[HN Gopher] Blocklist for AI Music on YouTube
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Blocklist for AI Music on YouTube
        
       Author : jsheard
       Score  : 87 points
       Date   : 2025-02-16 12:09 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (surasshu.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (surasshu.com)
        
       | wenbin wrote:
       | If you manage to curate a large enough collection of AI-generated
       | playlists, would you consider putting it on Kaggle? This way,
       | others could use it to train AI models to automatically detect
       | AI-generated music.
       | 
       | We did something similar by sharing a dataset of around 7,000 AI-
       | generated fake podcasts on Kaggle:
       | 
       | https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/listennotes/ai-generated-fak...
        
         | aizk wrote:
         | This is amazing and I think deserves a thread of its own.
        
       | voidfunc wrote:
       | I've been a big fan of AI music for background noise while coding
        
         | JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote:
         | Try this for coding: https://musicforprogramming.net/ Some
         | artists have their SoundCloud or Bandcamp account in the links.
        
         | Okx wrote:
         | soma fm has some good online radio stations:
         | https://somafm.com/ (and shows you the track and artist)
        
         | petercooper wrote:
         | Same, though by surprise. I've been generating a very specific
         | uncommon genre of music on Suno (a sort of Slavic accordion
         | drum'n'bass - a totally random idea I had one day) and found
         | myself listening to it more than I anticipated. I dislike most
         | of Suno's vocal output but the instrumentals can be quite good
         | especially in unusual fusions of genres.
        
           | zeven7 wrote:
           | > sort of Slavic accordion drum'n'bass
           | 
           | Interesting. Do you have an example?
        
             | petercooper wrote:
             | Largely no, but I did upload one of the very first ones I
             | generated at the time:
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP5eOdyRhYw - For some
             | reason I find this sort of thing good background music,
             | though suspect most would not!
             | 
             | I quite like music with uncommon modes and weird scales and
             | Suno isn't too bad at emulating this - especially with
             | Arabic music (e.g. "swirling dramatic orchestral arabic
             | music with oud guitar" will yield many good, if
             | stereotypical, results). I'm not familiar enough with
             | traditional regional music to pick out all the flaws so it
             | works for me, but a "local" would probably say it sounds
             | unrealistic in the same way that Suno-generated typical
             | Western pop and rock sounds off to my ears.
        
         | hexage1814 wrote:
         | AI music rocks. Especially the ones made on Udio, which I think
         | it's the best model as of right now.
         | 
         | I hope we soon have a "Flux" like equivalent model, but for
         | music, that you can run locally/fine-tune,etc...
        
           | gs17 wrote:
           | There's YuE: https://github.com/multimodal-art-projection/YuE
           | But running it locally will need a bit more GPU power than an
           | image model.
        
             | andersa wrote:
             | It's also far inferior to Udio or Suno.
        
       | senordevnyc wrote:
       | It's ridiculous that YouTube doesn't allow blocking of channels.
       | I find the prevalence of fake movie trailers to be absolutely
       | infuriating, and I do not understand why YouTube and the IP
       | holders don't nuke those channels, or at least let people block
       | them!
        
         | NitpickLawyer wrote:
         | Why nuke them when you can "divert" the revenue and enjoy free
         | work, free eyeballs on your IP and so on? This is a "problem"
         | that has been solved by the music industry. They leave every
         | song with shitty lyrics on top but get the ad revenues via the
         | tagging systems that Google implemengted. (agree with you that
         | you should absolutely be able to ban channels)
        
         | cobbal wrote:
         | Don't they have this? I hit the "don't recommend this channel"
         | button and never see them again
        
           | arccy wrote:
           | it hides from recommendations, but not search results
        
             | gs17 wrote:
             | It's always interesting to see how people use a site
             | entirely differently from myself. I've only used YouTube to
             | find a specific song/artist, so the only search result I'd
             | click on is what I was looking for. From there, the
             | recommendations are surprisingly decent. Do you usually
             | search for a genre or something?
        
