Napster Is Now a Slop Farm for AI Music

When it involves AI slop, the hits simply maintain coming, and Napster (sure, that Napster) is answerable for the newest banger. Much to my chagrin, everybody over 30’s favourite music piracy website is again from the useless zombie-style, and this time it’s billing itself as a platform the place folks (not folks I care to know) can go and create AI music slop collectively.

Here’s what the brand new CEO, some man named John Acunto, has to say about all that:

“Napster was born to break boundaries, and we’re doing it again. We see this as a declaration that the age of passive consumption is over. Fans aren’t here to be fed a playlist. They’re here to co-create, to fuse their identity with AI artists in real time, and to shape the soundtrack of a new era.”

Sure, no matter you say, John. Because if there’s one factor folks hate, it’s listening to music. So passé. You can go forward and delete Spotify or Apple Music, everybody. Thanks to zombie Napster, you’re co-creators now, not only a sheep who merely (scoffs) listens to music.

There’s, regrettably, so much to unpack within the new path for Napster, however the gist of it’s that you may obtain an app (or use Napster on the net) to dive in and begin producing music as you’d on related music slop apps like Suno. If music isn’t your factor, then you too can generate podcasts, which is an much more miserable thought someway.

Napster doesn’t simply need you to pay attention to AI slop on its platform, although; as we already established, it envisions you as a collaborator, that means you’ll have the choice to work together with its slop-generating chatbots. Naturally, I gave that harrowing thought a whirl, so that you don’t should. I had the pleasure of interacting with slop specialist “Nia Jenkins,” whom I prompted to make “AI slopo,” which is a typo of “AI slop” that I didn’t trouble to repair.

After a couple of minutes of “thinking,” Nia generated me a track about AI slop, which was fairly meta if I do say so myself, and it sounded, effectively, so much like AI slop with a hip-hop/R&B styling. I additionally made the error of permitting microphone entry, which helps you to communicate to the chatbot and immediate it with phrases out of your mouth. If you’ve ever had a dialog with ChatGPT, it’s the identical vibe. Do I remorse giving Napster entry to my microphone? Yes. There’s no second leg to that assertion. I simply remorse it.

The complete factor is as deflating as you’d anticipate. You kind some phrases, and Napster’s chatbot churns out some sounds that I’m informed are supposed to be music. To nobody’s shock, Napster doesn’t give any perception into what information its chatbot is educated on, but when I needed to guess, it’d be copyrighted music. In that approach, the brand new Napster embodies the identical spirit because the previous Napster, which at its core was all about stealing. Unfortunately, this stealing simply isn’t as enjoyable because the previous stealing. I imply, not less than the opposite Napster pissed Metallica off.

If I’m being sincere, the entire thing simply feels very hole, however I’m undecided what one would anticipate from a platform that’s predicated on taking the creativity, ability, and soul out of one of many biggest inventive mediums ever to grace humankind. I imply, simply have a look at this official zombie Napster image (which I’m going to imagine is AI-generated). The AI picture generator actually tried and didn’t steal an iconic Nirvana shirt, people; you possibly can’t make these things up.

I don’t know, man, possibly I’m simply not studying the room right here. Maybe all of us simply hate making music now, and zombie Napster is the subsequent massive factor. Maybe John whatshisface is on the precipice of laughing his ass all the way in which to the AI-generated financial institution. Or possibly zombie Napster is destined to wind up the identical approach as the unique Napster—as a footnote within the lengthy and sordid historical past of music versus expertise. Just a a lot, a lot, a lot smaller one.