AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart (showbiz411.com)

by flinner 376 comments 244 points
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376 comments

[−] Lio 38d ago
This looks like a great way to launder money.

Write some generic AI music, have have your small accounts using stolen giftcards bought with dirty money pump the track and watch it climb the charts as other jump on the band wagon.

Et voilà instant layering with no connections.

I'm pretty sure this is exactly how all the music I don't like gets into the charts. :P

[−] Frieren 38d ago
How are Swedish gangs using music platform Spotify to launder money?: https://www.euronews.com/business/2023/10/03/how-are-swedish...

You are not wrong.

[−] danielEM 38d ago
You saying it like there are no other easy ways to launder money. Every time I walk by a cleaning service or hairdresser in a less dense populated area I wonder if they are involved in money launderinng.
[−] IAmBroom 38d ago
You saying it like those areas don't need cleaning or hairdressers.
[−] Lio 38d ago
Undoubtedly! I haven't trusted hairdressers for 20 years. I have no idea why people would need to spend money in such establishments. :P
[−] dan-bailey 38d ago
Now those old-timey photo places in every mall in the U.S.? Definitely a money-laundering front.
[−] DroneBetter 38d ago
i've seen a a where three barbershops were a stone's throw away from each other, with a few houses between them on a street in an (only moderately dense) residential area with no carparks anywhere nearby, and wondered how that could possibly have arisen (since they'd detract each other's customers, and laundering operations wouldn't make it so blatantly obvious).

and the same occurs with phone(-repair)-and-vape shops in shopping areas (which I guess are somewhat more understandable, since they only require one employee present each and do get footfall, and the cost to rent a shop has imploded since the coronavirus hit the final nail in the town centre's coffin)

[−] tzs 39d ago
I wonder how well it would work to use AI as a front end to Band-in-a-Box?

Band-in-a-Box is a commercial program that has been around since 1990. What it did then was let you specify a chord progression, style, tempo, and instruments and it would make a generate a MIDI track. I think it might have also been able to take a melody and come up with a chord progression for it in a style/genre of your choosing.

The target market was musicians. Instrumentalists used it generate tracks to improvise or solo with for example, and songwriters found it useful to essentially have a full band at their beck and call while composing.

Over the years they added more features, and switched to sounds from recordings of real instruments played by real musicians. They have very good stretching and pitch transposition so you can use these at a range of tempos and keys and they still sound good.

It is still aimed at musicians, and can be overwhelming to others. This I've read is made worse because as it has grown in features and capabilities in the 25+ years it has been available the interface has become kind of disjoint.

It is not something the kind of person who just wants to describe what they want to hear and have a song produced would enjoy. But if an AI could operate it for them, maybe that would work and the result would be something with much better sounding instruments than the AI song makers (and without the risk of including unlicensed copyrighted material).

[−] yoz-y 38d ago
Auto play has been a way for me to find new music. I stopped using it because now every listen is accompanied by a a nagging feeling that the song that is playing might be AI generated.

Now I just go and look for new albums from bands I know I like. I wish there was a pre-2023 filter for the algorithmic feed.

[−] thomasfl 38d ago
My favorite pasttime for the last 12 years, besides reading hacker news, is to make music on my phone, ipad or on my piano. Will I stop making music now that Suno is here? No frigging way. Because I still like to make music. I won’t stop talking either, just because some AI is better at doing conversation about research. If I make enough money on my latest, I will spend more time making music.

Some of my music is available om SoundCloud. Most of it is made on an iPhone. https://on.soundcloud.com/lHJN26CwcwtnQzc2CB

[−] smilbandit 39d ago
I dabbled with AI music for a bit with Suno. Worked out well for the most part, only way I'm ever going to hear music with themes for some of niche things I like, like Shadowrun. I threw a bunch of music genres at it and some were good enough that I added them to my normal playlist but after about 30 completed songs I had a hard time coming up with new stuff. As someone who has never tried to create music myself it was fun to play with.
[−] daemonologist 39d ago
It's interesting to me that all AI music sounds slightly sibilant - like someone taped a sheet of paper to the speaker or covered my head in dry leaves. I know no model is perfect but I'd have thought they'd have ironed out this problem by now, given how pervasive it is and how significantly it degrades the end product.
[−] bobthepanda 39d ago
The iTunes chart primarily focuses on sales velocity, not streams, and so I wonder how useful that is in 2026 and how easy it is to game.
[−] notatoad 39d ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHQevuohJH8

my music tastes are pretty mainstream, and this just does absolutely nothing for me. it's exactly what i'd expect AI music to sound like - completely forgettable, with nothing interesting about it.

