I’ve been involved in one music project or another (bands, albums, solo projects, etc) for the past 25 years.

During the pandemic, a friend and I decided to make a record together. We labored over it for almost two years and finally “released it” on bandcamp to very little fanfare.

A few friends and family had nice things to say, and one random stranger reached out with positive feedback.

I get a monthly stream report from bandcamp, and it almost always says zero.

I am so pleased with this project and have such great memories of making the album that I had two lathe cut vinyl copies made (one for me, and one for my friend).

I put a big part of myself into the project and was able to convey ideas and feelings that I couldn’t express effectively via other methods.

I listen to the recording about once a year. It’s a part of me now, and I couldn’t be happier with my journey in making it.

To me, this is the purpose of the creative journey. Knowing yourself better, and enjoying all of the steps involved in arriving at what is always a surprising destination.

If someone else feels something as a result of your work, that’s a nice bonus, but not something I focus on at all.

You're not wasting your time, my friend. But you've got to be very certain and honest as to why you want to learn that.

If your goal is being heard and appreciated, well, you better reconsider.

If you're doing it for your own pleasure and pure love of art, absolutely do go on, without any expectations. It may or may not take off, but the samurai must not care.

I’ve asked an artist if they should be worried about the newest generative AI capabilities. This is his (translated) response:

> Artists? Pencil laborers, more like.. I am in favor of using AI in visuals. It will eliminate a lot of mere decorators, and won’t even slightly affect the artists. I hope AI as a technology has the same effect on the world of ART as the invention of photography had: it got rid of a lot of empty landscape copiers. Impressionism was born shortly after that. See, I believe many cursed photography, but Monet never saw it as a problem.

A lot of people thought the same thing with everything going from analog -> digital. Or heck, even learning an instrument when MIDI was first introduced.

Even before generative AI, there is a long-going debate in audio circles around simulated guitar amplifiers. The truth is, the simulations of them have gotten so insanely good that now one could simply purchase an all-in-one pedalboard and have basically all of guitar history at your toes.

My rule-of-thumb is this: "does this tool I'm using in particular take away from the authenticity of my performance or songwriting?" Example: I am very keen on performing vocals and guitar at the same time, and I don't have an expensive studio setup, and my office has background noise. I use these tools, and yes even some open source AI ones, 1) remove background noise of the individual tracks and 2) do a final master against a recording I want to target (using something like Matchering or similar [0]). It still sounds like me, my voice isn't perfect, my beat isn't consistent, but it sounds like I rented some studio space. So for me it was a cost-saving measure.

[0] https://github.com/sergree/matchering

I love making music, and got into it as a venue to be away from the computer. I still do post-production in Ableton, but everything else happens with gear not even connected to a computer. I've tried to make music with a DAW, but it feels so sterile and boring, compared to actually using hardware to make it.

Maybe get a second-hand Novation Circuit to start with, or some similar "groovebox" that lets you make songs on one device, and see if you actually still do enjoy making music, yet haven't found the right process for you yet.

I don't think you're wasting your time, as long as you're having fun, regardless of what happens in the rest of the world. Sure, AI could probably make "better" (by some definition of "better") music than me, but AI couldn't make my friends smile at me as I play them my music I've made, that's quite literally priceless.

Maybe you could see if there's someone who finds the "not fun" part fun and you could collaborate with them. That would solve two problems at the same time.

Either way, I strongly encourage you to keep using a DAW if that brings you joy. Using AI to create art is a different skill set, just like using acoustic instruments is a different skill set from using either. Each option appeals a different amount to different people, and you should just do what brings you the most joy.

Few things are as satisfying to me as seeing a musical idea realized and executed well.

It is immensely fun to write, play, and record with friends. In a good session there's usually a moment where something falls into place and suddenly the record feels awesome and the path forward is clear. The whole room will jump up and say "That's it! Do that again!" and shout and high-five and get a second wind to keep going. It is invigorating and it never gets old.

