Music Musings
I’ve always wanted a song done for me, and this fancy came true when a colleague-turned-friend made me one on my last day at work. I was thrilled. As someone who fantasized of being a lyricist, knowing about Suno – the software used for my song – was simultaneously astonishing and worrying, as an art that could take months to finish was done in a minute. Intrigued, I scavenged my files for a 2013 score that my Music major sister and I wrote for her graduation requirements. I keyed the lyrics into Suno, identified the genre I was interested in, and came it up with a rendition that was close to what I had in mind.
Suno aces song production: it provides lyrics, vocals, and instrumentation from a simple text prompt. Understandably, it won’t let you generate songs in the style of specific artists or use their real voices. Dana, a music enthusiast and the friend I mentioned earlier, and Josh, a software developer-slash-musician, believe the ChatGPT for music democratizes and disrupts the creation of music. However, the former feels it allows her to do art “for fun” and pushes her to labor for “serious art,” while the latter believes it is capitalism in the guise of music service.
Their POVs remind me of Benjamin’s concern on the loss of an art’s aura due to mechanical reproduction, and how Adorno & Horkheimer reckon the culture industry transforms art and its creation into a money-making scheme for the advantaged few. Thus, one can’t help but speculate how quickly Suno became so good. The term “Suno” is Hindi for “listen” – and listened, it did, as its executives admit training on copyrighted materials sans consent or proper compensation. Ethical concerns were naturally raised, but Suno counters that this is in the name of being “transformative.” Lawsuits from Denmark, Germany, and the music giants of North America say otherwise.
In fact, Suno settled Warner Music’s lawsuit through a licensing deal: retiring their current model, launching a new one trained on licensed copyrights, and limiting the number of AI songs a user can download monthly. This isn’t ideal, but co-founder Mikey Shulman is convinced this is more of a partnership than a settlement.
Dana thinks music is in the same boat with other creative forms warring the AI slop. For Josh, commercial values of speed, efficiency, and iteration don’t have a place in artistic endeavors, lest they become derivatives – or musical pieces created by altering, rearranging, or sampling a pre-existing copyrighted song.
Perhaps, something like “Hawak mo ang Beat,” which had me paying heed as it dominated social media and people jumped on its bandwagon. Like novelty songs that hostaged the 90s airwaves, it was exasperatingly everywhere. Repetitive, catchy, and LSS-inducing, it gave off vibes that made people believe it was AI-made. However, Tacloban-based French musician Sylvain Hernandez, aka DJ Mogo, denies that the song was artificially produced. He says his Filipina wife helped with the lyrics and sophisticated software handled the musicality. Moreover, he refuses to disclose the singer. Music experts surmise that the voice was crafted by sampling a pleasing vocal tone and transforming it into an actual song.
So what if DJ Mogo made use of AI? Why is there a need to keep it a secret? Could it be that there is some embarrassment about the song’s production – that it was not talent, but a mere tinkering with technology to have something go viral, and then monetize? Or is it because the admission would imply that something is amiss, and would make people wonder how many more AI-generated songs were fed to them via app-suggested curations?
On one hand, Dana thinks that if “Hawak mo ang Beat” was indeed AI-made, it may be “the best use of AI: great for memes and random, low-stakes things that bring amusement.” Yet, we may be falling for the tech-induced uniformity trap in our entertainment – something Marcuse cautioned us about. Moreover, it makes me wonder if AI-reliant producers really think this is the quality of musicality that appeals to Filipinos. If so, then have we lost the soul that gives our music its lasting, resonating power to the tech that instantaneously delivers it?
But then, there’s SB19 – the P-pop group working so hard to put Pinoy music back on the map. Pablo, the band leader, says they support innovation but not at the expense of identity and creative rights theft. Because artists exert effort to build their repertoire over time, they feel it’s very unethical for their materials to be used without consent, and should be illegal.
Unfortunately, in the PH, the legislature seems to be taking time catching up with technological developments. To date, there are no specific comprehensive laws dedicated to the protection of artists against AI. The proposed Protection of Voice and Facial Identity Act is promising, but remains pending. When passed as law, this act would establish legal safeguards to protect the integrity and privacy of individuals’ identities, including public figures such as celebrities, politicians, and other recognizable personalities. It will also make the creation of unconsented and fraudulent deepfakes unlawful. Violators may be imprisoned for six to 12 years, or pay at least Php 500,000 to a maximum amount commensurate to the damage incurred.
Meanwhile, NY federal prosecutors convicted a North Carolinian man for defrauding streaming platforms, flooding these with thousands of AI-generated songs, and using bots to boost listenership to billions. Having accumulated annual royalties of $1.027M between 2017 and 2024, he will face up to five years in prison and the forfeiture of $8.09M when he is sentenced in July.
In an interview with Billboard.com, Suno’s chief music officer Paul Sinclair jested how it’s a daily struggle and aspiration for him to “not destroy music,” because his child wants to build a career in the field. Isn’t that a major red flag if Suno’s very own chief feels this way? Given this internal struggle, it remains to be seen if Suno would continue to push forward with its capitalist endeavors, or have metanoia and be more ethically-inspired.