AI Generated Music Barred from Bandcamp

old.reddit.com

383 points by cdrnsf 3 hours ago


olivierestsage - 3 hours ago

Funny to see this right now. Spotify's promotion of AI music bothered me so much that it has actually pushed me to Bandcamp and the practice of buying music again. It's really fun to build a collection knowing you're supporting the artists, download FLAC files, organize your little "collection" page ... Feels like a renaissance in my relationship with music, the most fun I've had since what.cd. Anyway, love this stance they're taking.

BrokrnAlgorithm - 2 hours ago

I'm a musician, but am also pretty amused by this anti ai wave.

There was recently a post referencing aphex twin and old school idm and electronic music stuff and i can't help bein reminded how every new tech kit got always demonized until some group of artists came along and made it there own. Even if its just creative prompting, or perhaps custom trained models, someday someone will come along and make a genuine artistic viable piece of work using ai.

I'd pay for some app which allows be to dump all my ableton files into, train some transformer on it, just to synthesize new stuff out of my unfinished body of work. It will happen and all lines will get blurred again, as usual.

don-code - 2 hours ago

A few months ago I spoke with the frontman of a local Boston band from the 1980s, who recently re-released a single with the help of AI. The source material was a compact cassette tape from a demo, found in a drawer. He used AI to isolate what would've been individual tracks from the recording, then cleaned them up individually, without AI's help.

Does that constitute "wholly or in substantial part"? Would the track have existed were it not for having that easy route into re-mastering?

I understand what Bandcamp's trying to do here, and I generally am in support of removing what we'd recognize as "fully AI-generated music", but there are legitimate creative uses of AI that might come to wholly or substantially encompass the output. It's difficult to draw any lines line on a creative work, by just by nature of the work being creative.

(For those interested - check out O Positive's "With You" on the WERS Live at 75 album!)

KaiMagnus - 2 hours ago

Completely understandable.

I had this opinion for a long time, but only recently was I personally affected, but that made me even more convinced.

I was listening to my new releases playlist on Apple Music and listened to a track that sounded nice, but also a little generic. I don’t know exactly what prompted me to check, but it had all the signs of something fishy going on like generic cover image, the artist page showed a crazy output of singles last year (all the same generic images), unspecific metadata and - to my surprise - I found other Reddit posts about this artist being AI.

Now, a lot of music is generic and goes through so many hands you can hardly call it a personal piece of art. But even then, there’s always some kind of connection.

I guess that’s why I felt betrayed.

I thought AI generated art was wrong before, but I didn’t expect to feel this mix of anger and disappointment.

sharkjacobs - an hour ago

I'm not ideologically opposed to making music with AI, but the dream would be new songs which which showcase the new sounds and musical forms that AI enables, like Believe for autotune, or Rumble for electric guitar, or Autobahn for synths.

I want a friend to message me like "Hey, there's some interesting stuff happening in the AI music scene, check out these tracks".

But everything I've seen is pastiche, either novelty songs (hit song as different genre, or famous monologue from popular movie as pop song) or generic background music meant for algorithmic streaming playlists.

mapontosevenths - 3 hours ago

Every major platform needs to also do this. They've all become overrun with literal trash.

crtasm - 3 hours ago

Reddit link is an official announcement, and it's also on their blog

https://blog.bandcamp.com/2026/01/13/keeping-bandcamp-human/

newman8r - 2 hours ago

If I have an exact idea of what I want something to sound like, and I'm able to use an automated system to create that, is that creative expression? Obviously AI isn't entirely capable of that, but eventually with BCI devices it might be.

I've spent many hours learning to play guitar and ukulele but I'm really not very good, and probably never will be - but I can hear the music in my head I want to create. I'm not interested in monetary gain at all, just being able to hear it for real and maybe share it with some people.

tunesmith - 3 hours ago

I think the real distinction is whether the output came from the artist's human intention, or whether someone just said "let's just see what happens!"... it's sort of impossible to reach inside the artist's brain to find out where that line is. I suppose the only test is to start with that same intention multiple times and see how widely the output varies.

fallinditch - an hour ago

At first I was just curious, and unimpressed with the horridly bland shite coming out of these AI music generators. But then I made a prompt that sparked some kind of magic, so now I want to finish off that track just to see if I can end up with something that I consider good.

I don't hold it much hope for this track because everything else I've heard on suno and udio are rubbish, but the 1 minute preview I have is enticing me to spend 8 bucks just so I can experiment a bit more.

I feel somewhat conflicted by my fascination because I have a great love for music and I wholeheartedly support efforts to restrict AI music crap.

