All of the "discoverability" algorithms are specifically and fundamentally about sifting through the millions to find the few that are preferred. That is their many-billion-dollar industry purpose. Spotify does a fantastic job with this, for me.
> will often just opt for whatever is popular.
Are you suggesting that people consume media they don't like? I'm not familiar with anyone that does this. I personally skip if I don't like a song even a little.
You're not wrong, but the need to please the user is still paramount, otherwise they'll just do something else. This is why TikTok is eating everyone's lunch.
I don't agree with this and to answer the question you originally asked me, I do think users are consuming things they don't actually enjoy. The goal isn't to please the user, the goal is to not bore the user. If you talk to people I'm sure you'll find a lot of the music they listened to isn't "enjoyed" so much as it is inoffensive background noise.
It's not surprising that some people are mindless consumers, but it's not useful to assume the majority is, especially of paying customers, and competition exists.
You're assuming it's not useful because it doesn't bode well for your argument. What makes you think assuming the majority aren't mindless consumers is useful?
I see this a lot, actually. People put things on in the background, for instance, and don't really care if they like it or not (as long as they don't hate it). They just want noise. Or people just scrolling through their feeds without genuinely liking much in them.
In the old days, this was also how the majority of television was watched. People watched TV out of habit, and frequently watched things they didn't like because choices were limited and often there was nothing they actually like on. Thus all the complaints in the day about how "there's nothing on TV".
People are willing to sacrifice quite a lot of real enjoyment for convenience.
No - human learning is still something special in this world.
It is a gift of time and effort, from both the student and teacher. The ability to be inspired by other works and draw from them, not merely imitate them.
You can ask any human musician to make music that is either inspired or outright copied from another artist. They have a moral compass to do so in a way that is not infringing on the works of others.
A music AI model will ingest what is thrown at it, and generate whatever you ask of it. It is a tool, and if it is ingesting human works to be formed into something else, proper attributions and royalties to the sources need to be made.
Sure it's almost entirely things like background music in shops and cafes where nobody is actually paying real attention to the music? I find it hard to believe anybody is actively listening to that kind of stuff (apart from perhaps checking our some of the more notorious cases for novelty value).
