alt Hacker News> writing off the one thing that actually sells guitars in the 21st century (covers bands!) ...
I'm not so sure about that. Guitar bands playing original music is huge where I am right now, shoegaze / nugaze / grunge / dreampop is where the zeitgeist is here. As a middle-aged guy who was a teen during grunge, it's heartening to see the 20 year olds now buying Jaguar guitars (and a bunch of pedals) and new bands emerging each week. Everyone is nerding out over their obscure Bandcamp purchases, and it's definitely a thing that you need to write your own original material. The occasional cover is okay, but there's a definite "ick" to being a cover band.
"Analogue AI" as a description of playing a cover is harsh, but I can also see some of that label sticking. You didn't write the music or the lyrics, you're taking the credit and money for someone else's work. That seems to be some of the anti-AI attitude around here.
But you're right that "the forefront of AI" is not going to appeal to that audience, at all.
(Personally I'm pro-AI - not Suno stuff, but I think it will eventually find a place in the same way that synthesizers & sampling & DAWs did, all of which were regarded as cheating at the time they came out. I remember the grunge albums with "AAD" Analog / Analog / Digital printed on the CD sleeve just as Pro Tools was emerging.)
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I dunno.
Fender USA and Squier Jaguars and lots of pedals are for ppl in original bands.
But the money is in Custom Shop Gibson, Fender and PRS, which are for ppl in the older generations playing mostly in 70s cover bands, or just hanging it in the wall to occasionally play Smoke on the Water. TheGearPage has become a very influential force in the industry almost like HN has.
> I'm not so sure about that.
Pretty sure that, as a first approximation, essentially all bands are covers bands. At a first approximation, all electric guitarists only play along to other people's songs in their bedrooms! The proportion who ever play for anyone else is tiny.
It's just mindblowing to be that rude about the core market, especially for the luxury guitars they want to be known for.
> I remember the grunge albums with "AAD" Analog / Analog / Digital printed on the CD sleeve just as Pro Tools was emerging.)
I'm not sure digital recording is a fair comparison. Though at any rate, the first digitally recorded album (Ry Cooder's Bop Till You Drop from 1979) sounds so sonically dead that its artist has essentially disowned it.
It is, coincidentally, essentially a covers album. Ruined by its production; The Very Thing That Makes You Rich (Makes Me Poor) could have sounded immense and it does not.