i'd be willing to believe that this music was legitimately charting if it had at least some redeeming qualities, but i can't imagine how this could honestly get eleven spots on the iTunes chart without gaming it in some way.

[−] stronglikedan 39d ago
I listen to a lot of music of all different genres depending on mood, and I can honestly I don't think anyone could peg this as AI just by listening to it. It's soulless and devoid of emotion, but so are a lot of real artists. That wouldn't even be so obvious if they just added some background something, anything, like Wall of Sound style. If I played this for anyone and they said "it sounds like AI", I'd confidently tell them they are full of shit.
[−] Chaosvex 39d ago

> If I played this for anyone and they said "it sounds like AI", I'd confidently tell them they are full of shit.

Even though they'd be right? Interesting.

[−] themafia 39d ago

> If I played this for anyone and they said "it sounds like AI"

It sounds like AI.

> I'd confidently tell them they are full of shit.

Why are you getting offended on behalf of a computer? Or is there a deeper reasoning for this logic?

[−] cindyllm 39d ago
[dead]
[−] notatoad 39d ago

>honestly I don't think anyone could peg this as AI just by listening to it. It's soulless and devoid of emotion

i agree. as far as ai slop goes, it's pretty good. it could be made by a human who wasn't very artistic. i'm not saying it's obviously AI generated, just that it's not very good music. but that's not because i dislike popular music - i think most of the hot 100 is usually pretty good, and contains significant artistic value even if it isn't to my taste.

if somebody was claiming this was created by a human, i'd believe them but i'd have the same objection: this isn't going to hit 11 positions on the itunes music chart without gaming the chart in some way.

"ai generated music creator manipulates the itunes chart to occupy 11 positions" is a much less interesting story than "ai generated music is so popular it occupies 11 spots on the itunes charts"

[−] defrost 39d ago
For a reasonable comparison to a minor hit of yore, where do people stand on the Flying Lizard's cover of Money (that's what I want)?

Soulless and devoid of emotion, or an inspired end run about the minor issue of a (self confessed) inability to conventionly sing.

[−] Gigachad 39d ago
It’s slop for sure, but you’re right, it’s hard to label it AI slop because the model has pretty much mastered the human slop sound.
[−] RobMurray 39d ago
it's unmistakably AI as soon as the vocals come in. maybe your ears are full of shit?
[−] suzzer99 39d ago

> completely forgettable, with nothing interesting about it

You just described 90% of young country for decades now. I keep waiting for its fans to get tired of being pandered to with formulaic lyrics, but they seem to be an endless well.

[−] supliminal 39d ago
I’ve heard lots of music like this over the years. It’s catchy, the lyrics are very relatable to the audience of people who like this music. It might not be your thing, but it is certainly enjoyed by many, and there are albums written around this subject. Folk/blues are made of this subject.

Is it over all flat and boring? Somewhat. You can only hear the same thing so many times before it gets tiring.

[−] nearbuy 39d ago
I'd say the same thing about two thirds of the iTunes top 100. Different people love different songs I guess.

The lyrics of the one you linked are fairly strong compared to other songs on the top 100 list.

[−] zingababba 39d ago
I've been making all my own music lately with suno 5.5. It's pretty sweet, it allows me to explore concepts in a different way. This sucks though. Here's hyperpop version of https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6097646 -> https://suno.com/song/516c7e52-a03e-490d-ba26-8d9a332eeea7
[−] nwallin 39d ago
It feels... commercial. I feel like I have to read a EULA and hit I Agree before I can listen to that.
[−] chromacity 39d ago
I find the production and consumption of AI music to be uniquely... anti-human. You can make utilitarian arguments for most other uses of AI. For example, the code you're generating didn't exist before, and it would take serious time or money to write it. So, I get it, the economic argument is compelling enough.