Even if the records aren't any good, it's so. much. fun. to make dumb shit. Whether by yourself or with a friend. Don't underestimate the fact that music is pure play. It is one of the most plastic mediums available to us and you can sculpt it endlessly and continue to surprise yourself with the things that you can make. Have fun and do it for it's own sake.

This is all to say, the reward of making music (for me) is doing the work and being creative. Even if that's all you achieve it's valuable and priceless. You've already won. Great work. All secondary rewards (adoration, financial success, etc) are a cherry on top of that thing you've created. You did that.

I find the process itself a balm for the soul. It’s the one part of my life where only my vision matters, and I am free to completely disregard what others want. That includes some kind of imaginary audience.

I have a bunch of friends who also make music for fun and we share demos and build each other up. Sometimes we make stuff together, send each other inspo, discuss how to improve something in a song, etc.

But I have to say, the end result is completely irrelevant here. We’re all doing it for the fun of making, not for the finished product.

Given that you said you get the energy from the social element and approval, you could build a social network that will be a source of that approval for your creations. Otherwise you could find a hobby that gives you what you’re looking for without the less enjoyable parts.

You have the answer to the "why do it" in the first part of "why you are doing it". Just because something may be created at the click of the button doesn't mean it fulfills the goals you are looking for. People knit even though there are machines that do that for you. You are doing it for you.

I agree, the question of “why should I bother to do x/y/z when AI can do it so much better/faster/easier?” will become more prevalent and urgent as time goes on, resulting in a sort of creative and intellectual nihilism that will be harder on bright, intelligent people.

It was already difficult in the pre-AI age to engage with some activity in a meaningful way for the love of the process. AI now serves as the ultimate temptation away from doing the process yourself, getting the reward with much less of the effort. At work this may be appropriate, but life is not your work. We must be wary of using AI for activities that reduce the texture of our lives, making it less rich experientially. Bold claims to AI changing the world is reducing human activity to that which is readily generated on computing devices, and with it collapsing our sense of self to those few activities.

I have two answers for you:

1. All that AI really does is a (partially) randomized exploration of the space that has been spanned by existing music. AI creativity, as far as it can be said to exist, is limited by this. You, on the other hand, are human and not bound by any of these limitations. You are free to explore wild things that no AI can do. Just as a completely random example, you could go out, record noises your environment (even if it's just with the smartphone), grab interesting parts, chop them up, process them and turn them into unique new instruments. Bang on random stuff that has a nice ring to it. Record background hums, apply filters and envelopes to them etc. And there are so many other ways to produce unique creations.

2. Most importantly, music is a form of human expression. It is able to capture the human condition in a unique way. As a human, you can express these things genuinely through your own emotions, experiences, memories etc. AI systems can only produce hollow facsimiles of this. Regardless of whether you are conscious about it, every piece of music that you create is a reflection of you: your thoughts, your emotions, your process. And that imparts the true value on your creations.

Art is a form of communication. You turn to the arts when the other methods to communicate something either do not feel as if they fit, or feel that they will not encompass the idea you wish to convey. Art is a dialogue with other people, not a commodity. The point is to help yourself understand what you want to say, not to say something that is valuable in way that can be exchanged for goods.

So do not become discouraged by the machine generated sounds. They are only sounds, not a message.

I just recently setup a very simple home recording studio after picking up drums again at 40. I had the same thoughts, but I'm going it for me and it is extremely therapeutic. Plus, given the genre (extreme metal), I've gotten into much better shape. (Also picked up an 8 string guitar. I never grew out of my edgelordiness. No real point to mentioning this but just wanted to tell someone :)

AI music may eventually satisfy the masses and you can't stop that speeding train, but the process of creating something yourself will always have value if it's something you're interested in creating.

I know this is kind of at odds with this thread in general but

> but I know it requires work (...) to finish it

If you're like me and, when you get to this stage, you tend to burn out and abandon the thing, have you tried using gen AI to get you over that hump?

