Great thread. Thanks @hilde45
We are experiencing a preview of A.I. generated music right now. If you have Serius XM try listening to the station of current Pop hits for a couple of hours. There are three or four genres and within those genres this music is regurgitated, homogenous pablum that is made on electronic instruments. There is very little song structure, the beats sound the same, the chord structures are similar, and it is hard to tell one song from the other. It is made purely for profit and directed to an audience that wants to hear the same thing over and over. BTW, I sometimes listen to this station while driving just so I can be judgemental and yell at the radio. It makes me feel good to know that my generation made music that was so much better.
120,000 songs are uploaded to Spotify every day. Think about that. 3.6 million songs per month. We are already at the point where music is a fungible commodity.
I will avoid music that is known to be A.I. generated but there won't be a clear dividing line. What if a musician uses A.I. to come up with a catchy riff? How about A.I. lyrics that tell a compelling story but the musician writes the tune? Most of the time we'll never know. I think we are clearly on the road to popular music as a commodity and A.I. will accelerate that trend.
I'm in my late 60's and I'm constantly discovering great music that is decades old (thanks Qobuz). I'm finally doing a deeper dive into jazz, for example. And there are new interesting titles being released all the time by real musicians. My dying words will likely be, "I wish I had more time to listen to music." The music business can completely go to hell and I will be finding great music until I die.
On a related subject, if you haven't seen it already, I highly recommend the movie "Her."