But music? There's basically an inexhaustible supply of human-created tracks that can be accessed for next to nothing. Millions upon millions of them, in every conceivable style, for every conceivable mood. There's nothing you gain by listening to AI music day-to-day, so what's the argument for it - other than utmost indifference to human creativity?

[−] Gagarin1917 39d ago

>But music? There's basically an inexhaustible supply of human-created tracks that can be accessed for next to nothing.

Isn’t this an argument against all new music, even human made?

Either we have it all already, or there’s room for new things that we haven’t heard before.

[−] echelon 39d ago
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[−] obirunda 38d ago
This is what we call in the business a "fever dream"
[−] echelon 38d ago
Or the uno reverse - that's what the anti-AI crowd is experiencing in their inability to adjust to the coming reality.

You're just going to have to make peace. I don't know how y'all can cope with being angry at progress all the time. It's not going to stop for you. It's also really awesome that we live to see this come to pass.

We're living in a good dream.

[−] kranner 39d ago

> As far as I'm concerned we're content scarce and I don't care what makes the music - humans, robots, netherworld demons - I just want good music.

Presumably you've already listened to every piece of music ever recorded? Otherwise it seems it would be more efficient to do that first than wait for AI to generate it and you chancing upon it.

[−] hombre_fatal 39d ago
All good finds are chanced upon. Just now sometimes it's made by AI.
[−] echelon 39d ago
[flagged]
[−] rauljordan2020 39d ago
Sometimes you can't even tell. I was in an uber drive where the driver had this incredible playlist of Brazilian bossa nova. It was sublime and some of the best tracks I ever heard. He even said he loves the singer but cannot find their name anywhere. It turns out it's a youtube playlist that is fully AI generated and genuinely some of the best bossa nova you can imagine. I still hear that playlist daily tbh. Moreover, imagine if you are an independent musician, have a good voice, know how to play instruments...you could ask AI to generate hit tracks for you and then you can play them at concerts or shows and claim them for yourself
[−] smallerfish 39d ago
Is formulaic pop music produced by a corporate label that's designed to push all the right buttons more "human" than the average track you find published on Suno? I wouldn't say so. Pop music was already to some extent a commodity.
[−] SirMaster 39d ago
But what if you like to listen to a specific genre? Say electo-swing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_swing)

There isn't that much good electro-swing made by humans, and not much new coming out. One can easily consume it all and want to hear some new tunes in that genre, and maybe AI can help with that.

[−] SoftTalker 39d ago

> what's the argument for it

Record companies can sell it and don't have to pay any royalties. They only pay the artists pennies as it is, but that's too much for them.

[−] simmonmt 39d ago
If you consider say elevator music - music that's just there to fill space, rather than to be listened too - then I don't think there's that much difference between using AI to produce it and using AI to produce clip art or boilerplate code.
[−] rob74 38d ago
I guess using AI is just the logical continuation of what mainstream pop already did before that: reduce music to the lowest common denominator so it can appeal to as many listeners as possible. AI only speeds up that process.
[−] userbinator 39d ago
There's basically an inexhaustible supply of human-created tracks that can be accessed for next to nothing

You train an AI on that, in order to create something that combines all of the best parts that you want. If anything, I think AI music is the natural progression of innate human desire to leverage and "stand on the shoulders of giants" to create something bigger from smaller pieces.

[−] gnarlouse 38d ago
Used Suno to reimagine a handful of my old demos late last year, and honestly the results floored me. I could never release those tracks though, purely out of shame. But it seems pretty practical to study the AI remixes to understand what I like about them, and use these as a practice tool for music production.
[−] dfxm12 39d ago
It's not that people want to listen to AI music, per se. According to the article, this artist charting was part of an April fools gag. It's about ego, or maybe hubris. People think their idea for a record is good, but don't want to learn musical composition. Instead, they put blind faith in AI generation. Gen AI is more for the idea men unwilling to put in the effort than the consumers.
[−] brokegrammer 39d ago
Because human singers will usually sing about what they like. They will use their own life experience and imagination to write and sing songs. Other people may or may not like them.

