Generative AI killed my niche music subgenre, and how I lost two longtime friends to AI psychosis.

Mod here. Lots of reports about this thread and comments in it and particularly the line of conversation around the OP here possibly being a bot account posting LLM output.

After looking over everything, there's one rather belligerent comment that I removed, but beyond that I've decided not to take any action. First, I don't think there's a strong case that OP is a bot, nor do I think OP really did anything to bring on that suspicion except I guess that this is OP's first post (but every active user has to make their first post sometime). Though I also don't blame Grimy for the comment pointing to the similar Reddit thread and I don't really consider that "doxxing" as Reddit threads usually aren't really traceable back to any real-world identity.

I'm hoping a bit of transparency in the mods' (or at least my) decision making process is appreciated.

I've been doing software development for 30years processionally, 40 years in total

I love software development and its been my job one way or another for my entire professional life. Even as CTO I still daily got my hands dirty because I just can't stop development

That is, until 4 months ago when a project manager stabbed the then current CEO and best friend of hers in the back, got that CEO fired, and became the new CEO herself. (That entire event is a Mexican soap opera with chapters in on itself)

First thing that new CEO did? Fire my ass, fire the entire IT department, hire two new AI viber bros, or whatever they call themselves now, and all the software i produced over the past 5 years got scrapped immediately without replacement because fuck knows why.

And so I go look for a new job and there is nothing

I mean, there seem to be jobs, I applied for everything, literally at this point, and haven't even gotten a single call in 4 months now

Its fucking depressing, I stopped working on my open source project, because I'm just too depressed to enjoy it.

I am seriously considering becoming a gardener

Nothing really to say except that I'm very sorry you lost those two close friends. And that I hope you can beat the depression and find your passion again (either for trance music or for something else that inspires you). I think there will always be a core who appreciate human-generated content. But that fruit hasn't fully ripened yet.

The trance, and specially psytrance, community is shit full of Zionist hippies. Doesn't surprise me at all that they embrace and accept AI art and music for their superficial spiritually art. Sadly is not only trance but basically every electronic music out there. Spotify is full of it. I listen mainly latincore and related, from artists that I can verify that exists or that release in labels with a reputation to defend, so I think I'm kinda free of AI music, butnot sure how much that is going to last.

Kudos for you for denounce it, hope you keep doing music and experimenting. Share your SoundCloud I check out.

Someone is running bots, this is a slightly reworded Reddit post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtistHate/comments/1v6z770/ai_ruined_my_favourite_music_genre_trance_and_the/

Edit: Not a bot, sorry

I LOVE trance, and I HATE AI with all my life.

With me you'll always have at least one supporter. And in this community, even more.

Wow, is trance really considered niche? Your music is a perfect fit for so many aspects of life, and it's awful that the genre is completely flushed out with AI chill/focus/study playlists. I personally listen to Blue Turtle's AI-free fantasy playlists while I work. Back in the age of CDs I had so many trance mixes that I'd listen to driving or just zoning out in my bedroom. It's an incredible type of music that I hold near and dear.

The influx of AI everywhere IS distressing, but it's good you're in a better spot mentally now. I'd encourage you to keep creating. If not music, find an outlet to express yourself, even if The Plagiarism Machine can do it 1000x faster. Because creating is clearly important to you, or any artistically minded person. I enjoy TTRPGs and it's so satisfying to worldbuild, come up with scenarios for my players, and improvise at the table. Making stuff will both keep you sane and benefit those around you.

Man, that sucks.

I grew up in the punk scene, played in a few bands, had a distro, used to produce gigs, knew shit tons of people, but later I moved to a city that has nothing, and I kinda left Facebook in 2018 and I never joined Instagram, so I lost contact with majority of them, and right after the pandemic lockdown I got some new responsibilities so I haven't left my town since, so I'm very distant from the "scene" now. I recovered my Facebook acc recently to look for some old contacts and, man, every fucking flyer, every fucking cd cover, or "single" cover (for spotify or whatever) is AI slop, it's so fucking sad to see, because all those bands have very political lyrics... as punk is "analog" music, I think it will be harder to be taken by AI, but bands could be covertly playing covers of music they made with AI too...

