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Just wait for AI to completely replace musicians. The record companies will write the songs with AI, create the recordings with AI, do holographic shows in stadiums with AI and the audience won't know the fucking difference. Or maybe won't care. The wet dream of the record biz: no musicians to pay, no songwriters to pay, the show can be toured with a laptop and some stage equipment. AI won't take the label to court for unpaid royalties.
Originally Posted by DawgBone
But there will always be a few weirdos like us who value skill, talent, dedication, self-development, teamwork, etc. We'll be the ones sitting in what's left of the jazz clubs soaking it up. It'll be a niche, but it'll be our niche.
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12-30-2025 11:29 PM
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I've been harping about that for some time. It's the record exec's wet dream. A legitimized, more cost effective, digital version of Milli Vanilli. I suspect half of what we have been hearing for 15 years was basically analog boardroom intelligence with a prop "artist" set up for visual appeal made from record exec's boy and girl toys. It's all lip synched performance anyways so AI is just a logical conclusion in that case. Originally Posted by Cunamara
Yup, everything else will be reduced to us weirdos. It has been halfway there for 25 years anyhow. Most "live musicians" today peel songs from a set list of about 150 pop/rock/country songs and that list seems to be getting smaller and smaller each year. Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, Sublime, Wagon Wheel, Tennessee Whiskey, then another Fleetwood Mac tune LOL. It amazes me how narrow the material selection and sound is now and "live music clubs" seem to want that more and more. Look on the bright side, within 50 years, if not much sooner, one giant electromagnetic solar storm will make it all clean again.
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I don't think that's a secret (except perhaps among 14 year olds who want to believe their pop idol is actually an Artist)? Originally Posted by DawgBone
Historically I see it more that the Beatles and their influence on music were blip in the overall course of pop music history which has always been what rock fans would consider 'manufactured.' and to some extent that was true even in the post-Beatles era... I mean how many big rock band albums had their parts rerecorded by session musicians?
Showbiz baby
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Yeah, that ABBA show which is all holograms (wikipedia calls it a 'virtual concert residency') has sold over 1.5m tickets worldwide. Originally Posted by Cunamara
Given the cratering of profits from selling recordings, this is clearly the future for the music industry. Except perhaps they can cut out the expense and unpredictability of actually having any musicians in the loop, of course. They've always wanted to do that!
This is perhaps the flip side of the fact that stadium concerts have long been rather impersonal. Perhaps, it may as well be a hologram.
Again, if one makes one's music reproduceable by a machine, I don't think we can be very surprised when you are replaced by machines. TBH this is a trend that has been happening for decades. Think of the effect recording technology had on live musicians. Things get disrupted.
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The ABBA show includes live musicians - Hero Band - ABBA Voyage 2025 | Official Website
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Critically it does not include ABBA, which is good because you can only do one gig at a time with them. Also expensive. Originally Posted by Bill C
Maybe we are at the point where we say it is great that they hire humans? Maybe.. Kind of dystopian … From a hard nosed profit first sensibility the bit that could probably be removed from the show. pit players in the West End have been fighting battles about this for years.
The nightly scale of a session band is not that much though.
I imagine it’s a fun gig - as a player or audience member! I’m a big fan of ABBA.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 12-31-2025 at 07:01 AM.
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On the other hand you could say - how is putting on a holographic concert with no live musical performers ethically different from screening the Band’s Last Waltz at a cinema?
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The music in Last Waltz was real people playing a real concert in front of a real audience (although some bits were done on a soundstage) not machines pretending to be people. It was also consciously a film about The Band, not merely a reproduction of the performance. Its purpose was not to manufacture and commodify a facsimile of a performance. Its purpose was to tell a story. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Completely different from the sort of animated fake performance being discussed here. Your raising the comparison makes me wonder if you’ve even seen it.
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Two venues I frequented when I lived in DC, The State Theater and the Hamilton, have largely gone to tribute acts.
We attended a David Sanchez performance at the legendary Bohemian Caverns, Lage Lund was to be at guitar but he was delayed leaving Europe. Closed a few months later.
At least Blues Alley is still going.
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I don’t think that’s correct, from the biographies I’ve read he was able to give up the various day jobs and go professional after he signed with Riverside Records. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Which was just as well, because by that stage, the strain of working all day then gigging until the early hours most nights was apparently causing him to have blackouts.
But I doubt he ever made a lot, probably just enough to support his family.
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As has already been intimated (if not explicitly stated, I haven't read the last couple pages of this thread yet), there's a huge difference between being a working "full-time musician" and being a working "full-time jazz musician" Originally Posted by deacon Mark
I went to an undergraduate music school that trained students who aspired to be working full-time musicians, and/or jazz musicians. The program was pretty adamant about disabusing students of the romantic notion that the pure [sic] jazz musicians would be able to afford a house and a car and 2.5 kids. They positioned themselves less like a conservatory, and more like a trade school: You wanna be a working musician? You gotta take any and every gig that comes along, and you'd damn well better be conversant in all those styles & idioms.
After graduating I was a working full-time musician in NYC and Boston for over 20 years (and a part-time working musician in NYC for another 20 after that). In all those years I played a lot of jazz. But jazz rarely paid the rent; it was all the other musical styles that allowed me to actually work.
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As someone who is in the process of dedicating my life to music, a point I haven't seen anyone bring up here re AI / the financial possibility of being a pro jazzer is that 99%+ of people who sing or play an instrument are not doing it to make a living. In other words, regardless of the state (or even existence) of commercial music careers, could we say that for 99% of musicians, the act of playing and participating in music will be the same as it ever was - a life-enriching hobby?
