I am generally in favor of technological development. The benefits are almost uniformly worth the effort in the long run.
Almost.
I ran across a circumstance today where it seems that technology is not working in favor of humanity in the arena of music. There has been a longstanding issue with AI created music being added to Spotify. I haven't encountered much AI music. A few of the podcasters/YouTubers to whom I listen have expressed mixed reactions.
Some of the AI music wasn't bad. It had musical hooks. The lyrics weren't totally off the wall. In their opinion, AI music lacked something. In comparison, the human-produced music has more completely explored the depths of "bad".
Today I was looking to explore some new groups. That led me to looking at the "new releases" section on Spotify. Their algorithm is usually pretty good at picking out stuff that interests me. I came across this "new album" supposedly by the band GTR.
For the uninitiated, GTR was a "super band" from the 1980s that incorporated some of the best guitarists of the day. They put out one album that did reasonably well. Finances and internal conflict between the band members caused GTR to disband. Their one album was the self-titled "GTR".
The ownership of this album is listed on Spotify as:
The other album (with the AI generated cover featuring some sort of dog) is apparently owned by someone else.
Despite being released in 2025, the website for "GTR Entertainment" is already defunct. I do corporate research from time to time professionally. I checked a couple resources and the business registration information looked highly suspicious.
It appears to me that someone is using the popularity of a good band [GTR from the 1980s] coupled with the lack of current interest by the band to slip content to unsuspecting listeners. As we have been learning over the last few years, one such instance isn't very profitable. But creating thousands of albums and tens of thousands of songs can result in enough streams to generate a non-trivial amount of revenue.
For the record, I have no interest in listening to the 2025 content.
