Best Ever Albums

Re: Generative AI album releases

dihansse — Mon, 7 Apr 2025 16:32:06 GMT

Author: dihansse

Posted: 04/07/2025 20:32

Funny because I was nearly caught off-guard. Lately it has happened sometimes that lots of (sometimes multiple track) albums are being created released by artists completely unknown to me. One of those was Project Pitchfork which seems to be a secretive Google Labs AI project. But when I investigated further it seems to be a genuine German Darkwave band which released a lot of albums with some of them sometimes very long compilations; sorry Craola (the original creator of the albums on BEA).
And just a heads up that I will also try to be attentive but it's sometimes difficult to detect.

Re: Generative AI album releases

Anonymous — Tue, 1 Apr 2025 07:00:42 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/01/2025 11:00

martintho wrote:

Of course it's a yes.
I don't see the problem here.
If something is good it will float sooner or later.
If it's shite it will eventually sink.

Exactly this 😎

Re: Generative AI album releases

martintho — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 19:05:14 GMT

Author: martintho

Posted: 03/31/2025 23:05

Of course it's a yes.
I don't see the problem here.
If something is good it will float sooner or later.
If it's shite it will eventually sink.

Re: Generative AI album releases

albummaster — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 04:26:10 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/26/2025 08:26

MadhattanJack wrote:

That's the problem though - it's not really a threshold, it's more of a smell-test …We'll also need more instructions to data-mods who are adding albums, saying that if they think it's AI, don't add it, at least not without taking it to the forums first.

A bit worried a smell test might not be objective enough, which will lead to disagreements and extra work trying to police it. Also,
trying my hardest not to flood the forums with every data moderation issue as we'll end up with discussion about individual edits happening in multiple places (away from the admin pages) and context will get lost, making it hard to look back at the history of an item and see why changes have been made.

MadhattanJack wrote:

This also creates an additional downside though, whereby people who would rather be listening to the new Japanese Breakfast or Blondshell album, or maybe an old Pink Floyd or Radiohead LP, end up spending their time listening to all these (mostly terrible) "AI suspect" releases instead. I'd be willing to put some time in myself, but that's not what most people come here to do, so that probably means rewarding people for participating in the suspicion-rating effort - and I don't know if just a few bonus points are going to be a sufficient incentive.

Totally agree and unrealistic for the site to expect this.

MadhattanJack wrote:

Lastly,, I'd just like to point out that as of now I'm still the only person on the site who has added Is This What We Want? to a chart (#2 for 2025) or even rated it, and since this is still the only album release I'm aware of that's explicitly meant as a protest against AI recordings, I hope more people will follow suit. I may personally be "on the fence" about all this, but regardless of what I think, awareness of the issue is the first step towards dealing with it. 😄

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Thanks for highlighting that album, great way of bringing attention to the issue.

Re: Generative AI album releases

MadhattanJack — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 16:12:13 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 03/25/2025 20:12

albummaster wrote:

I think we still need to define whatever the threshold is that determines whether a release is wholly AI, or not, so that BEA can make a determination about each release. However, BEA might be creating a rod for its own back if we don't include some popular (in the future) AI releases. And whatever this subjective threshold ends up being, this will then lead to disagreements when people are unclear about how much AI has been used (with many albums slipping under the net). It's impossible enough already assessing year changes etc, I can't imagine how difficult it will be to do this with AI releases without clear guidelines (especially looking into the future when AI will become more & more advanced, and the whole nature of AI-assisted work might be more accepted (or not) by society as a whole).

That's the problem though - it's not really a threshold, it's more of a smell-test, and some people don't have good noses. If we want a definable threshold, we'll almost have to set up our own "suspicion ratings," where we have a list of releases that people have added (or might want to?) that are suspected of being AI, wait until we get at least three "how likely is this to be AI" ratings, and assuming a 1-100 scale, anything that's suspicion-rated over 80 or 90 or whatever gets the axe. For now, we could probably just run that here on the forums, but at some point it will probably require some new features.