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Don't get my hopes up. Originally Posted by DawgBone
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SFAIK, for a while after he was signed to Riverside he kept his welding job, but stopped when he started touring full time. In the last couple of years of his life he made a lot of money (there are quotes out there from Creed Taylor to that effect). But he died so young that he didn't have enough years of high income under his belt to have real financial stability. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
I think that's an exaggeration. I get to see a pretty steady stream of young players coming out of school trying to kick off music careers. Most seem quite realistic about the level of talent and effort required of them and in their expectations for income/success. And, obviously, there are people who actually do wind up as full-time jazz musicians (though not many who earn middle-class or better incomes exclusively from playing jazz and not playing any other music, or teaching, or doing other ancillary music stuff like arranging). Originally Posted by AllanAllen
That's probably true for the style of jazz he played, but there was also a flowering of modern jazz and fusion in the 60s, and the studio scene was far from dead at the time. NOW, I'd say it's fair to say that all the ancillary opportunities have radically shrunk, but I know people who were doing pretty well as studio players, in the jingle/TV business, playing in B'way pit bands, etc., until relatively recently (let's say 10-15 years ago). Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Nothing except time, energy, and opportunity. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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I think it's worth considering that anyone hustling in their off hours from a day job will inevitably make some money on the side that can at least be re-invested into the whether it buys gear, recording time, extra sidemen, etc etc. In that situation I wouldn't consider that person a hobbyist but rather a pro/semi-pro. They are very serious in their pursuits, it's just not paying all the bills. Originally Posted by luk_luk_guy
A lot of the whole "pro" stuff is semantics because plenty of very capable guys are ready and willing to take a jazz gig, or a blues gig, but generally aren't presented nightly opportunities to do so....money-wise they are semi pro but the chops are pro. I played "pro" in 2017-2018 then I guess went semi-pro since my 3 shows per week residency ended due to a club closure and I refused junk gigs the agent offered and took a part time day gig. I haven't been "pro" since then but my chops are far superior to what they were in '18.
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this randomly showed up in my feed today
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Welcome to New York
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Mine too, but listening on my phone I thought he was saying Fame, as in Bowie or Irene Cara! Originally Posted by djg
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I'd throw him out myself and I'd just be there to watch. Too many jams tolerate this kind of crap these days. Originally Posted by alltunes
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Yes I have seen it. Tbh I’ve never been a huge fan. Joni is great. It’s something the rock press always used to bang on about when I was growing up, so I see it as somewhat totemic. Originally Posted by John A.
Which is why I brought it up, to get a strong emotional reaction.
As far as I can see, the difference is you like one but not the other? I don’t have a problem with a subjective reaction, but looking at it as a problem of who gets paid for what and why I don’t see why it’s fundamentally different.
We could have a live holographic show with a story based on real performances. Or not. It might be good, it might be awful, but that’s not the key thing….
In both cases the money goes to the mechanical rights holders, no? No performers are getting paid for performing.
I think the fundamental difference is that one seems familiar to people of a certain age (including myself) and the other does not?
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Somebody combed 3hrs of a stream to time stamp every guffaw some random guy did? That is just sad. Originally Posted by DawgBone
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Maybe this is already happening. I don't follow AI music.
Sooner or later (has it already happened?) there will be a massive AI hit song. One so good that you hear it constantly and that it prevails over any anti-AI-music sentiment.
Then, somebody is going to figure out how to take it on tour by creating a theatrical version. Holography? Robots? CG? I have no idea. What I'm expecting is that somebody will figure out a great way to do it. Or maybe AI will figure that out.
Right now, AI does natural voices well. Afaik, it doesn't do animated 2-D human representations perfectly, yet (does it?). 3-D seems out of reach now, but I'd guess there are very clever people working on it. At some point, probably not more than a few decades, maybe less, you'll be able to see, for example, something like a Marx Brothers stage play, featuring "performers" who look and act exactly like the Marx Brothers. That is, it will look like a live show. And, around the same time, you'll be able to see fully AI production of high enough quality to sell tickets.
And then, as a thought experiment, think about each worker you've encountered in your lifetime and ask whether or not a smart 3-d AI generated individual couild do that person's job.
Full disclosure: I recently had a fully AI help-desk bot assist me with a somewhat complex computer problem. All speech. The bot was able to listen to me explain an atypical situation and respond perfectly. It was impressive.
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I'd agree but the "somebody" was probably there watching the jam anyways which means he had to suffer through that guy a bunch. If you're suggesting a more forthright approach of dealing with him then I would agree but the somebody behind camera is not you and me so I guess internet shaming is his way, lol. I'd refuse to sit in with that guy and hopefully the rest follow suit in due time. Case closed. Two options, go sit down and learn something or hit the bricks. Have some respect for where you are and what you're playing and some of the guys you might be getting the chance to play with. Dude is oblivious. If you're a complete amateur like that joker clearly is then show some humility instead of being a total killjoy. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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Oh people on Reddit will be mining this for years, just like the Berklee guitar faculty jam … Originally Posted by AllanAllen
It's the best thing to happen to them for a long time.
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Although the YouTuber in question has now unlisted it. I guess he didn't want to get into the cringe content game. I think this is classy and the right move.
I don't think I was ever this bad, but if I'd had my youthful arrogant idiocy preserved on a live stream... man, doesn't bear thinking about. There's also a line where I might start to be a little bit worried about the mental wellbeing of the chap in question.
We would all hope he might have the chance to learn from this experience and not become another cringe meme.
Genie is out of the bottle now though.
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