               | senordevnyc wrote:
               | I'm usually searching for movie trailers in specific
               | genres
        
               | tyrust wrote:
               | Is there a reason that you don't use YouTube Music for
               | this?
        
               | gs17 wrote:
               | Yeah, nothing makes me go to YouTube Music. Usually, if
               | I'm listening to music on YouTube, it's because a YouTube
               | video of a song came up in a search. If I was on YouTube
               | already, then I had just used the search bar there. If I
               | wasn't, the search engine wouldn't send me to YouTube
               | Music. For music in general, I just use Spotify.
               | 
               | I can't be that weird about using music on YouTube rather
               | than YouTube Music, the post shows someone doing the same
               | thing.
        
               | tyrust wrote:
               | Sorry, didn't mean to imply that you're weird, I was just
               | wondering.
        
         | behnamoh wrote:
         | YouTube as an app/website is broken beyond repair, I'm
         | surprised they lasted long enough to be the de facto video
         | hosting website...
        
         | doctor_blood wrote:
         | YouTube fundamentally does not respect the time or attention of
         | users - even if you pay for YouTube Premium.
         | 
         | The only way I can stomach YT at this point is with blocktube
         | and unhook; I can disable parts of the interface, block
         | channels and content individually or with regular expressions,
         | and filter comments with regex - a necessity given how many
         | scams are being run right now.
         | 
         | I dread the day they drop RSS feeds for channel updates.
         | 
         | https://github.com/amitbl/blocktube
         | 
         | https://unhook.app/
         | 
         | Edit: also see how YT search gives you unrelated nonsense.
         | User-hostile may as well be their mission statement at this
         | point.
        
           | MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
           | uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock are also fundamental for being
           | able to tolerate YouTube.
        
       | jsheard wrote:
       | Along similar lines, a blocklist for filtering AI crap out of
       | image searches:
       | 
       | https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | These strike me as momentary throes from a
         | technological/cultural realignment.
         | 
         | Back in the day there were tons of people who were totally
         | opposed to the rising genre of "electronic" music. Today you
         | couldn't call electronic music "not music" without drawing the
         | ire of lots of people.
         | 
         | In the same vein, people opposed the internet, digital drawing
         | tablets, digital cameras.
         | 
         | AI is interesting because it can be use to "just prompt", and
         | those outputs can't be called art. But actual artists are using
         | the technology as just another tool to accomplish even bigger
         | things:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_SgA6ymPuc
         | 
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/comments/1ihq048/i_was_ai_l...
         | 
         | Of course AI will still be used for slop and fan fiction, and
         | people will endlessly try to fix Star Wars and Game of Thrones
         | [1]. But that shouldn't be used to detract from the medium,
         | because there will be an abundance of people doing amazing work
         | that stands on its own legs.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfPeixY_I3w
        
           | jsheard wrote:
           | When doing an image search there are times you specifically
           | don't want AI images, ever, period. If I search the name of a
           | real artist I want to see their their works, not a diffusion
           | models half-remembered knock-off of their style. If I'm
           | looking for reference photos then I want reference _photos,_
           | not synthesized images which resemble photos but may or may
           | not reflect reality. If I 'm looking for historical photos
           | then no, a generated image vaguely drawing on the
           | stereotypical vibes of that era isn't going to cut it.
        
             | echelon wrote:
             | This is a temporary problem that the market will solve for.
             | Either the search companies will fix their algorithms, or
             | curated websites and platforms will arise.
             | 
             | One way or another, this bug will be fixed in time.
        
               | markrages wrote:
               | > The statistical likelihood is that other civilisations
               | will arise. There will one day be lemon-soaked paper
               | napkins.
               | 
               | > 'Till then, there will be a short delay. Please return
               | to your seats.
        
           | visarga wrote:
           | Hell, even reading was decried as a way to wreck your memory
           | - why remember when you could always open a book?
        