But as the tools mature, the creative possibilities to make new sounds with finer control and granularity will make the process more ... creative - with greater human input.

I'm sure we'll end up with new styles and maybe even new genres that originate from prompts, and hits too. Is this a good thing to look forward to? I can see my future listening habits become strictly human only, but dang, the start of my new track sounds so dope!

I applaud Bandcamp's stance here and I will always look for ways to meaningfully support real musicians.

LTL_FTC - 2 hours ago

Not a musician (dabble with the guitar from time to time but I do absolutely love music) and don’t make music but one of my best friends growing up has been playing instruments forever. He writes songs and song lyrics. He has started a YouTube channel and shares some of the music he makes, and it sounds really great. I am amazed sometimes how great. But he puts in lots of effort to craft these songs and lyrics. They are not “one-shot” prompts.

If we look at this through the lens of making software with ai, which also allows for creativity, blanket bans may keep lots of quality stuff from being made.

How will the tracks be distinguished? Any ai and you’re out?

neom - 3 hours ago

I've been having fun making stuff in Suno, I'm not a musician but I've always enjoyed "producing tracks" using Abelton and find the Suno + Abelton combo to be real magic on the weekends. I think some of the stuff I made isn't too bad and I'd love feedback on it. For a few weeks I went back and forth about uploading them to my soundcloud and resolve with this: I wouldn't have insisted we only allowed art made with MS paint on deviantART, we didn't even enforce quality (tho we highlighted) - we enforced the type of kindness that leads to learning and growth. I hope we can have places for professionals and places for people to display and play with creativity and art irrespective of the tooling. :)

datsci_est_2015 - 19 minutes ago

/find in page “discovery”, 0 results

A little shocked. The biggest issue with music streaming right now is, imo, discovery. Algorithmic discovery is cute, but there’s a perverse incentive for companies who provide discovery services (ie Spotify) to funnel users to artists that cost less (ie AI generated in-house).

There’s also the fact that flooding the market with AI music slop _also_ makes discovery even harder.

Tried-and-true methods for discovery over the past decades are network effects (artists featuring and collaborating), and niche label A&R. However, Spotify has no interest, or incentive, to allow users to explore these avenues for discovery.

So, kudos to Bandcamp. But with better discovery this wouldn’t be necessary.

Finally, anecdotally, as someone in the top percentile of listeners for several niche genres on Spotify, I’ve yet to hear AI generated music that isn’t crap. Whenever it gets recommended to me by Spotify I reach for my phone, see that I don’t recognize the artist, and then see that they’re self-published on Spotify with a few hundred listeners. I guess if you don’t have any taste you might not notice, but it’s painfully obvious for anyone who is familiar enough to recognize themes, callbacks, and instrumentation within a genre.

nunez - 25 minutes ago

Man, I friggin' love Bandcamp. I hope Apple Music follows suit. (I don't expect Spotify to.)

thorum - 2 hours ago

Can’t imagine this policy lasts more than a year or two given the rate that AI tools for music are improving. Once the tech can reliably create high quality dry stems of instruments, backing tracks etc. and automate professional-sounding production work (which most musicians do not currently have access to) everyone is going to be using it even if they won’t admit it publicly.

montebicyclelo - 3 hours ago

For an example of an AI generated song that's gone viral in the last few days, getting millions of views on Spotify / Youtube, see this post from earlier today:

"Tell HN: Viral Hit Made by AI, 10M listens on Spotify last few days" [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46600681

999900000999 - 21 minutes ago

I support this.

However, what if I use AI to generate a simple sine wave. Then I map it to a keyboard and play it with different notes.

Who's going to define what's ok.

ceroxylon - 3 hours ago

It will be interesting to see how/where the line is drawn on "in substantial part", considering that Logic Pro lets you click a button and adjust some sliders to add an (awful, imo) drum/instrument played by AI to your track.

vindex10 - 3 hours ago

They sent AI generated music away to Bannedcamp.

adriand - 3 hours ago

This seems like a good decision, although, is there a good way to tell if music is AI-generated? I assume that some of the music that's showing up in my Spotify feed is AI-generated but I've never noticed.

justarandomname - 9 minutes ago

Hell yes, I love this and bandcamp so much more for this stance!

So many creator platforms are becoming slop factories.

meindnoch - 21 minutes ago

Good decision. Bandcamp makes money from people who consciously avoided the streaming shitfest in favor of directly supporting the artists. Hardly surprising that their have a strong aversion to AI slop.

