Best Ever Albums

Re: Question on AI Music

asimpkins — Sun, 8 Nov 2026 06:18:34 GMT

Author: asimpkins

Posted: 11/08/2026 11:18

Yeah, it's pretty easy to write off AI music where a human just prompted AI to create complete songs that "sound like X combined with some Y". Maybe they provide a bit of additional feedback, then just pick their favorites and release it. That's pretty low value and anyone can do it. But there's a lot of space and potential to collaborate with AI to brainstorm, tweak, and enhance human created music. Think of human written melodies but performed in new sounds, tones, or voices generated by AI. Most of the examples right now fall into that easy call territory, but it's going to get a lot more complicated.

Re: Question on AI Music

albummaster — Sun, 8 Nov 2026 03:55:18 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 11/08/2026 08:55

I’m with Romanelli on keeping mass-produced releases with very little human input off the site. Where I’m hesitant is making a blanket rule about AI use now. There’s a big difference between asking AI to generate an entire song and using it to come up with a drum loop or help with post-production. As the tools evolve and musicians find new ways to use them, a rule we make today could box BEA into decisions that make less sense down the line.

More broadly, I think we’re still at the beginning of a much bigger shift. I expect there’ll be pressure on the music industry to set some limits on where and how AI is used, partly because so many people’s livelihoods depend on creative work. I don’t know what those limits will look like, but I think plenty of people will still seek out work made by other humans, and the people making it will still want to be paid and recognised for it.

I'm more with asimpkins that I think the AI policy needs to be more nuanced, at least until we've lived a little longer with AI to know which direction we are headed in.. MJ’s flagging idea is pragmatic. Flag the most obvious cases of suspected mass production, like Unreal Rock Songs, and open the less clear-cut cases up for peer review. AI ,or not AI, is going to be a sliding scale as MJ mentioned but I'm not sure it's possible to measure it and where any threshold should be for displaying an 'AI' label. A binary yes or no is probably too aggressive as probably lots of music production tooling now uses AI in the background (AI is a loaded label really as programmable drum loops, samples etc have existed for decades).

The difference between the example of YouTube (and their 'AI' denotation) and a streaming site or record store is that YouTube allows any content creator to upload videos whereas a music label would have curated the artists that they want to promote, which brings me back an earlier point in this discussion about streaming services and record labels acting as gatekeepers: they decide what they’re willing to carry.

If an album is only listed on one streaming service, that listing alone isn’t enough to justify adding it to BEA. That’s in line with BEA’s policy from before AI became a consideration, and it matters even more now if that service has a loose AI policy. They decide what albums are available for people to listen to and somewhat mitigates the need for BEA the only ones making the AI judgement.

Re: Question on AI Music

MadhattanJack — Sat, 7 Nov 2026 19:33:49 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 11/08/2026 00:33

Romanelli wrote:

I know that AI albums are here, because some people add them. And I know that not everyone checks to see if they are AI. That doesn't mean they should be allowed. My stance is that if I find one, I flag it for deletion. And I hope that I never receive instruction to do otherwise.

I forgot to mention — that "Glasstrees" album (and all other albums under that name) got banned from Bandcamp, presumably for being AI, so that one can be safely deleted. I guess I should have downloaded it, but they wanted money, so... 🫢

I think @asimpkins and I were both referring to a hypothetical future scenario there, in which it becomes increasingly difficult (and perhaps even impossible) to determine if a piece of music is AI-generated just by listening to it or running it through audio-analysis software. In that case people will increasingly have to rely on crowdsourced investigations for this, conducted by individuals known to be human. (We don't know that in my case obviously, but that's only because I'm not trying.) Maybe that day will never come, but saying "that day will never come" doesn't seem to have slowed the bad guys down very much so far.

Re: Question on AI Music

Romanelli — Sat, 7 Nov 2026 18:44:52 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 11/07/2026 23:44

POTENTIAL UNPOPULAR OPINION

AI banning is already coming. It's been in place on Bandcamp for quite some time...a zero tolerance. It's coming to Spotify, and even youtube is starting to catch fire for monetizing AI content The pressure is on streaming services to not allow it because the "artists" are abusing the platforms and making money for music that no one actually created.

