I have had many interesting personal conversations with my subscribers regarding my reluctant view on the progress of Artificial Intelligence. This stems from previous posts, most recently, Remember When Robots Were Only Here to Help Us? Many feel like I am missing the AI boat and don’t understand the benefits. I do understand the benefits, but I feel there aren’t enough guardrails, and I question the morality of what is being programmed in.
In my previous posts, my primary contention is that AI is starting to replace us in domains once thought to be the realm of human intellect and experience, namely the arts. I mentioned that machines are now creating books, movies, and music. I understand how thrilling and exciting this can be. I do. I get it. But just as instant meals lack the nutrition to fuel our bodies, instant art lacks something uniquely human: a soul.
Apparently, the bigwigs at Spotify (the company I alluded to but did not mention in the aforementioned post) must have heard the cry from my humble website, Brian on Purpose. Just last week, in an article published by Variety (link provided here), Spotify announced it is removing 50 million tracks from the recommended list in its algorithm. The tracks will remain, but no longer be recommended. Users would need to search for those tracks themselves.
These tracks are referred to as “slop” or “spam” tracks. Indeed. I could not agree more. Art should not be replaced with slop. I use the term “art” in a general sense and may be generous, as I struggle to find art in much of popular music, but I still believe those artists have a right to produce what they think others may like, or what they themselves appreciate.
This announcement comes after they have already completely removed 75 million tracks from the platform, meaning they are no longer available. I had no idea it was as pervasive as it apparently is. That’s a total of 125 million tracks (just on one app). That’s more than the Beatles, Elvis, and Van Cliburn combined.
The music listening world has spoken by deleting, disliking, or thumbs-downing slop music being force-fed to them. This action, in addition to, I suspect, canceled subscriptions, caught the attention of the powers that be, at least at Spotify. I will put this in the Win column for the music listening world in general and Brian on Purpose in particular.