           | tim333 wrote:
           | >Today you couldn't call electronic music "not music"
           | 
           | I'm not sure anyone is calling AI music "not music." It's
           | just so far a bit rubbish. It mostly gets called AI slop
           | which is kind of fair.
           | 
           | Maybe we'll get a Donna Summer - I Feel Love moment but I
           | don't think it's arrived yet. I Feel Love was probably the
           | first big electronic music hit and did stuff you couldn't do
           | with regular instruments.
        
           | kelnos wrote:
           | I don't think the parallel quite fits.
           | 
           | There's always resistance to new genres of music. Rock'n'roll
           | was considered evil, a bad influence on children, by the
           | establishment of its day. People didn't like electronic music
           | because they thought it wasn't creative enough, and that it
           | was just "noise".
           | 
           | AI generated music -- at least the current iteration of it --
           | is different. For the most part it's created in order to
           | flood platforms with low-effort content in order to win
           | advertising dollars. It's spam, plain and simple.
           | 
           | I'm not saying that all AI generated music is spam, or that
           | it won't turn into an art form that people appreciate. But
           | right now, the majority of it is not the result of creative
           | endeavor. EDM and other new genres didn't really go through
           | this initial spam period.
        
             | echelon wrote:
             | It's maybe not a great fit, but early home console video
             | games were garbage until Nintendo led by example.
             | 
             | Even if this doesn't look the same as other new tech, it
             | still rhymes with a lot that's happened to us before.
        
       | hexage1814 wrote:
       | It would be cool if the author shared the AI music channels list.
       | 
       | I love AI music and would greatly appreciate some recommendations
       | of channels to listen to.
        
         | pclmulqdq wrote:
         | I'm curious, what aspects of AI music do you find specifically
         | appealing?
        
         | input_sh wrote:
         | It's right there, you just have to expand it.
        
       | brookst wrote:
       | In ten years this will be as quaint as a blocklist for music that
       | uses samplers would have been in 1980.
       | 
       | Not to say there's no value today; most pure AI music is terrible
       | and I don't want to listen to it. But that's a very temporary
       | state of affairs.
        
         | jsheard wrote:
         | This isn't even really about the merits of AI music as a whole,
         | it's about the vast majority of these channels being the music
         | equivalent of blogspam. They're not even _trying_ to do
         | anything interesting with the medium, they exist purely to
         | extract ad revenue by mass producing SEO-optimized content
         | slurry.
         | 
         | I picked out a few random channels from this blocklist and some
         | of them are posting new 2-3 hour compilations _every day._ The
         | person running the channel is probably barely even listening to
         | the tracks before before uploading them, assuming they 're
         | listened to at all, the whole process could well be completely
         | automated.
        
           | visarga wrote:
           | > They're not even trying to do anything interesting with the
           | medium, they exist purely to extract ad revenue by mass
           | producing SEO optimized content slurry.
           | 
           | This sad situation was caused by internet. It made it
           | possible for us to have unlimited art, writing and video to
           | "consume" so any new work has to compete with a backcatalog
           | spanning decades. This makes royalty revenues tank, so
           | creatives moved to ad based revenue. This caused the
           | attention scarcity situation where we are right now, and
           | enshittification is the outcome. It all started long ago when
           | AI wasn't even a blip.
           | 
           | But fortunately AI can clean up web content, so I hope we can
           | distill the good parts and get high quality back. But I don't
           | expect Google or Meta or X to do it for us. We need to power
           | this revolution with local models.
        
           | hexage1814 wrote:
           | >it's about the vast majority of these channels being the
           | music equivalent of blogspam. They're not even trying to do
           | anything interesting with the medium, they exist purely to
           | extract ad revenue
           | 
           | Honestly, you could say the same about Marvel movies made by
           | humans.
        
         | MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
         | It's more like a blocklist for the demo programs from samplers.
        
           | brookst wrote:
           | Excellent refinement. Gods, remember how amazing those
           | programs were technically, and at the same time how
           | incredibly _boring_ they were as music?
        
         | _DeadFred_ wrote:
         | It's more like not listening to 'elevator music' covers back
         | then.
        