I do not, and will not, support music that is completely or even mostly AI generated. It's bad for the industry. It's bad for the true artists. It's bad for the consumer. It's bad for the environment. It breeds dishonesty. And, realistically, the music flat out sucks. There may be areas in which AI is a good thing. There are definitely areas in which AI is NOT good. Music is one of them. And I'll say it...if you need AI to engineer your music better, then you need to work on becoming a better engineer. Same for writing, singing, and playing. Get better at the art instead of cheating it.

I see absolutely zero reason to make room for some talentless hack sitting in his basement telling his computer to "make me a hit album", and then watching as he lies and deceives people into giving him money and praise for creating nothing. And I believe that the music industry is going to follow that...because the music industry does not like to get ripped off.

I hope that BEA maintains a stance that AI albums should not be allowed. Period. And right now...there are already pretty easy ways to detect AI content. I hope there is no bend on this. And I believe that if there IS continued no allowing AI on BEA, that BEA will be sitting at the front, not the back of the line.

I know that AI albums are here, because some people add them. And I know that not everyone checks to see if they are AI. That doesn't mean they should be allowed. My stance is that if I find one, I flag it for deletion. And I hope that I never receive instruction to do otherwise.

Re: Question on AI Music

MadhattanJack — Sat, 7 Nov 2026 17:41:40 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 11/07/2026 22:41

asimpkins wrote:

So I don't have a neat solution. But I'm pretty sure a zero tolerance policy towards using AI will not work. Eventually you'll need to start pulling significant albums off the site and the site will become a relic of the pre-AI age. And I don't think some sort of AI threshold makes sense either. What would it even be? How would we know if it was met? The filter for AI noise has to build around notability in some way, not simply the fact that AI was part of the creation process.

I don't think a neat long-term solution is possible unless someone builds a universally-recognized central authority (on what's AI and what isn't) that can be accessed by other sites via an API. That's not going to happen any time soon, if ever.

In the medium term, we'd probably have to convince @Albummaster to build additional UI (and some data fields, etc.) to flag and rate potential AI album entries. Since we already have a member-level system to handle trust formation (I realize it's not ideal because it's not meant for that, but it's a lot better than nothing), we could say something like, "Level 4 or higher gets to flag possible AI albums, Level 3 or higher gets to score the likelihood of each one being AI on a 1-100 scale, and Level 7 or higher gets to remove the flag based on evidence/proof that no AI was used." (Which, ideally, would be provided by the person removing the flag in the form of links, etc.) AM could copy some of the UI and code from what he's already done for quality ratings.

At that point, each album otherwise gets treated like any other except for the fact that the scarlet-letters "AI" appear beneath the album title if the likelihood ratings go above, say, 80% maybe? That would be similar to what Youtube does now, at least visually. Also, if proof exists that the album is AI, you could hide the rating UI stuff and make the album's "AI" scarlet-lettering effectively permanent.

In the short term, I'd say just muddle through it — the problem isn't quite at crisis level yet, so we might have a year or two before the situation becomes completely untenable.

Re: Question on AI Music

asimpkins — Sat, 7 Nov 2026 08:34:12 GMT

Author: asimpkins

Posted: 11/07/2026 13:34

albummaster wrote:

Does this cross the line for what constitutes human-created music (and what is the line?) Thought it worthy of discussion to get people's views.

Late to this, but here are my thoughts for now.

I'm pretty comfortable if an actual human artist wants to use AI as a tool to create art and they are really working the creative process and they are putting their name behind it and vouching for its quality. I'm pretty sure AI is going to be used as a tool by a significant portion of humans to varying degrees to make a significant portion of art going forward. I'm not sure it's possible or desirable to try to legislate against that.

The problem is mass produced AI content with minimal human input/supervision. It's so easy to make so much of it. And it makes sense to block out that noise.