JodieBenitez - 2 hours ago

Well... they'll have to clean their content because unfortunately there is already lots of AI generated music at Bandcamp

JohnFen - 2 hours ago

Bandcamp is my main source of music online, and this makes me love it even more.

dyauspitr - 2 hours ago

How would they know? A lot of the new stuff is pretty indistinguishable from regular music with the AI adding imperfections like a recorded album would have.

AnotherGoodName - 3 hours ago

I suspect it's honestly a huge threat.

Ok maybe you have the opinion that it's all crap right now. That's fine. But pretend it gets good. Pretend that instead of bothering with bands at some point in the future you just generate music to your tastes on the fly all the time.

Where does that leave Bandcamp? Do they market themselves as "fresh organic music" and live in that niche? What good does all the rights music companies own do if music generates on the fly?

I suspect a huge amount of lobbying incoming asap to stop this. Perhaps a law against AI generated music that's not owned by the RIAA? You might not like AI generated music but you should be very very cautious of those fighting it.

hmokiguess - 3 hours ago

I have a maybe unpopular opinion to share.

We now sort of accepted the idea of “vibe coding”, and, even shared appreciation from people who are using it to resuscitate side projects and things they wanted to do but required a lot of work. (Heck, even Linus Torvalds is doing it).

Is “Vibe Music / Art” any different? For example, I am not a drummer, say I use Suno to program some drums for me so I can record my guitar on top, and finally release that track I’ve been procrastinating.

I think the analogy here holds. Not all vibe coding is good, and not all vibe art is bad.

puzu - an hour ago

I am not against AI art but this would better to be contained in specific platforms, you could browse Suno for AI music and Bandcamp for human music. You would'nt display some generative art piece next to a Rembrandt. Also, Bandcamp could enshittified by a flood of AI music and change the fees or terms, so please no.

RIMR - 8 minutes ago

AI-generated music is novel, but like images and videos, I think of it almost exclusively as a novelty. I haven't heard any AI-generated music that I like in a real way. Just stuff that sounds like something I like.

The real value AI has for music is discovery. I've been using Gemini and ChatGPT to build playlists based on music I already like, and discovering lots of fun new tracks. I can be really specific about what kind of music I like and don't like. I can show it a playlist I already made, and ask it to make one like it, but with completely different artists. It's insanely useful!

But these kinds of tools would just expand how many different artists Spotify has to pay from my streaming, and that doesn't do the same thing as shoving cheap mass-produced slop down our throats, so it isn't surprising what they offer us.

fzeroracer - an hour ago

I feel like the thing like you can easily divide things along the lines of 'art' vs 'consumption'.

A lot of people including myself enjoy music because it's so intimately human, the flaws and all. It's someone putting a bit of themselves into every piece they create, and people look for things that resonate with them.

AI music however is purely about consumption. It's not something made to be remembered or cherished. And the more you integrate it into your music, the less and less of yourself you put into it and the less reason for anyone to bother. I could just ask whatever AI to generate generic rock music inspired by the beatles and remove you from the equation entirely and have the same experience. Everything gets amalgamated into the exact same thing with all of the imperfections sheared away.

habibur - 2 hours ago

I am on the opposite side. For the last few months I don't listen to music unless it's AI generate. I can feel the difference.

throw_m239339 - 2 hours ago

Good. Although It's gonna be tough to enforce.

> Our guidelines for generative AI in music and audio are as follows:

> Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp.

> Any use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles is strictly prohibited in accordance with our existing policies prohibiting impersonation and intellectual property infringement.

Which is balanced. It means that you can still use Illugen to generate a drum sample for instance, but you can't just generate a whole track on SUNO and just upload it on Bandcamp.

throwaway2046 - 3 hours ago

I've encountered a few artists who partially used AI in their music making process and the results have been incredible, I would hate to see them banned when grouped with people making completely AI-generated slop... Perhaps a middle ground could be reached? Allow AI generated audio as long as it undergoes significant processing by humans, for example.

bethekidyouwant - 2 hours ago

Irrelevant platform says irrelevant thing. Also let people like or dislike things. Maybe we could pick if we want AI content or not. (it’s a no from me personally ) but I feel like the ban hammer is the tool of petty tyrants and lacks creativity and nuance

rapsacnz - 2 hours ago

wohooo!

- 3 hours ago
[deleted]
CrzyLngPwd - 3 hours ago

We banned AI slop in 2022, and whilst it has been challenging, I believe that only allowing authentic human-created content is the future.

marsven_422 - 2 hours ago

[dead]

antibull - 3 hours ago

[dead]

z7 - 2 hours ago

That's pretty racist. It's rejected on account of its origin. And it is given no chance to succeed by merit.