       | gmuslera wrote:
       | Why "awful"? In what is different AI generated music and organic,
       | free range, supposedly human made one? I mean, how do you tell
       | what percent of today's commercial music has been generated more
       | with a calculator than through inspiration or whatever?
       | 
       | In the end, made by inspiration or by some algorithm, following
       | patterns, marketing studies or whatever, by AI or not (if there
       | are cases you can tell), what matters is your experience.
        
         | MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
         | For many people, the human factor is the most important point.
         | I'm not against AI music if it was as good as human music (it
         | still very much is not for anything that's not extraordinarily
         | generic and mainstream, or free form jazz), but many people see
         | most arts as a conversation, not just consumption.
        
           | gmuslera wrote:
           | But the conversation part is something happening only in your
           | side. Music, books, a good part of modern media seem to be
           | done because the algorithms said that it will be sold more
           | than someone having the intention of having a conversation
           | with you.
           | 
           | And then the AIs are making something that, from your point
           | of view, are indistinguishable from whatever happened before.
           | What makes it more or less real than what was already
           | happening, from your side?
        
             | MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
             | I'm not against AI music. From my point of view, perception
             | is everything, and it's all relative to one's point of
             | view. I do understand, though, that for some people, the
             | whole point is to gain a real understanding and connection
             | to another real human's feelings and insight. I can't
             | really fault somebody for considering art to be about more
             | than the end result, and feeling that it's empty without
             | the process.
             | 
             | Also, I do feel at my core that creation is superior to
             | consumption, so even though I'm not bothered by AI output
             | (even as a musician and an artist), I have a feeling of
             | respect and admiration for those who create that I simply
             | do not feel for people who type a request into a prompt.
             | Effort and work for a goal are respectable.
             | 
             | The ends do not always justify the means, and even if the
             | end result is identical, there is a greater implication on
             | what it means to be an artist, and possibly many negative
             | (and positive) externalities as a result of being able to
             | get the same results with little effort. The art is
             | identical, but the effect on humans is not necessarily. We
             | are changed by the journey, both the artist and consumer.
             | The actual effects of short circuiting the journey isn't
             | something we can fully appreciate until we've had
             | generations of humans who have lived with this. It might be
             | a good thing, but it's not guaranteed that it won't be
             | potentially more negative than positive in the long run.
             | I'm optimistic, but I think it's foolish to not be cautious
             | and skeptical about potential side effects.
        
       | z7 wrote:
       | The beginning of a new kind of discrimination - call it
       | 'synthetic racism.' AI-generated music is being dismissed
       | outright even before listening to it, not based on quality or
       | enjoyment but purely on its artificial origin. Just as past
       | prejudices dismissed art based on heritage rather than merit,
       | we're now seeing a new bias against anything not 'human-made.'
        
         | hnlmorg wrote:
         | Art is an emotional experience. Sometimes people enjoy art
         | because it elicits an emotion in them. And sometimes they enjoy
         | art because of the emotional effort that went into it from the
         | creator.
         | 
         | It's the same reason some people don't like generic pop music
         | due to its formulaic commercialism.
         | 
         | So if people are discriminating AI art because they want to
         | experience the emotions that the authors put into the pieces,
         | then I'm ok with that right up until it can be argued that AI
         | experiences emotions.
        
         | GuinansEyebrows wrote:
         | Show me an AI with a point of view.
         | 
         | Show me an AI with an opinion; an aesthetic preference.
         | 
         | Show me an AI that has emotions.
         | 
         | Show me an AI that's chosen to make sacrifices to produce its
         | art.
         | 
         | AI cannot produce art. Images are not intrinsically art. Sound
         | is not intrinsically art. Art requires thought and intent. AI
         | is not capable of either.
        
           | PUSH_AX wrote:
           | Gee let's hope free will is real, otherwise this take gets
           | really awkward.
        
             | GuinansEyebrows wrote:
             | I'm not worried about questions we can't answer. I'm
             | worried about businesses destroying artists.
        