The artist in question, I think, is trying to present themselves as the first case:

Quote:

"Artificial intelligence is an essential tool for generating sounds, but the entire creative process is mine. I create, review, and finalize the complete musical structure, including riffs, solos, transitions, arrangements, lyrics, and mastering."

And if that was really true, I would support the album being on the site. But a little bit of investigation makes me pretty skeptical of their quote. On Spotify they have over 65 albums released in the last year and a half. A human artist is just not capable of that kind of output. (And their artist name being Unreal Rock Songs does not exactly scream auteur.) So in this case I think it's an easy 'no' despite their claim -- this is AI noise.

But it's not always going to be so clear. If they had just released one album and their artist name was actually Jane Brown, then I'd be inclined to support it. But even then I still wouldn't really know how much human creativity went into it. I'm just guessing.

So I don't have a neat solution. But I'm pretty sure a zero tolerance policy towards using AI will not work. Eventually you'll need to start pulling significant albums off the site and the site will become a relic of the pre-AI age. And I don't think some sort of AI threshold makes sense either. What would it even be? How would we know if it was met? The filter for AI noise has to build around notability in some way, not simply the fact that AI was part of the creation process.

Re: Question on AI Music

albummaster — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 04:18:22 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 09/20/2026 08:18

MadhattanJack wrote:

I don't know if this is "definitive," but I did say I'd keep an eye on it. So it looks like there's been no further effort to promote Plastic Milk whatsoever, and they've since been pulled from the Dead Noise Radio artist roster on Bandcamp. (The album's gone too.) The Discogs page is still there (and they're still on Spotify and Amazon), but since there's no info about the band on Discogs, there's essentially nothing left to back up this act's existence as a real (i.e., human) band. Not sure what the procedure is, but even though there were probably some humans involved, maybe it should now be pulled from BEA based on lack of current documentation? I wouldn't object, personally...

On the plus side, searching for the phrase "plastic milk" on Bandcamp did bring up this plunderphonics album, so I guess that was worth a laugh or two.

Thanks for the follow-up. I think that's probably a decent way of approaching things. I've flagged the Plastic Milk album as suspect, which gives it another 30 days for anyone to object before it's deleted.

Re: Question on AI Music

MadhattanJack — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 22:53:36 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 09/20/2026 02:53

MadhattanJack wrote:

I'd suggest we just keep our eyes on it/them, see what happens, but unless we can find something more definitive they should probably stay in.

Re: Question on AI Music

albummaster — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 06:22:49 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 04/10/2026 10:22

This is the latest album which has triggered the AI threshold.

Jane Brown And Yellow Atmosphere Band (2025) by Unreal Rock Songs

This album is currently listed on Apple Music and Spotify. In terms of AI involvement, the following text is copied from the artist's website.

Quote:

Does this cross the line for what constitutes human-created music (and what is the line?) Thought it worthy of discussion to get people's views. If an album is listed across different streaming platforms, is this enough to legitimise a release? (some platforms seem to be softer on AI than others and the above two are probably on the soft side).

Re: Question on AI Music

albummaster — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 06:04:16 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/20/2026 10:04

Really interesting analysis. A close eye needs to be kept on AI and how it evolves. Unfortunately, we can't put AI back in its box and pack it away somewhere, it's unleashed now, and we all need to evolve to prevent it invading everywhere. AI will get 'better' at what it does and we need to get better at countering it.

A big factor that legitimises any release is how many stores and websites an album is listed across. We're already seeing push-back on some online streaming platforms against AI, so hopefully this helps to keep the worst of AI at bay. Undoubtedly, there will be some albums on BEA that have slipped through the net (especially in genres that are more suspectable to generative AI); but to appear on BEA, these albums would have to have been previously listed elsewhere, as BEA requires proof of each release, so the online streaming platforms are very much now the primary gatekeepers.

