-use musical instrument, and believes it could bring music making to everyone much the way camera phones and Instagram democratized photography. The idea, he says, is to once again “move the bar on the number of people that are allowed to be creators of stuff as opposed to consumers of stuff on the internet.”
His use of the word "stuff" is certainly telling.
Camera phones need a human being to take a picture. To choose a moment, to frame a shot, to press a shutter. Also, to be present in the location where the picture is being taken (usually). If camera phones were Suno, we'd sit on a couch, type in "portrait of an old man in front of his boat in the Andes" and call ourselves photographers. You shoot a camera; you play a musical-instrument. It's a fairly easy concept to grasp.
More importantly, what's this about being allowed to be creators? Did I miss something? Is there a "creation permit" I should've paid for at some point? No, there isn't. Everyone's allowed to create. There is, however, the basic requirement of having something to say, and a skill that allows you to express it. That's been our entire history, from drawing on cave walls to Michelangelo’s David to Hendrix to Dune. It's the whole point of art, or craft, in any shape or form. You think. You execute. You present. That last step matters, sure. But the bloody, or joyful, or error-filled road that leads us there matters just as much. Without it there's no growth, no evolution, no insight.
Are we that lazy now? Of course anyone can create, but no one is entitled to it. There should be a fucking minimum level of effort involved. I'm not a barista because I push the button on my Nespresso machine.
The most vocal of the co-founders, Mikey Shulman, a boyishly charming, backpack-toting 37-year-old with a Harvard Ph.D. in physics, envisions a billion people worldwide paying 10 bucks a month to create songs with Suno. The fact that music listeners so vastly outnumber music-makers at the moment is “so lopsided,” he argues, seeing Suno as poised to fix that perceived imbalance.
There we are. Clear as day. But you know what else is lopsided? Patients vs doctors. Oh! and I also hear there are fewer pilots than people flying in airplanes. We should fix that too. But please, none of those pesky years of studies, diplomas, or hours of practice.
Watching this wave of uncaring, arrogant, self-deluded engineers and scientists, hiding behind vapid VC bullshit while they destroy the fabric of personal expression, makes me sick. Ten bucks a month, folks. That's the real mission. The dumbing down of humankind, the devaluation of art, of truth, of skills, of entire lives, none of it matters. Collateral damage on the yellow brick road to Wall Street.
The article includes several quotes from the always eloquent Vernon Reid, and his reaction to the project. I leave you with this one:
“Music, as made by humans driven by extraordinary circumstances … those who have suffered and struggled to advance their craft, will have to contend with the wholesale automation of the very dear-bought art they have fought to achieve”
Ten bucks a month.
What a bargain.
P.S The pictures in this post were shot with the GFX 50S and GF63mm f/2.8 R WR. It’s nothing an AI couldn’t do. But it’s my eye, and that’s our dog.