               | PUSH_AX wrote:
               | Ok, your original comment seemed more concerned with the
               | genesis of opinion and creativity, but that's good to
               | know too.
        
           | wruza wrote:
           | You may get most of that by prompting. You can create really
           | based or emotional characters even with "aligned" models
           | (with a little realignment). Have you ever talked to an LLM
           | that allows system prompting? Heard of [E]RP? You can even
           | teach them to not produce idiotic bullet points.
           | 
           | I won't argument on the art part, but these common AI
           | stereotypes are not true.
        
             | GuinansEyebrows wrote:
             | The AI does not possess those attributes. It's behaving as
             | told. It has no experience. It has no senses. It has no
             | thoughts or ability to reason. It has no motivation.
        
               | nathanlied wrote:
               | Could we not - for the sake of argument here - surmise
               | that, since these AIs need prompts, and usually a few
               | rounds of refinement, and then a selection for uploading
               | to (in this case) YouTube, that the -human- in charge of
               | prompting/refinement/uploading has a point of view, an
               | opinion, an aesthetic preference, emotions?
               | 
               | After all, there are artists that collate "samples" from
               | other artists and produce music from all those different
               | samples. They did not play any instrument, they merely
               | arranged and modified these samples into a product that
               | they presumably find pleasing.
        
               | GuinansEyebrows wrote:
               | The only way we can make that assumption is if the
               | -human- makes it obvious. Tell me the people mass
               | producing AI slop for YouTube/Spotify are approaching
               | this with sincere intent.
        
               | wruza wrote:
               | It's not even told, it continues a text (or denoises an
               | image) in a way that closely resembles what was in the
               | training data. Experience, senses, thoughts, reasoning
               | and motivation were all there in original human- and
               | nature-produced data.
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003186
               | 
               | Doesn't mean the result is ideal, far from that. But your
               | "bullet points" imply some specialness which has to be
               | explained. Personally I don't love the style of refusal
               | you're demonstrating, because it's similar to if you know
               | you know and other self-referential nonsense. At least
               | add some becauses into your arguments, because "it has no
               | X" is a simplification far below the level of usefulness
               | here.
               | 
               | Anyway, how does that prevent creating AI personas again?
        
           | mlboss wrote:
           | Humans are not the center of the universe. There is nothing
           | intrinsically magical in being a human. Humans don't have
           | soul. We were not created in "God"'s image. We are not
           | special. We are just like other animals and continuously
           | evolving. AI is just the next step in the evolution.
           | 
           | All the emotion serve as a shortcut for behaviors that make
           | evolutionary sense.
           | 
           | Things suck before they get better and then keep on getting
           | better.
        
             | MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
             | 100% atheist here. Humans are the center of my universe,
             | and humans are special to me. I'm team human. I don't care
             | if AI is the next step in the evolution, I would absolutely
             | kill it if necessary to save humanity.
        
         | concerndc1tizen wrote:
         | There is no intent, so it is no more discriminatory than
         | removing autumn leaves is discrimination against trees.
        
         | satvikpendem wrote:
         | I've favorited this comment because it could easily pass for
         | satire of certain types of comments on HN.
        
           | GuinansEyebrows wrote:
           | Too Poe For Poe ("synthetic racism" is unreal!)
        
       | ziofill wrote:
       | Someone once said it better than I ever could: it doesn't matter
       | how good it is, I don't want art without anybody's consciousness
       | behind it.
        
         | visarga wrote:
         | Here is where you are wrong. The AI art is built on even more
         | "art consciousness" than any one of us has ever seen. It's a
         | mirror reflection of our own culture, and we should respect it
         | as such.
         | 
         | But you say there is no one there, just a model? No, there is
         | someone. There is a real flesh and blood human prompting the
         | model. It's the result of many iteration cycles. At the very
         | least it has some meaning for the prompter.
        
         | hexage1814 wrote:
         | Would you stop liking your favorite movie if you discovered it
         | was actually made by an AI?
        