AI will only sing songs that other people like, so AI singers will naturally attract more listeners.

[−] gizajob 39d ago
You’ve hit upon a bit of a paradox inherent in music - the average listener really gives next to no shits about human creativity or the artistry and hard work that goes into being a musician capable of releasing music. They can’t even comprehend, so don’t. Music is something that comes out of a speaker same as water is something that comes out of a tap.
[−] madaxe_again 39d ago
It isn’t indifference, it’s obliviousness. My mother keeps on listening to AI music, and I’ll be like “why are you listening to this slop” and she’ll then argue back that it isn’t AI, it’s actually really very good and I’m just jealous, as the synthetic voice continues to warble nonsenses like a fucking arcade machine full of snakes in the background.

It’s an even more uncomfortable truth: your average Joe cannot tell the difference between human made music or AI generations, just as they also really think that that 8 year old African boy with a huge beard and no hands built a helicopter out of old bottles, or that that cat walked into a hairdresser wearing a suit and had its whiskers curled.

So there’s no argument for it apart from “people will buy the product because they can’t tell that it isn’t real”.

[−] JCharante 38d ago
while I don't like AI music, "Millions upon millions of them, in every conceivable style, for every conceivable mood." is something that's not true. There very often is a gap which forces me to open up Ableton and make edits
[−] fooker 38d ago
You can repeat your argument with photos, poems, code??, and just about anything else that humans produce.

Not that you're wrong, but human creativity doesn't mean what it used to.

[−] jMyles 39d ago

> I find the production and consumption of AI music to be uniquely... anti-human.

I mean, I'm a professional musician - not sure if that gives me more credibility or less - but I don't feel slighted by folks listening to music made by others (whether those others are other humans, or birds, or whales, or AI).

As you point out, music has an infinite edge; one can spend a lifetime exploring either its niches or its closures and still have an infinity of each to continue discovering.

As moat identification goes, I do feel slightly secure in the sense that AI music (and the information age generally) seems to stoke a hunger for dirty traditionals played well on thick steel strings, and it's going to be a minute before robots can pick 'em like we can.

[−] maplethorpe 38d ago
Having AI create music frees us up to do other things with our time.
[−] burnerRhodov2 38d ago
its changed the way I DJ.... I can be much more expressive.
[−] testycool 39d ago
I mostly listen to AI-generated music. 8 out of 10 of my top listens in the last 180 days are AI-generated.

I gradually went from various genres -> mostly nerdcore -> mostly AI nerdcore.

https://www.last.fm/user/testycool/library/tracks?from=2025-...

EDIT: Updated link to the most listened songs in the past 180 days. The songs are not generated by me.

[−] cdrnsf 39d ago
This is no more art than a container of corn syrup is a proper meal.
[−] jmathai 39d ago
We've seen a steady shift in music over the past 2 decades from full length albums, to single hits, to artificially generated.

Surely there's some gained and some lost. But coming from the era of buying an entire album, spending time reading the CD booklets and art, and listening to 10 songs which tell a larger story ---- what's being lost really hits home.

[−] mkprc 38d ago
It appears Apple/iTunes has already responded. He's no longer on the Top 100: USA list:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/top-100-usa/pl.606afcbb7...

[−] luma 39d ago
Today there are zero mentions of Eddie in the top 100: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/top-100-usa/pl.606afcbb7...

I'd really love to see an actual source on this claim.

[−] jimnotgym 38d ago
You can stop this in its tracks.

Go on KEXP, find a new band you like, share it with your friends, buy a physical copy, buy a t-shirt, book tickets, like their stuff on socials. Watch the record companies flock to real bands.

For the second time on this thread, start with Angine de Poitrine. Live music is the antidote.

[−] arjie 39d ago
I suspect this is some trick somewhere with purchased views or something. Not that I'm against AI music. I love the various lo-fi / cyberpunk / etc. AI youtube channels. I also enjoy my own suno music. Overall, I'd say AI music dominates my listening these days.

It just seems unusual that a lot of people like the same thing. Even the channels on Youtube that I listen to are so prolific (people generate a large amount of music and just stick it in there) that I never go look for a particular track or anything. And there are so many of them that each one only gets a few thousand views.