I love coding and still do but I often reached a point where all the fun, easy things were done and I'd be stuck at 90% with only difficult and boring tasks. I've been using Claude recently to just get me over that hump and finish my projects. It can still be fulfilling if you do it right.

If you're learning for your own enjoyment then you should keep learning. But regardless of AI, the music industry has always been notoriously difficult to get into

But you will end up with something where you can say „this is mine, I did that“ for the rest of your life. Even if no one ever cares. I come back to some of the things I did in the past through hard labour (coding projects, skateboarding videos) and even if it is nice if others appreciate this, they are still always there for myself as sign of what I achieved.

Hey friend, if it helps, every “song” you make will eventually become a symbol and memory of a time in your life. It doesn’t have to be good. Sometimes these sounds have even more fidelity than text when it comes to capturing your emotional state and thoughts at the time. I didn’t realize that for a while but in retrospect all of the “it sounds bad” and “I didn’t finish it” didn’t matter

I have done this with music, writing, and many other things. AI doesn’t make any of these things less enjoyable for me because the process of creation itself is the part that I enjoy.

I have a very low bar for what I consider to be a successful creation: it just needs to be enjoyable for myself in the future. Anyone else who happens to enjoy the content I make is a bonus. I have several songs on SoundCloud that I have produced in the past and I still enjoy listening to them.

There are still several avenues for this, and I imagine they'll continue to exist even in a mostly-AI-enhanced world. You'll need to dedicate time to finding them.

For example, Battle of the Bits [0] is a community all about chiptune music. I'm sure you _could_ use AI to help you learn and produce some things, but the community is mostly about sharing ideas about what works at the electronic level, so even if AI became super capable, it wouldn't help you engage with the community in any meaningful way. There are several such communities across different domains and I imagine they aren't going anywhere anytime soon, regardless of how much improvement happens w.r.t. AI, since the focus is on "what you learned" and not so much "what you did".

Similarly, I have seen communities focused entirely on Silicon Graphics workstations, or pc-98 internals. Human passion-based communities aren't going anywhere, Google just makes it incredibly hard to find them outside of word-of-mouth.

[0] https://battleofthebits.com

> Part of my reason for trying this was reading how creative endeavors can be therapeutic (I'm dealing with burnout/depression/cptsd).

This is the reason why a lot of us make music. Writing orchestral pieces is my own meditation. I don't share most of them, and replacing them with AI would defeat the purpose.

Please keep learning it! The world needs more musicians, even if we never hear them.

It's not a waste of time. Every time some new thing comes out and becomes popular, everyone everywhere says everything must be that thing because it's the future. In America, everyone wanted pure white sliced bread. People wanted frozen TV dinners. People wanted chain fast food restaurants. People wanted no effort reality TV. People wanted endless superhero movies.

Now people want actual food and they want stuff made with human hands and they want to know what's in it. People want TV shows with a proper story. People are beyond done with cookie cutter superhero movies.

The slop wave is going to pass. AI can make stuff that sounds super polished and perfect, but people will want the rough and crude touch of something hand made. They'll want to see videos of musicians showing behind the scenes of how they made something. They'll want to go and see a musician perform. Interest in 100% AI generated music will fade into the background and it'll be relegated to soulless Muzak used for ambiance in soulless chain restaurants too cheap to pay for actual music and too afraid to play any songs that might offend or annoy someone.

If you do it for money it is maybe a waste of time, because the chance to win the race were already low and now you have to compete with a tsunami of AI generated music. If you do it for your enjoyment, nothing changed and nothing will change

I used to make a lot of music in FL, mostly beats. I would make beats similar to whatever I was listening to at the time, try to get a little weirder with it every time. Like making Memphis style beats with crushed drums and warped samples running through PS1 reverb until it's drowning. It was never for anyone, I would send my songs to my group chat with my buddies for feedback. Kind of fell off just because I got into other hobbies. It doesn't need to be for anyone else. A re-mix of a song I did got 2M on YouTube though, the real catharsis was beating the botted 300k views the shitty rapper from my grad class had though. That video is copyright struck so I don't make any money from it, but that was never the goal, I just uploaded so I could send my songs to the boys/listen on my phone to do the 'ol car test.