           | ziofill wrote:
           | Yep
        
       | lazycouchpotato wrote:
       | > since then, i really started to notice that my youtube
       | recommendations have been colonized to a very large degree by
       | mixes made entirely out of AI generated music
       | 
       | Turn off your YT watch history and search history. I've advocated
       | for this on HN for years. Watching one or two AI slop videos
       | won't ruin your recommendations, leaving the algorithm to rely on
       | your likes to find you stuff you'd want to watch.
       | 
       | Now if only YT could fix search and allow me to block Shorts.
        
         | navanchauhan wrote:
         | While not the best solution, I use this userscript to disable
         | shorts-- https://github.com/Mr-Comand/youtube-shorts-remover-
         | tampermo...
        
           | bondarchuk wrote:
           | There's also the unhook youtube browser extension.
        
           | visarga wrote:
           | Those are a cancer on YouTube, they don't offer any way to
           | disable the shit. And on mobile it's even worse, there is a
           | dedicated tab button you can't hide, even if you are a paying
           | customer no way to avoid it.
        
       | mlboss wrote:
       | Instead of "AI Music", writer should have just created a
       | blocklist for music that sucks.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | In the future "AI Music" will just be called "Music". Just like
         | electronic music.
         | 
         | Or digital photos. Or digital illustration.
         | 
         | AI film isn't great right now, but people are still finding
         | their legs:
         | 
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/comments/1ihq048/i_was_ai_l...
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_SgA6ymPuc
         | 
         | I find this medium is one of the best to showcase what people
         | _can_ do with AI, because it requires manual integration of so
         | many different techniques and inputs.
         | 
         | When more real artists start doing this (and fewer early
         | adopters / hypesters), the future is going to be explosively
         | indie. A Cambrian explosion that will cater to the long tail of
         | super niche interests. I'm all for it. Less boxed
         | Disney/Marvel/Star Wars spam, and more super edgy and
         | innovative drama and fantasy.
         | 
         | Hollywood hasn't really given us much good sci-fi or fantasy.
         | Now all of the world's creatives can start visually
         | articulating their ideas.
         | 
         | A good set of analogs to predicatively compare this to might be
         | the overwhelming number of amazing YouTube creators, or indie
         | game designers. That's what will happen with "AI" art.
        
           | visarga wrote:
           | "AI" art is 99.9% of the time ephemeral art, see it once and
           | throw it away. Who's got the time to see my AI art shit when
           | they could be generating their own? It's more of a personal
           | exploration tool, closer to imagination than to publishing.
        
             | echelon wrote:
             | Most digital photos are garbage, too. It doesn't discount
             | the medium or the technology.
             | 
             | Perhaps you're not a part of the growing community that
             | spends entire weekends making a singular "AI" art pieces.
             | It's a growing creative medium, and the things being
             | created can't simply be "prompted".
             | 
             | You might generate a photo of a consistent character, pose
             | them using DwPose / 3D IK, extract them, comp them into
             | another scene. Do the same for two other characters and a
             | prop. Then use that composition as a single shot from a
             | shot list for your AI film. Animate it, then rinse and
             | repeat for a few hundred shots. After the shot list is
             | complete, record the lines, capture facial performances,
             | fix the errors, fix lighting, upscale, and publish. Easily
             | a week of work for one person.
             | 
             | AI can be used in workflows by actual artists. It's a tool.
        
               | where-group-by wrote:
               | Unfortunately it is a tool that is also used to generate
               | a lot of content for the sake of views capture. For this
               | to work it needs to be created with lowest effort
               | possible. As a result the bulk of AI stuff I have seen so
               | far was not worth my time to consume it or the hardware
               | cycles to generate it.
        
         | antifa wrote:
         | I wish literally any mainstream music discovery service (my
         | sample size: youtube and Spotify) would let you block specific
         | artists and genres from discover queue and searches.
        
       | kiwiguy1 wrote:
       | I run a christmas channel with legit music (almost 3 mil subs)
       | and the entire music scene on YouTube is run by bot networks out
       | of vietnam with YouTube's knowledge
        
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