We'll also need more instructions to data-mods who are adding albums, saying that if they think it's AI, don't add it, at least not without taking it to the forums first.

This also creates an additional downside though, whereby people who would rather be listening to the new Japanese Breakfast or Blondshell album, or maybe an old Pink Floyd or Radiohead LP, end up spending their time listening to all these (mostly terrible) "AI suspect" releases instead. I'd be willing to put some time in myself, but that's not what most people come here to do, so that probably means rewarding people for participating in the suspicion-rating effort - and I don't know if just a few bonus points are going to be a sufficient incentive.

Then there's the personal taste problem. I might be reasonably good at determining when a shoegaze or dreampop album is AI-generated, because I've heard so many albums in those genres and like them, but I'd be absolutely worthless at calling an EDM or nu-disco album - to me, all of that stuff sounds like it could be AI-generated. So I wouldn't even want to try!

Lastly, I'd just like to point out that as of now I'm still the only person on the site who has added Is This What We Want? to a chart (#2 for 2025) or even rated it, and since this is still the only album release I'm aware of that's explicitly meant as a protest against AI recordings, I hope more people will follow suit. I may personally be "on the fence" about all this, but regardless of what I think, awareness of the issue is the first step towards dealing with it. 😄

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Re: Generative AI album releases

albummaster — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 05:35:45 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/25/2025 09:35

MadhattanJack wrote:

I realize I've just said that while pretending not to have said it, but eventually that argument will probably come up, whether or not it comes from me or some AI who just writes like me because it's been trained on my BEA posting history.

🤣

MadhattanJack wrote:

Another argument that will almost certainly come up is that similar things have happened before, such as when digital sampling first became available/affordable, or even when K-Tel was selling albums consisting entirely of cheap cover versions of popular tunes with the words "ORIGINAL HITS! ORIGINAL STARS!" on the covers. Obviously the AI problem is much worse and will almost certainly be more widespread, but the point is, we do have K-Tel albums here as well as Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em by MC Hammer listed on BEA, and nobody seems to mind those. (Again, not my argument, but it's very likely to be used eventually.)

I kind of agree with this, but those covers were physically performed (& royalties probably paid)

baystateoftheart wrote:

An the topic of how easy this is to detect, here's the most influential song so far that is AI-generated.... Would you be able to flag this with confidence if I hadn't told you all that?

A lot of the time, albums are moderated/fact checked without people actually listening to them. There are doubtless many AI albums on the site already (aside from MJs), which kind of demonstrates the point bay is making as nobody picked them up prior to MJ introducing this whole topic.

MadhattanJack wrote:

if you have to relitigate the "is this AI or human?" question each time, that just seems like it would be more of a pain.

This is probably the biggest issue, from a site management point of view, if we went down the road of having to assess each album from an AI perspective.

If BEA disallowed AI releases, from what I'm understanding so far, this would only be for releases that are entirely generated by AI (but you still need to prompt whatever tool you are using with the inputs you want to base your album on, and there is an unquantifiable element of skill as acknowledged by most people & some people have more AI skills than others). I also agree with MJ about certain genres benefitting from AI more than others. Artists won't label their releases as AI and nor will the record companies. A big issue is the ethical concerns people have over where the content came from that powers the AI tooling, but how do we resolve this. Should this prevent every AI album from being listed here?

Romanelli wrote:

The reason is that King Willonius is very open about his use of AI. And it's very much in the open that this song is AI generated. Took me a single Google search of his name to find that. He did write the lyrics, and he is open about using prompts to get the sound he wanted. But this is absolutely provable AI. And from what I have seen, many are open about their AI use. I dunno...guilt, maybe?

Taking this as a crude example of the type of future argument that might be had, is this wholly AI if the lyrics were written by a human?

I think we still need to define whatever the threshold is that determines whether a release is wholly AI, or not, so that BEA can make a determination about each release. However, BEA might be creating a rod for its own back if we don't include some popular (in the future) AI releases. And whatever this subjective threshold ends up being, this will then lead to disagreements when people are unclear about how much AI has been used (with many albums slipping under the net). It's impossible enough already assessing year changes etc, I can't imagine how difficult it will be to do this with AI releases without clear guidelines (especially looking into the future when AI will become more & more advanced, and the whole nature of AI-assisted work might be more accepted (or not) by society as a whole).