Re: Question on AI Music

MadhattanJack — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 22:50:09 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 03/20/2026 02:50

Here's another one that totally looks like AI, but SubmitHub says no. The band is called Adult World, and their newest (or newest-dated) album is called Exit Strategy. It's indie-rock, jangle-pop kinda stuff with the occasional shoegazey "burst." Okay, but there's no Discogs page, they have no discernable media footprint whatsoever, and their band photo on Bandcamp is a picture of a space heater. And that's not all!

There are eight (8) releases, ostensibly dating back to April 2017, but not a single one has been purchased by anyone, which seems to indicate they were all uploaded quite recently, with zero fanfare.
None of the albums have title tracks. (If you've ever been in a band that made a record, you know there's a strong temptation to name it after the most-clever song title, at least once anyway.)
There are no credits or liner notes on any of the 8 releases, except for one line, "mastered by Travis Thatcher," on Exit Strategy. There's a Travis Thatcher on Discogs, whose bio reads, "Travis Thatcher is a musician, instrument designer, and mastering engineer. He is technical director for the Virginia Center of Computer Music at the University of Virginia and is behind the Voice of Saturn line of synthesizer modules and effects." Apparently he is, or was, also in a band called Judi Chicago.
Only one of the albums, Final Cut, has an album cover with something resembling people on it, but they're not really people, and it's a heavily manipulated image.
Another album, No Master, uses track numbers as song titles — that might be something you'd get on an album of instrumental tracks, but they're not instrumentals.
For some reason they use the word "moderate" as a genre tag.

So I listened to some of this stuff and it's not bad — in fact, Exit Strategy (while not great) is surprisingly good, and to me it doesn't suggest the kind of soullessness or consistency of approach that I'd expect with an AI album at all. They also don't seem to have a consistent sound between albums — you can actually detect a stylistic progression from album to album.

And here's what SubmitHub says about the leadoff track from the newest-dated LP:

Quote:

Analysis
Human made
Strong human characteristics detected

Detail:
Duration: 210 seconds

Spectral analysis:
Human: most likely (91%)
Hybrid (AI + Human): highly unlikely (5%)
Pure AI: highly unlikely (5%)

Temporal analysis:
Human: very likely (97%)
Hybrid (AI + Human): highly unlikely (3%)
Pure AI: highly unlikely (0%)

Go figure! I'm not going to add this to BEA because there's no Discogs page and I'm still not convinced, but there are albums on charts here that are nowhere near as worthy as this. So, I'll keep my eye on it, and we'll see if any evidence pops up to prove they're real, I guess. There could be something else going on here too, like maybe this is a guy who's trying to sell his old band's recordings or songs as his own without their knowing about it, maybe. Who knows!

Re: Question on AI Music

Romanelli — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 09:48:43 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 02/17/2026 14:48

AI is the devil. Personal opinion. 😈

This is helpful. It's not 100%, and shouldn't be used exclusively (there are clues to spot AI). But it is a helpful tool:

https://www.submithub.com/ai-song-checker

I threw in the youtube video from Plastic Milk. Here are the results:

Spectral analysis:
Hybrid (AI + Human): likely (66%)
Pure AI: unlikely (27%)
Human: probably not (7%)

Temporal analysis:
Human: most likely (83%)
Hybrid (AI + Human): probably not (16%)
Pure AI: highly unlikely (1%)

This would indicate that they probably did use AI in the creation, but it's not PURE AI. The fact that the Bandcamp page still exists is a sign, to me, that they are likely legit. Other clues include a detailed list of band members and what they contribute, and a mastering credit.

Also...I have found that it's a pretty safe bet that if an artist has released work prior to 2025, they are probably not releasing AI tracks. In this case, I think it's worth keeping an eye on, but they are probably okay.

