I used to really love SoundCloud but in truth i was using it as a dump for all my audio. Recently as in about year ago SoundCloud decided that they would force users to login to simply listen to tracks. This doesn't work for me as the music for Fluxture is actually available for listening free of charge.
The other weird thing that kept happening was I was getting e-mails from SoundCloud when uploading new tracks about Copyright. Now some of this might have been due to enabling Pro Features i'm uncertain. However then i started getting e-mails randomly about things that were already there. It turns out this was due to AI.
The problem is. Early on yes i did do quite a bit of sampling but all the samples were from sample banks that either came with software or were purchased as sets at some point. This was a LONG time ago and it was mostly because real-time synthesis meant having really beefy systems and lots of fan noise. It's not like today you fire up Ardour and load up your favorite VSTi or LV2 and it “just works” no fan noise hardly touchs the CPU. This was not the case back then although when i started I was using csound for awhile which if you've ever used csound you understand it's real-time features only came about very recently history wise. It's an audio compiler which means you have to wait until compilation finishes to preview your WAV file.
Today i just use synthesis for everything and I've sort of settled now on using Ardour as my DAW but also strudel.cc (which is an amazing language) to produce all the electronic portions of my electronica tracks. So what this means is these claims are unfounded. But it also means something else.
Your music is being used probably without your consent to trains models you are not even aware exist. Then music is being produced using those models. The other problem is that other AI are being trained to detect people who break the covenant of Content ID. This is hands down the worst AI dystopia I can imagine just on the grounds that it's just so lame and stupid.
I guess the good news is any time this has happened SoundCloud has reacted in a way that was favorable but it doesn't make me want to stick with a service that does little to nothing for me. Now that my already small audience is dead there and people are actively training AI off it. I'm good.
Anyway this is why I'm now self-hosting Fluxture. I don't care i want to spend money on hosting in a way that isn't offensive to me or my wallet. Which brings me to one last thing I really enjoy Faircamp. It's a static site generator and it's what i'm currently using to get that “band-camp alike” feeling out of the Fluxture website.
I don't know what your opinions on AI are and how people want to or don't want to use AI in their artwork. I don't have any intention about writing about that. Instead I want to write about the way in which we respond to it.
I have my laptop on my lap. I was going to use Krita which is excellent Free and Open Source Software which everyone should endeavor to use. Then i realized that i also had a box of pastels. Armed with this some paper and few moments to myself i decided to get back to what i really care about. Traditional mediums. In particular i really enjoy pastel even though I'm very horrible at it currently. I like how it feels and how portable it is. It has a really deceptive texture to it that i enjoy that is oily without there being any oil in it. There is just that much pigment in there. This doesn't mean I will never again use Krita it has all kinds of uses for me. It is just how i'm deciding to slice my time between technology and traditional work.
But also, I love other things a well. I recently started collecting vinyl so i could play it back without the need of the internet. Having offline music is a great way to reduce your stress. Climbing all in on a single device has enslaved us to our devices. Everything is there, everything is easy. Nothing is tactile. You touch a phone and you get the same experience everywhere. I don't know if you've spent a lot of time around actual turntables but they are a very different experience and not all the music is continuous there are sides to records sometimes as many as 4! There is a process to using it that creates memory and changes how you think. The phone changes how you think too.
I finally bought the equipment and instruments i need to get back into my songwriting process. I am pivoting from electronic music to using my hands again and touching steel and wood. I have a bass guitar and a 6 string electric and now also a 6 string acoustic. This is all i really need along with the 88 key Keystation MIDI controller which i operate as a lightweight piano/organ using synthesizers in Ardour which is another FOSS project. Since i have decided to focus on recording Ardour makes the most sense for me. It's uncomplicated enough you can create your setup as you go or create some more sophisticated templates to keep around and even edit for later.
What am i getting at? In each case I'm increasingly more inclined to go back to the way things were closer to my childhood. Not out of nostalgia but out of convenience and as a way to fight back against a world that keeps insisting on encroaching on every part of our existence. These are just some ways to keep in touch with what makes us human. I'm all for human art. I suspect since we already have a corporate art shift and corporations seem intent on largely utilizing AI in some way to generate more corporate art it's fine if the rest of us focus on human art. That is art made by humans for humans doing human like things.