[−] vor_ 39d ago
Who still buys from iTunes? This is likely bot-driven.
[−] leviathant 39d ago
I have no doubt that those numbers have been inflated by AI powered marketing tools, dead internet theory style.
[−] piokoch 38d ago
Mainstream music was created for a good 20 years using the following process:

1. Do the survey/focus groups to figure out a hot topic for a song. For instance your exploration shows that 300K girls between 13 and 17 years old were left by their boyfriend, so there is a 300K market for a song about that.

2. Find someone or group who will sing the song. Something your target audience will identify. E.g. "rebellious teenager" (take Britney Spears), "we need a group that will attack larger target" - take Spice Girls - we take one black, one white, one Latino looking (doesn't have to be real Latino, obviously), one polite and nice, one impolite. You get the point.

3. Note: singer/group does not need to know how to sing, they need to move reasonably on the scene, the rest autotune and computers will handle easily.

So, given the process, AI singer is just a little bit different "music" production process, not so much different from the one used up to date except that you don't need autotune anymore.

Luckily there are still people who do music for the sake of doing music and it really stands out as compared to 80% of fodder for listeners that is on YT, radio, Spotify.

[−] msephton 39d ago
A couple of weeks ago I went to an 'Italian' restaurant. To my surprise, they played a 10-second video loop of an AI-generated stereotypical 'blues' singer with obvious artefacts. The music was a mix of 'blues' with nonsensical lyrics that couldn’t be found online. It was an odd experience. I don't think it was this creation, but it was disconcerting. Felt like Blade Runner isn't too far away.
[−] bsenftner 38d ago
You could say I'm a music snob, big time. I can't stand any of the streaming services, because they only have a small fraction of my favorites (which is variations of discord jazz, often in other genres. I like when music decomposes into noise and then restructures again.) Due to my interest there, I've done a deep hole with AI music generation, not the services, but developing the models and exploring the open weight models being released.

There will be quality real art music created by these systems, but not by those that prompt alone. This is a whole new level of instrument, and the levels of control beneath are there to seriously transform one's thoughts to music, and melody, and that composed symphony of separate elements into a symphony of intended meaning.

Perhaps traditional music and this form of music should be treated separate. The distinction between AI music that is prompt-only and what can be created from a deeper set of controls is immense, and is not distinguished at this time, and may never be with how surface level this entire public assessment of AI music happens to be.

[−] everdrive 39d ago
It's similar pattern that we've seen previously, but exaggerated by modern trends and modern technology: the most popular cultural items will often be meaningless and base, and if you want something substantial you need other ways to find meaningful content.
[−] shevy-java 38d ago
I don't like AI, but either music is good, or it is not. AI can generate good music, I noticed this on youtube. In my local collection I have zero AI songs and I will probably keep at this number, but AI can produce good music too, there is no doubt about this. The question will be whether humans want to rely on AI music. I'd love to say I don't, but ultimately when it comes to music the criterium that I use is whether my brain evaluates the song as good or not, rather than whether it is AI or not.
[−] ornornor 38d ago
I’ve listened to his three top songs on Spotify. They’re practically the same songs with different lyrics. I know approximately 0 music theory and I could tell they’re almost identical.
[−] pjmlp 39d ago
Thankfully I still buy proper music, what a sad state for human culture.
[−] SergeAx 38d ago
I just listened to the top 3 songs of this project out of curiosity, and it feels like the same song. Same rhythmic pattern, same harmonies, same instruments.

However, I also listened to several other artists on the chart[1]. They all, bar a couple, are so low effort that they may also be generated by neural networks, FWIW.

[1]: https://itopchart.com/us/en/top-songs/

[−] deadbabe 38d ago
A decade or two from now your children will be dropping thousands of dollars to go to a concert to hear AI generated music from an AI generated artist.
[−] CrzyLngPwd 38d ago
I was a big fan of listening to music, long time subscriber to Spotify, would listen to music when driving, when cooking, when coding (Same playlist for 20+ years - Matrix + fat of the land).

The last 6 years has been no music. I unsubscribed from everything since I felt music was an intrusion in the moment.