Re: Question on AI Music

albummaster — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 04:29:04 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 02/17/2026 09:29

BurndenAce wrote:

Forgive me if this has already been answered elsewhere on the forums but I wanted to bring this issue to the attention of this site's userbase if it hasn't already. I set myself a goal this year of listening to every new album that appears on the homepage as Trending. On Feb 12/13 of this year, that was Plastic Milk's Echoes with Teeth and I finally got around to listening to this album tonight. It's sort of dark and gloomy with a female vocalist and initially struck me as fairly decent. However, I noticed on Spotify that there is virtually no artist page for the band and upon further digging, there are a couple things that don't sit right with me...
After listening through the album in its entirety, the song structures are roughly the same, with similar keys and near-identical aesthetics production-wise. I don't have definitive proof but I strongly suspect this is AI-generated (though I would appreciate some second opinions).
Are AI albums allowed on this website? And if they are, is there any way to flag them as such?

Hi, thanks for interesting post. First, good to hear people are using the trending album and hope they've generally been useful (algorithm has only been around for a few months). To answer the last point, pure AI albums aren't allowed here (if they slip under the radar, they can be flagged for review and taken down by clicking through on the icon into the admin page for each item). MJ has given a good analysis on this and it's probably one to keep an eye on. Generative AI is something that's currently evolving and BEA's policies will evolve with it, but right now for this particular album, the fact the album is on Discogs gives it credibility. I'm not sure why it isn't listed on other sites (yet), but if there are traceable humans behind it, then this is probably ok.

Re: Question on AI Music

MadhattanJack — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 02:10:32 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 02/17/2026 07:10

It's possible, but usually if they have a Discogs entry, a band photo, and names for all the band members — all of which they do have — that means they're probably legitimate, and in this case, just not good at promoting themselves. (At all.) In addition, I don't believe the album cover image is AI-generated, either. As for the fact that they're not listed on other sites, I think that's more an issue of me accidentally discovering them on a Bandcamp tag search on day-of-release and adding the LP here before they were noticed by anyone else on the planet, rather than the other way around. (It happens...)

Plastic Milk
Echoes With Teeth (2026)

Link

You have a point about Dead Noise Radio, since their cover art is all AI-generated.... but it looks like they've been putting out mostly ambient stuff, and ambient stuff is notorious for having AI-generated cover art, not to mention the fact that AI-generated ambient music is now virtually indistinguishable from human-produced ambient music (not that I dislike ambient music, mind you). On Soundcloud they claim to be run by one Duncan Ritchie, aka "Flowers for Bodysnatchers" (an ambient act from Australia — no albums listed on BEA for him, but that's true of most ambient acts, even from Australia). He had an album or two on Cryo Chamber, and I know they're legitimate, though I guess that doesn't prove anything regarding Plastic Milk.

I'd suggest we just keep our eyes on it/them, see what happens, but unless we can find something more definitive they should probably stay in.

Question on AI Music

BurndenAce — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:41:53 GMT

Author: BurndenAce

Posted: 02/17/2026 05:41

Hello Everyone!

Forgive me if this has already been answered elsewhere on the forums but I wanted to bring this issue to the attention of this site's userbase if it hasn't already. I set myself a goal this year of listening to every new album that appears on the homepage as Trending. On Feb 12/13 of this year, that was Plastic Milk's Echoes with Teeth and I finally got around to listening to this album tonight. It's sort of dark and gloomy with a female vocalist and initially struck me as fairly decent. However, I noticed on Spotify that there is virtually no artist page for the band and upon further digging, there are a couple things that don't sit right with me

- There is no press coverage about this band or the album, which while not entirely unusual for a debut album, still seems odd
- There is no social media presence from this band as far as I can tell
- This album is not listed on either of the other major online music ratings websites (RYM or AOTY)
- The label this band is allegedly signed to is absolutely using AI to generate the description for this album on Bandcamp, at least according to GPTZero (The bandcamp link is not easy to find, I had to go through a YouTube video to find it)
- On Spotify, only the producer is credited, with none of the "band members" listed on the Bandcamp page
- This is harder to prove, but the label also appears to have multiple similar albums released in the last year or so that have similar vibes

After listening through the album in its entirety, the song structures are roughly the same, with similar keys and near-identical aesthetics production-wise. I don't have definitive proof but I strongly suspect this is AI-generated (though I would appreciate some second opinions).

Are AI albums allowed on this website? And if they are, is there any way to flag them as such?