Hey OP, the electronic music scene is awesome, my brother was a raver in the 90s, my cousin still travel to those rave parties in farms in the middle of nowhere, when you get your strength back, be positively hostile to AI, that's gonna be your scene, I'm sure tons of people are sickened by that shit as well, and you will all find each other, death to posers.

I'm a trance (and EDM in general) fan. I deplore generative AI for all the reasons you've stated, so I won't get into it again right here. So I'm behind you. There are at least two of us.

My advice, tone deaf though it may be (ha), is that if you love to do something enough you can do it anyway and to hell with what shitheads have to say about it. That's an inherent part of all art in some capacity, I think. The math is muddier when you depend on doing that art for a living. But if you still want to do it even if it can't be your day job, go for it.

My audience will never be millions-wide. I implicitly limit my potential viewer base by only publishing (and advertising) in the Fediverse and even then only on Lemmy. So be it. Work is what you do for other people. Art is what you do for yourself.

Then, there will come a day when this all comes crashing down. Some of us will still have our skills afterwards. When it's all derivative, when it's all grey noise that sounds the same, who is going to be able to come up with something truly new?

You.

I love Trance, for over 30 years. You do what you love doing and know you have fans who are not interested in AI-generated “art” of any kind. I’m not up on new music but I’d love to hear your work :)

Artists deserve better fans. It's just very difficult for artist and fan to find each other, as these days the platforms you'd do that on, are pro AI.

But we do have bandcamp, and the fediverse, and other places where people still want art for people by people.

I'd love to give your human-made tracks a listen.

A possibility is that the Facebook, who is known to be really shitty in this way, may have taken over your group and/or feed. It may have seemed like everyone is against you, but Imo, you weren't allowed to see the support. Your 2 friends may have been sucked into the psychosis in the same way. I feel bad for all 3 of you and anyone else getting sucked into their mind fuck.

Retrowave has been hit. The Midnight and Gunship are big in the genre, i cant tell if new artists im hearing are AI or not.

Sorry about that your friends, however you're not describing AI psychosis.

Depression sucks bro and its hard to see the light from the tunnel.

I am seeing wildy successful posts of thirty hand drawn signs and "AI free" art. It could be your new selling point.

While you might not see people being openly anti AI in your community they might not be as brave as you to speak out.

If you need to also seek support, the brain is like any body part that can be hurt and need professional care.

Don't lose hope man.

PS do you have a link to your music, people here would love it I'm sure.

Is this what people call AI psychosis? I thought it was actual psychosis. TIL

Anyways I love trance and psytrance, it has been a big part of my life. I have only listened to A State of Trance a year ago or so, and then mostly other podcasts and some songs I found and loved.

Hearing how AI is ruining the genre sounds really disappointing. Same goes for the development of psytrance and the zionism connections.

I feel you on this. I‘m a bedroom producer myself but I haven’t touched my DAW in a while since genAI took off and I got disheartened by it. However I think we need to have a reevaluation of our art. Music has always been an incredibly difficult industry. There’s zero money in it outside labels, especially in the streaming era, and many electronic musicians can’t really access revenue from touring instead. Getting someone to even try listening to something original is like pulling teeth.

So we’ve gotta reorient and start just making this for ourselves with zero expectations anymore. There’s no real way to actually compete for listeners with Suno-slop, so make it as an act of humanity, purity and rebellion.

Ok, so hell yeah, love trance music.

So here's some hope for you:

You're talking to people who are making music, not the people who listen to it. I think the people who listen to music want the human touch.

I think if you did keep making it and really learned into how it's all human made, you'd find that niche of people who hate this AI shit.

Stick to your guns and keep making the music you love.

Also if you want post where we can find it, I'm curious what your style is

Sorry for your loss.

Sad to see even creators are falling for the AI hype train. I already had an issue with finding new artists to listen to, since many are either "rational adaptors" (e.g. don't think it's good for music, but think it's good enough for everything else), or outright just posting slop trying to pass as real stuff.