I had a quick listen to the "AI singer", and it's soulless, empty, and generic - Which is modern music anyway.

[−] scubazealous 39d ago
I searched Spotify and Apple music top 100 songs and Eddie Dalton is not on either. I think the majority of users do not buy singles on iTunes anymore so this may be an easy chart to manipulate. The source mentions the name of the creator in the second line leading me to believe this is some clever advertising for Dallas Little's AI.
[−] adzm 39d ago
Live shows are the biggest part of music anyway
[−] futureproofd 39d ago
It's as if what William Gibson wrote about in Idoru has already become a reality. Soon we will see celebrity AI gossip.
[−] l5870uoo9y 38d ago
I can't find any of his songs on Top 100[1], is it another list?

[1]: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/top-100-usa/pl.606afcbb7...

[−] HardwareLust 39d ago
I just checked Spotify, it has 368k followers and at least one song has over 1M streams.
[−] gnarlouse 38d ago
I see music as "the space of all possible 5-second clips at stereo 48kHz 24bit depth". If you think about it, that space contains the intro to Stairway to Heaven and Oops I Did It Again, and the end of either song. It contains every 5-second segment of O Fortuna, plus a previously unimagined O Fortuna Remix with MF Doom rapping the pledge of alliegance backwards. My point is, AI is getting good at searching music space for novel patterns, and that's entirely the point of music, not making a career out of being an alcoholic minstrel with a tour bus.

The audience will out the good patterns, and it's up to the musicians or AI companies to serve better patterns.

[−] mt18 38d ago
Chart rank is mostly distribution and playlist economics—treating it like a referendum on whether people prefer AI vocals is the real industry coup.
[−] pickleglitch 39d ago
The top 40 has always been riddled with garbage, in my opinion, but at least real, human musicians were making a living from their art.
[−] wr639 38d ago
I've heard vinyl and CD's are making a comeback. Hopefully this is one of the reasons for this.
[−] MrThoughtful 38d ago
I actually can relate to AI music better than to music made by humans.

I always feel some jealousy when listening to rockstars. Because they get all the action and I get so little. They see the world, are desired by all the beautiful women, earn a ton of money and don't have to work a boring job.

With AI music, I know it is just some lonely GPU in a cold, dark datacenter somewhere. Crunching numbers. Just like I do.

[−] bdavbdav 38d ago
It’s really odd to listen to - the vocals seem like they’ve been recorded at a really low nitrate.
[−] yokoprime 39d ago
iTunes? i wonder what kind of sales we're talking about here. people buying music is few and far between, and i wonder what percentage of that customer base buys their music on iTunes when there are great alternatives offering lossless files
[−] fedeb95 38d ago
1984 gets more real every day.
[−] starkeeper 39d ago
So absolutely tasteless it should be banned. I think it's fine if people want to generate music at home like this but also, isn't it questionable what is even copyrightable? Apple makes you pay for this?

oh man, I just am so bummed that around 2007 I ditched my 20 year collection of CDs and went digital whaaaaa!

[−] Aloha 38d ago
I like AI Music, there is some great all instrumental stuff out there.
[−] paul7986 38d ago
In high school i started to hear melodies/lyrics pop in my head and it prompted to learn instruments - pursued songwriting dream in college in Nashville (just a hobbyist since). I was initially excited about using Suno -- make the songs how they're heard in my head a reality as my rough garageband demos with me singing isnt how i hear them. Also, people arent excited by singing. Though my excitement wore off as I started to feel uninspired that it now takes zero talent/zero effort to write songs.

I took a break from Suno for many months .. attacking everyones slop including my own but my bandmates like my AI songs. Now at practice (80s & 90s music band) we listen and play along to the AI versions and have thrown in two into our setlist. Thus, for me Ive finally found an inspiring human usage of AI music! No text prompter could ever enjoy playing / performing their music in a band and to an audience and receive live human feedback. That's unless they do what millions other musicians have done .. cultivate their talent/musical interest.

[−] nizbit 38d ago
This reminds of the time Data started performing with the violin…
[−] rbanffy 38d ago
Isn't it too early in this timeline to have a Rei Toei?