Re: Generative AI album releases

baystateoftheart — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 22:00:42 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 03/25/2025 02:00

Romanelli wrote:

baystateoftheart wrote:

On the topic of how easy this is to detect, here's the most influential song so far that is AI-generated, with no human vocals or instrumentals. The prompts and (I think) lyrics were human-written, and that human then ran them through AI models many times and compiled the best "takes" into a song. Would you be able to flag this with confidence if I hadn't told you all that?

Link

God example. The answer to your question is yes, without a doubt, I could confidently flag it.

The reason is that King Willonius is very open about his use of AI. And it's very much in the open that this song is AI generated. Took me a single Google search of his name to find that. He did write the lyrics, and he is open about using prompts to get the sound he wanted. But this is absolutely provable AI. And from what I have seen, many are open about their AI use. I dunno...guilt, maybe? 😄

I understand that what's going to happen, as is the case with Willonius, is that the time will come that coding is going to be viewed as a musical talent. I think that, with rare exceptions, we are not there yet. I believe that the majority of the AI we run into now is going to be exactly NOT that: it will be people throwing key words into a generator and coming out with fully AI generated songs. I'm not worried about people who use ELEMENTS of AI as almost an instrument. My concern is with talentless individuals using AI to suddenly become recording artists by doing virtually nothing.

I believe, that until the time comes when creative and professionally used AI is something to consider letting in, that we have a door we can open for that. But if we let them all in now, it will be a mess.

Also, madhattanjack brought up the possibility of AI albums being refused and repeatedly added back. That is something we already see quite a bit of, with EP's less than 20 minutes, with bootlegs, and with an endless stream of duplicate album entries. We've been dealing with that forever, and we always will be.

My question was not about our collective skills in finding publicly available information. After all, I found the info with a search myself. It's about whether it's detectable based on the sound alone. Fully AI-generated music that comes with a disclosure about the backstory is the exception, not the rule.

Re: Generative AI album releases

MadhattanJack — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 21:37:31 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 03/25/2025 01:37

Romanelli wrote:

Also, madhattanjack brought up the possibility of AI albums being refused and repeatedly added back. That is something we already see quite a bit of, with EP's less than 20 minutes, with bootlegs, and with an endless stream of duplicate album entries. We've been dealing with that forever, and we always will be.

Right, fair enough, but those things are pretty easy to check - whereas if you have to relitigate the "is this AI or human?" question each time, that just seems like it would be more of a pain.

Re: Generative AI album releases

Hayden — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 21:34:58 GMT

Author: Hayden

Posted: 03/25/2025 01:34

MadhattanJack wrote:

We'll want to wait until he fixes that typo though, at the very least.

Yeah, I'm feeling that's not an artistic choice.

Re: Generative AI album releases

MadhattanJack — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 21:33:04 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 03/25/2025 01:33

Tap wrote:

I think you would be making a mistake if you blocked stuff like this https://yasunaotone.bandcamp.com/album/ai-deviatoin-1-2

We'll want to wait until he fixes that typo though, at the very least.

Re: Generative AI album releases

Tap — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 20:42:45 GMT

Author: Tap

Posted: 03/25/2025 00:42

I think you would be making a mistake if you blocked stuff like this https://yasunaotone.bandcamp.com/album/ai-deviatoin-1-2

Re: Generative AI album releases

Romanelli — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 18:18:12 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 03/24/2025 22:18

baystateoftheart wrote:

Re: Generative AI album releases

baystateoftheart — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 17:35:05 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 03/24/2025 21:35

On the topic of how easy this is to detect, here's the most influential song so far that is AI-generated, with no human vocals or instrumentals. The prompts and (I think) lyrics were human-written, and that human then ran them through AI models many times and compiled the best "takes" into a song. Would you be able to flag this with confidence if I hadn't told you all that?