I'm having fun building elaborate software that meets my needs precisely and nobody else's. I mean, maybe it would meet other's needs but that production would take away from the fun and learning I have building it, and would also reduce its utility for me personally.

don't sell your work short. it has value because it comes from you, and struggling to finish is unbelievably common in the creation process - not to mention frustration and a lack of joy.

if you're creating because you feel a drive to create, you are making art and that has intrinsic value to yourself and others. if however you are performing the act of musical creation as a means to an end, what you are doing may be better considered work and not art. the work of others can also be appreciated but it is different.

keep at it though. you are asking good questions and unlike many you are also personally engaging with them.

What about finding game creators or similar who could make use of a musical collaborator. Your music gains an extra purpose, you mix with other creatives and those others get their soundtrack sorted before they head to Suno as the easy option.

1. None of this should matter if you do it because it’s therapeutic.

2. If it turns out it’s not therapeutic for you, try something different. Play piano. Learn chess. Learn MMA. Go for a run. Heck, vibecode something silly. Music production is not the only way, if you have it a good try and it just frustrates you, try something else.

Just pick up your instrument and make some noise. DAWs are time sinks.

Music is about the “feel” first and foremost. Playing music on a physical instrument or singing is a feel thing.

DAWs are tools for polishing what was created with feeling into something “produced”. If that’s what you want to end up with, that’s ok. Just be clear with yourself on which you’re trying to do.

I've been making music as a hobbyist for 18 years.

It's fun.

That's it's own reason. Even before AI you statistically will never ever ever make money.

Not only that, but legions of scam artists want to rip you off in some manner. 'Cool music , for 400$ I can get your listeners '

Same applies to any creative hobby. Do it for yourself. I guess you can still share to your social circle. Others can still appreciate it.

I'd wager most people who make music are making it for the sheer joy of expression. Like .001% of people who make music get any kind of meaningful monetary return on it, and I think anyone who goes into it looking for monetary return is doing it for the wrong reasons. In my view, AI changes nothing where it matters it music.

I am hopeful that in the near future once AI has saturated as much of everything that it can that it will actually become even more worth it to do things. At least for me the only reason to experience art in any form is that there was human intent behind it. Thus making human generated content more valuable compared to the flood of empty AI content.

Step 1: ditch the DAW and learn a real instrument

Step 2: find a local jam group or community band/orchestra

Step 3: have fun playing music with friends

It's process vs end result.

If it's the end result important to you, use whatever tool brings you there fastest and makes you the most happy about the result.

But often it's the process that's important to people.

In both cases, it's very clear what the answer is.

I have little interest in doing a DJ set in public but I'll spend hours crate digging for new music and mixing circular black slabs of vinyl for nothing more than the love of the craft.

Fear not, a few of us are building in the direction you're hoping. Leveraging AI to make it easier to stay in a creative headspace with music rather than getting caught in a spreadsheet with endless settings

Sharing is definitely a core part of "why do it", but that can be sharing with friends/family or a living room performance

Some preliminary ideas here: https://songbird.studiocollective.xyz

Making the art changes you. Don't do it with the goal of having produced 'content' in mind.

Just remember that AI has lowered the skill ceiling to produce a lot of things. But it hasn't lowered the bar for taste :)

I have ~40 demoes from a music career that never took off. Now I am feeding little Suno with this demoes, turning them into afrobeat with oboe, deep house with harmonica, etc, and reliving the creative joy.

You can make a decent demo in a DAW and run it through AI for a nice production. The art of writing songs is still equally hard IMO. And a good song is still good, no matter what costume it wears.

If no one hears them, do they really exist?

It's worth doing. Those "no AI" mixes on youtube are doing great, though the vast majority of people is clueless and will happily digest any slop.