I suggest you to look around for some anti-AI artist communities. I probably also should join some, became quite socially reclusive recently as I'm losing friends left and right to various things.

AI music always sounds like someone threw a hand full of songs in a blender and the gray goop that comes out sounds so bland and soulless.

I'm sure the music you make is unique and has soul to it, it has a human touch and creativity.

Sucks some people fall for the fake slop music, but lots of people don't and want music made by people.

I have a neighbor that's obsessed with AI, it's the solution to EVERYTHING. I just ignore what he says when he says how great it is, then try to explain the way I do things the hard way, but AI is such a shortcut, it's impossible to get through. Over time I explained how much power it uses and how inaccurate it is, and how it actually is just a word probability machine, but it doesn't stick to him. Again, I just ignore it. He has been absorbed by the slop and sinking in it.

AI is like quicksand. I would rather be anywhere but sinking in that.

You are the hope going forward. It can only be people like you.

I often think how if we had genuine robust social security, stuff like this, would be an utter non-issue.

• No economic coercive drive to race faster to the bottom. [And so no ai churn]
• No concern if anyone uses your creations since your livelihood/survival's no longer tied to it [and the "intellectual property" monopoly you have on it].

I've been in love with trance music since I was in high school 20+ years ago. Fuck AI and all the slopbros. Keep making your music, it's the human element that makes it so great. AI can never replicate that.

Eurobeat has also been hit with the ai plague. Many legendary artists from the genre's heyday and many major labels (including the biggest one) have gone fully in to ai art, vocals, beats, or a combination of those. There's been pretty wide pushback I've seen from the community (especially r/eurobeat) but most of the artists and labels have doubled and tripled down...

Do you have a link to your music so we can have a look?

If you love the trance scene and passionate about it then keep doing it the way you want. Others will adapt new techniques for the better or worse - exiting the scene and going full depressed over this is a bit overracted IMO. If you already have a name in the scene and known for making quality stuff, this won't change, just because other people using AI to generate music.

So I guess you should focus on what you love - the music, the scene, the subculture. Destroying everything you've built up, just because folks using some expensive dice rolling for their stuff - it's not your concern. You want to fight against it? The only way you can effectively fight against it is not lecturing people about how bad is AI and oh, the billionaires etc. etc, they don't care, they want to listen to some music, go to clubs, hang out with others. So what's better than giving them quality content?

Just to throw my two cents in:

I went through something similar way before generative ai. As in, had to face losing my lifelong passion and let go. Years of depression and losing contacts happened. Similarly, it was music. I was wrapping up my bachelor’s degree in musicology in university when this happened. The kick in the balls for me was realizing I wasn’t nearly good enough to make it as a musician and would’ve been doing either academia or notating or something else less creative than actually creating music, for salary. Felt crushing and it was a process that gradually culminated over years ultimately, throwing me into a downward spiral.

Well, it took me a few years to recover and battle back. Lost people in the process, not because of anything substantial, simply depression making me feel and think as you are writing here.

I’d like to offer some nuggets of wisdom borne from experience:

I think for a lot of what you say, it’s the depression talking. The people you lose, you didn’t have to, but right now it feels as if you did, and you do.

You can come back from that. I did.

You can also come back from losing the passion, the lifelong dream and enthusiasm. The spark that kept you alive through everything.

You can find a new one. It’s not the end.

I did; I found myself spending a lot of time indoors during my depression years, so I naturally picked up games for the first time in my life really, and with them, modding. This evolved to programming in general, and eventually an engineering degree. And a new passion, new dreams, new reasons to live and breathe, something to belong to and create.

I’ve recently had to start adjusting my expectations with it too, for much the same concrete reasons you are battling with here, but this time it seems much easier to let go. Not as catastrophic. All-consuming. And I know there’ll be a next thing eventually that’ll be my new home of enthusiasm.

All to say, don’t lose hope. You’ll get through it and find new things. Life will go on.

You’ll get through this, you’ll learn from it, you’ll be back. Trust me on that.

Your descriptions of "ai psychosis" leads me to believe that you might be the asshole here stalking and harassing people. Now you come here for validation.