Link

Re: Generative AI album releases

MadhattanJack — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 17:15:35 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 03/24/2025 21:15

Okay, so let's say Romanelli's position is "zero tolerance," mine could probably be called "The Scarlet Letter" (it's an "A," after all), and while there may be other alternatives, early indications are that "don't care"/"don't worry about it" isn't going to be acceptable to the BEA user base.

Like I say, I'm OK with zero tolerance if that's the general consensus (as it appears to be thus far). I'll even help! Though there is one other thing I didn't mention — if we disallow all these albums completely, won't we sometimes get people trying to add them anyway, over and over again, with the mods having to play whack-a-mole each time? The site could have a "blacklist" feature of some kind to prevent that, but that seems like more coding would be required than treating AI as a nationality or even adding a new flag (a la live or compilation albums).

Another problem is that some musical genres are probably a lot more susceptible to AI "infiltration" than others, and unfortunately (for me), shoegaze seems to be one of them, probably because the vocals are traditionally buried in the mix so you can't make out what people are singing. That means the AI software emulating it doesn't have to worry so much about pesky things like lyrics, emoting, and vocal inflections that nobody can hear anyway. Still, I would think that genres like EDM, dubstep, drone, ambient, and drum 'n' bass are even more susceptible, to the point where it's going to be very hard to differentiate as the software continues to get better. And who knows, someday one of these AIs might even produce a "monster hook" and have a huge hit record, at least within one of those genres. So... does all this create a "genre fairness" issue?

As for the criminal aspect:

Romanelli wrote:

If Glasstrees (and others) are really fully AI, then what they are doing I would consider to be outright criminal. It's full on deception and theft. They've released 19 albums / EP's in less than a year, and they are selling them as if it's really their own work. The possibility of thievery in music should never be underrated.

On the surface I agree with this, but for practical considerations I'd have to say that if the people doing this weren't being deceptive, then merely selling the output from the AI shouldn't be treated as criminal in itself. What's needed here is really just Truth in Labeling. In fact, if I wanted to make a mealy-mouthed apologist type of argument, I could say something like, "putting a few of the better examples of these albums on BEA, labeled as such, might encourage these purveyors to up their game quality-wise, possibly to the point of rejecting lower-quality AI output and not crap-flooding Spotify, Bandcamp and other sites with 4-5 albums a month." I realize I've just said that while pretending not to have said it, but eventually that argument will probably come up, whether or not it comes from me or some AI who just writes like me because it's been trained on my BEA posting history.

Another argument that will almost certainly come up is that similar things have happened before, such as when digital sampling first became available/affordable, or even when K-Tel was selling albums consisting entirely of cheap cover versions of popular tunes with the words "ORIGINAL HITS! ORIGINAL STARS!" on the covers. Obviously the AI problem is much worse and will almost certainly be more widespread, but the point is, we do have K-Tel albums here as well as Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em by MC Hammer listed on BEA, and nobody seems to mind those. (Again, not my argument, but it's very likely to be used eventually.)

Re: Generative AI album releases

albummaster — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 16:01:17 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/24/2025 20:01

Romanelli wrote:

If an album is KNOWN to be fully created by AI, it should not be allowed on BEA. Make THAT the rule. I know that instances like this are hard to prove but there may come a time when Glasstrees slips up and admits its product is AI generated. And at that time, I believe sites like BEA should step up and act accordingly. By removing that content.

If BEA accepts these as albums, I will have no part of that. And quite frankly, on a site filled with people who have full understanding and appreciation of what albums are, I'm pretty shocked that this is even a discussion.

100% concur with above. The reason to discuss (obviously), is to allow people to put across their views before site policies are introduced (if policies are needed) rather than them suddenly coming out of the blue. 90-100% AI albums should be possible to identify (although possibly not based on what ManhattanJack was saying, so this might be a problem). There's also a murky area where you could have some other majority percentage of AI which makes churning out releases very easy (an album containing a small amount of true content bulked out by AI). AI is definitely not going away, so it's important that the site addresses this before it becomes too much of an issue (& definitely don't want to be spending time arguing with people on album pages whether a particular release is or isn't AI).

