Three songs generated by artificial intelligence topped music charts this week, reaching the highest spots on Spotify and Billboard charts.
Walk My Walk and Livin’ on Borrowed Time by the outfit Breaking Rust topped Spotify’s “Viral 50” songs in the US, which documents the “most viral tracks right now” on a daily basis, according to the streaming service. A Dutch song, We Say No, No, No to an Asylum Center, an anti-migrant anthem by JW “Broken Veteran” that protests against the creation of new asylum centers, took the top position in Spotify’s global version of the viral chart around the same time. Breaking Rust also appeared in the top five on the global chart.
These three songs are part of a flood of AI-generated music that has come to saturate streaming platforms. A study published on Wednesday by the streaming app Deezer estimates that 50,000 AI-generated songs are uploaded to the platform every day – 34% of all the music submitted.
“Slop” feels like a weird description when it’s something widely loved and appreciated. Like, either you mean it in the snobby “most people don’t understand real art” sense, or what’s not slop?
Compare to when it’s used to describe, like, one of those SEO clickbait sites, which are full of hallucinated answers to whatever you were looking for. Nobody likes that, but it’s hard to shut down.