Create for yourself, and for those that seek the human effort and passion. There's an increasing number of us.

I'm the biggest doomer on this site, yet I'm certain human art will become even more valuable, and appreciated, than it has ever been before in history. Just don't expect to make billions out of it, or to reach out to the masses that are quite content with industrial-scale mediocrity.

> I wonder if I'm wasting my time

Art is strictly not about efficiency. Go do the thing instead of thinking about optimising everything.

> it will likely never be appreciated by anyone but myself.

So? Not everything you create needs fans or monetisation. It should still elevate your sense of accomplishment, like a kind of Type 2 fun.

>I'm at the stage where sometimes I make something that sounds good (to me) but I know it requires work (in the "not fun" sense) to finish it and even then, it will likely never be appreciated by anyone but myself.

That's true of 99% of very polished finished work too. Amazing bands and artists in Spotify with sub 1000 streams/month.

>None of these problems are "new", but I feel like AI is making this question of "why do it" or "what is worth doing" even more urgent. Kind of wondering how others are affected by all this, if at all.

Absolutely. One big concern is that even if you do it and you're proud of it, many will think it's AI anyway.

Plus the over-inflation of AI generated shit. It could all die in a fire.

You are clearly just at the beginning of your musical journey. I am happy for you. Yes, music for me too makes no sense without other people. This means, I suggest, that you must go out and find other people to collaborate with. The more you do it the more you realize just how many people out there are in the same boat as you. And once you find that right person or group, it’s like nothing else. And let’s be clear, this will take you far far outside your normal social circle. The type of people who like the same music as you may be completely different in every other way. It is important to actively seek out the right people and along that journey, define exactly what that person is, as well as who you are. This is the thing I care most about and yes I hope that more tools, AI or not come out to reduce that work that you have to do to make something polished, so everyone can focus on being creative.

> I've always struggled to enjoy anything that doesn't involve other people in some way

Well... play in band/orchestra ? You get to meet people, interact with them, build with them, etc.

I've been making music solo using various machines and computers all my life and I love it, but it's probably not for everyone. Yes, you're alone. Yes, (almost) nobody cares, so if you can't enjoy the process there is no point really.

() from time to time someone will show some interest but let's face it: there's just too much good music released everyday, competing with other distractions for the attention of the people.

For people like me, AI doesn't change much, it's another tool. We've been abusing technology in music for decades.

Learn an instrument (guitar,keys,drums...) if you haven't already and go jam with friends and do concerts instead. That's the best part of making music.

The age of music production is almost over, the age of the music industry already is.

I wouldn't want to be in the DAW/VST business today though, because a lot of potential customers are thinking exactly as you do...

I recently wrote more or less this exact comment on another platform recently (although I've been making music for a while).

I was told that I should make music for myself, but I guess I don't really understand that perspective? It's like with code – I used to enjoy writing code in the past, but these days if I want to build something I'll just generate it with AI because most the time it will be quicker and better than me hand cranking it. I used to enjoy it but coding just seems pointless now.

I don't really get why the average musician would bother recording there own stuff anymore either. If you want to create music then the AI is really good and you should just use that. It took decades to get half decent at playing instruments and producing my own songs, but today a kid can put out a song that sounds far better than what I can do in just 10 minutes with AI.

For the last two decades of my life all my free time was basically spent coding or write music. I can do neither now. I'm trying to learn more practical skills like wood work because that's the only way I've found I can still get that feeling of accomplishment which I got with coding and music, but it doesn't come as naturally to me unfortunately.

Definitely lost a big part of myself over the last year or two which I'm trying to come to terms with.

Mhm... it sounds like the main problem is that you like the result more than the actual process.

If you start a new hobby, you should enjoy the time you spend doing it. Of course, every hobby has its chores or tedious parts, but doing it just for the end product or for the validation you get from others will never work in the long run.

AI makes or will make everyone question doing „any” creative work. The real question you should ask yourself is „Do I care?”

If you do it for yourself - do it.

If you learn that to make money - forget about it.