Re: Generative AI album releases

Romanelli — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 11:01:38 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 03/24/2025 15:01

My last word on this:

If Glasstrees (and others) are really fully AI, then what they are doing I would consider to be outright criminal. It's full on deception and theft. They've released 19 albums / EP's in less than a year, and they are selling them as if it's really their own work. The possibility of thievery in music should never be underrated. I was part of the MP3.com scene in the early 2000's when we had a site that was actually paying independent artists fair money for their work...and some assholes figured out a way to game it, wound up taking away more money than you would imagine, and ending it all in a heap of nothing for the rest of us. And the current state of streaming services...which is basically giving artists work away for free with the promise of "exposure"...I think we already have enough criminal behavior in music as it is.

But I understand that there has to be some give and take. And while right now, Glasstrees 100% APPEARS to be full AI, they are also doing a really pro job of concealing it...with the exception of their video quality and their impossibly prolific output.

MY OPINION: IF an album is discovered to be AI, then it should not be allowed on BEA. Because having it here is basically helping to sell the product, and that product is dishonest to its very core. I believe that if we have an open door policy towards AI, then it will never close. I believe the integrity of BEA will suffer.

Quote:

So... personally I'd recommend starting with some sort of "cultural shift" approach, whereby we start by encouraging people to add comments to albums that are clearly AI, saying "this is clearly AI." We could also make AI a nationality — I know that sounds counterintuitive, but think about it. It might be the most appropriate way to flag them, not to mention the easiest.

If not, we could instead add a little icon or something to each suspected-AI entry, similar to what we do now with compilations or live albums, the image for which could just be the letters "AI" or better yet, the glowing red eye of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Sorry...but I absolutely disagree with everything about this. No "cultural shift". Making AI a nationality? Accepting albums that are known to be fully AI? All of this is giving in. People making fully AI albums and selling them (or even trying to pass them off as original works) is wrong. Making ANY kind of concession to allow albums that are KNOWN to be AI is wrong. Just as having unauthorized bootlegs on the site is wrong.

If an album is KNOWN to be fully created by AI, it should not be allowed on BEA. Make THAT the rule. I know that instances like this are hard to prove but there may come a time when Glasstrees slips up and admits its product is AI generated. And at that time, I believe sites like BEA should step up and act accordingly. By removing that content.

If BEA accepts these as albums, I will have no part of that. And quite frankly, on a site filled with people who have full understanding and appreciation of what albums are, I'm pretty shocked that this is even a discussion.

Re: Generative AI album releases

albummaster — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 06:49:28 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/24/2025 10:49

MadhattanJack wrote:

The people writing the prompts to generate (I won't use the word "making") these albums never identify themselves as such, or explain exactly how they're doing it, so how would we know? 🤔

Maybe this is just a coincidence, but this thread was started about 7 hours after I added this album to my 2025 chart:

Not a coincidence, I read your comment in the mod history and responded saying we needed a wider discussion (should have mentioned you in original post, sorry, but didn't want to prejudice argument by singling out this album/artist).

MadhattanJack wrote:

If the site decides to ban AI albums, I won't complain, though it would probably be hypocritical of me to promote the idea myself. Long story short, I don't think the solution here is to just ban them, based on what will almost always be suspicion and not proof. The people behind these "artists" aren't going to admit they're AIs, and let's also not forget that other sites like Discogs and AllMusic aren't going to help us with this, at least not initially.

I personally think it's going to be very difficult to ban these albums because there's no real way of knowing how much content has been AI generated and even more difficult to measure its involvement in a release. Flagging albums as AI is going to require some type of subjective threshold, which is going to be hard to judge and difficult to referee (& AI technology will also improve making this even more difficult). In future years, we might also think about this whole issue a lot differently when AI is everywhere and becomes the norm. I do, however, worry about the site getting flooded with AI releases and allowing one allows them all.