As much as hate generative AI in artistic fields with a burning passion, it sounds like you have some serious emotional instability if this rocks your world to the point that you fall into persistent depression and burn bridges with all your friends. I’m very sorry you feel this way and hope for everyone’s sake that human-made music stays appreciated going forward.

We shouldn't be surprised that it's the Electronic Music folks that would enthusiastically embrace AI, they are already deep into the tech stuff more than most musicians. They would be predisposed to accept technological progress, just as they have since the MOOG hit the scene in the mid-60s. Nobody was complaining when synthesizers became polyphonic.

Look, AI music is here to stay, but there will always be people who will totally reject it, and gravitate toward genuine organic music like yours, even if it's in an electronic genre. It will be even more pronounced in music that is generated manually, like guitars and vocals. I am one of those people, who will be avoiding AI music as much as possible, and will support real musicians, composing and playing real music.

Not defending AI at all, but we have been accepting of electronic drums, and even other electronic replacement instruments like basses, for decades. In the future, AI is going to be used on every recording somewhere, even if its only embedded deep in the bowels of some mastering process or something. That would be acceptable to nearly everyone.

But there are lines, and they just haven't been fully drawn yet, they're still blurry. The two most sensitive areas are composition and performance. How much AI is acceptable in a composition? If it's nearly entirely human composed, but they accessed AI for suggestions about a few troublesome lyrical rhymes, should it be stomped? If a track is entirely human performed, but with Steve Slate digital drums, is that okay, because it isn't AI drums? What if that same drum track is fully created by AI, using digital drums? What's the difference?

You still have a foot outside the electronic world, so you have a more open perspective on the issue, but your friends are so deep into that world that they only see the advantages of AI in making their jobs easier, and not the longer term problems. Or maybe they just don't care, which is the case with many people. If it makes life easier, what are you whining about?

You need to adopt the attitude that ALL successful musical artists adopt - you don't care what anyone else is doing. You have YOUR music, composed according to YOUR philosophy, and that's YOUR art. Let them do whatever they want, but you have adopted a totally organic philosophy of music, and that's your "genre." Promote that, don't worry about what others are doing, and you'll find other composers, musicians, and music fans gravitating to YOUR art.

If it's getting so bad that you are considering an end game, go talk to a medical professional about your feelings. This AI stuff, and all the other garbage that's happening in America is wearing us all down, but it will only be temporary, the assholes will NOT win. Keep plugging away, and force your mind to think positively. Lincoln, who struggled with depression in a very tough time in America, said "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be." It seems simplistic, but it is definitely the first strategy to try before escalating to medical stuff.

So try to maintain a positive attitude, and pour it into your music. If you are getting worn down by AI and other current events, compose about that. Use your ORGANIC music to spread the message about ORGANIC music. And use the word ORGANIC, a LOT of people are downright militant about organic stuff, and will support it intensely.

Now is not the time to give up, it's the time to dig in and fight back. We need your real music to build a wall against synthetic music. You've lost friends to AI, and perhaps you can mend those rifts, but search around for others like you. They're out there, and looking for other organic musicians like yourself. Once you surround yourself with like minded musicians, you'll feel a lot better.

Good luck brother, you still have friends in Organic Music, never forget it.

if people are using Ai to form relationships with AI BFs/ GFs theres very little you can do.

This is a reddit repost from an account with no other activity, so anyone replying to 'OP' here is talking to a machine.

To the point of the post, trance, edm, dubstep, and whatever the hell else you want to call it was always generated music. To make a song, you sample someone else's music, cut it up, and put it over one of the stock backgrounds your keyboard gives you. Sure, there's people doing more than that and actually making music, but you cannot deny that the process is as I describe.

Ever been to an EDM show? Ya. One guy stands up there and 'spins' ... meaning he plays pre-recorded music and acts like he's performing. Kareoke is a more creative act than live EDM.

For those of us who listen to music by humans, this whole complaint is amusing.
I saw Elder and Blackwater Holy Light play last night. I'm about to go see Sleep and Pink Mountaintops play tonight. That's music. Real people with real instruments doing real stuff on a real stage.