Re: Generative AI album releases

MadhattanJack — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 03:12:54 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 03/24/2025 07:12

baystateoftheart wrote:

It will become more common for an element here or there to be AI-assisted within overwhelmingly human-made works, and that will be impossible to police. But if there's no human input beyond writing a prompt, I agree that we should draw a line in the sand.

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Afterimage by Glasstrees

It's obviously AI-generated, but hey, I liked it. Sure, Glasstrees puts out albums almost once a week, so they're obviously not human, but I can't prove they're not human. According to their Facebook page, they're a "two-piece band" consisting of "Miss Tree (vocals/guitar/noises)" and "Dr. Glass (vocals/bass/noises)." (Here's the album on Bandcamp.) Sure, I have terrible taste and I deserve total and complete condemnation, that's obvious, but meanwhile these AIs are getting better at this stuff literally by the hour. In my defense, I did make it the last entry on my 2025 chart, but if you go back to 2024, the self-titled album by "The Debasers" came in at #91, beating out several real humans.

If the site decides to ban AI albums, I won't complain, though it would probably be hypocritical of me to promote the idea myself. Long story short, I don't think the solution here is to just ban them, based on what will almost always be suspicion and not proof. The people behind these "artists" aren't going to admit they're AIs, and let's also not forget that other sites like Discogs and AllMusic aren't going to help us with this, at least not initially.

So... personally I'd recommend starting with some sort of "cultural shift" approach, whereby we start by encouraging people to add comments to albums that are clearly AI, saying "this is clearly AI." We could also make AI a nationality — I know that sounds counterintuitive, but think about it. It might be the most appropriate way to flag them, not to mention the easiest.

If not, we could instead add a little icon or something to each suspected-AI entry, similar to what we do now with compilations or live albums, the image for which could just be the letters "AI" or better yet, the glowing red eye of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Re: Generative AI album releases

baystateoftheart — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 17:52:13 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 03/23/2025 21:52

Hayden wrote:

I think utilizing AI in the mixing/recording process isn't the worst thing in the world, particularly with recent sound-isolation technology, but I don't particularly appreciate it (from a behind-the-glass standpoint). Entire songs/albums though? I think it would be a good stand to bar it.

This is going to be a very interesting (and important) discussion in art for the next few years. I'm still very torn on the use of AI in Brody's performance in The Brutalist. This is not your old 'acoustic instruments vs electronic instruments' argument. This is much closer to what teachers in school used to classify as cheating.

Also, what's the point of making an entire albums entirely with AI? What fun is that? Who exactly wins here? Why the world is insisting the first thing the robot uprise takes over is art is mindboggling.

albummaster wrote:

+1 to these. I hate AI for the most part, but I think any restrictions should be limited to entirely AI albums. There are plenty of records already that are predominantly human but incorporate AI in some form, from that buzzed-about Beatles single to this acclaimed 2019 album that was co-created with (a much earlier and custom-made) AI:

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Proto by Holly Herndon

It will become more common for an element here or there to be AI-assisted within overwhelmingly human-made works, and that will be impossible to police. But if there's no human input beyond writing a prompt, I agree that we should draw a line in the sand.

Re: Generative AI album releases

albummaster — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 10:11:34 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/23/2025 14:11

Romanelli wrote:

I believe that allowing AI generated albums on BEA would diminish what this is by cheapening the sites definition of what albums are. I don't care about what may or may not generate more traffic. To me, AI crosses the line of musical integrity, and if allowed on BEA, we would be making a statement that BEA believes AI generated music to be the creative equal of music that human beings have actually worked hard to create. I could not, in good conscience, be a part of that.

I share your thoughts, however it might not be clear in all cases if AI has been involved (especially if/when technology improves). It's going to be hard to moderate and as well if only a proportion of the album has been AI assisted, how do we identify it as we cannot listen to every release that gets added here. There are some thresholds that need to be defined.

A big concern as well, is that the site becomes flooded by AI releases when/if the streaming platforms begin to legitimise them (just like Bandcamp seem to be doing) and then making them appear as legitimate as other releases (when in reality they are not). They're so easy to create, they'll become a dime a dozen.