Bandcamp Bans AI Music 39
Bandcamp has announced a ban on music made wholly or substantially by generative AI, aiming to protect human creativity and prohibit AI impersonation of artists. Here's what the music platform had to say: ... Something that always strikes us as we put together a roundup like this is the sheer quantity of human creativity and passion that artists express on Bandcamp every single day. The fact that Bandcamp is home to such a vibrant community of real people making incredible music is something we want to protect and maintain. Today, in line with that goal, we're articulating our policy on generative AI. We want musicians to keep making music, and for fans to have confidence that the music they find on Bandcamp was created by humans.
Our guidelines for generative AI in music and audio are as follows:
- Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp.
- Any use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles is strictly prohibited in accordance with our existing policies prohibiting impersonation and intellectual property infringement.
If you encounter music or audio that appears to be made entirely or with heavy reliance on generative AI, please use our reporting tools to flag the content for review by our team. We reserve the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI generated. We will be sure to communicate any updates to the policy as the rapidly changing generative AI space develops. Given the response around this to our previous posts, we hope this news is welcomed. We wish you all an amazing 2026. [...]
Our guidelines for generative AI in music and audio are as follows:
- Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp.
- Any use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles is strictly prohibited in accordance with our existing policies prohibiting impersonation and intellectual property infringement.
If you encounter music or audio that appears to be made entirely or with heavy reliance on generative AI, please use our reporting tools to flag the content for review by our team. We reserve the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI generated. We will be sure to communicate any updates to the policy as the rapidly changing generative AI space develops. Given the response around this to our previous posts, we hope this news is welcomed. We wish you all an amazing 2026. [...]
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There's a difference between making music using AI and making AI music. I take it you haven't come across the latter if you're making this comparison. The former isn't banned and doesn't meet the criteria listed.
Re: Dumb (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, Bandcamp is all about giving people the ability to more directly support and connect with the artists. AI-generated music is just a very poor fit for the site, and something their target audience largely has no interest in. Whoever wants to publish their GenAI music output has plenty of other places that will accept it, such as Spotify.
How will they know? (Score:4, Insightful)
According to TFS they're relying mostly on visitors reporting AI content. But there's a problematic convergence at work here.
These days, music created by actual humans sounds more and more like it's computer generated. Lyrics and melodies tend to be simple and repetitive, and both vocals and instruments are snapped to beat and pitch grids. And at the same time, AI-generated music is becoming more sophisticated and is sounding more organic. So at some point - probably soon - it may be very hard to differentiate between them.
As a Bandcamp customer, I welcome this policy and wish them well. And I think they may be able to hold out for a while, because the music I hear there is generally less slick and over-produced and simplistic, so the contrast with AI slop is probably greater. But at some point in the not-too-distant future, I think they're going to end up selling a lot of AI music because people simply won't be able to tell the difference.
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100% detection is impossible but it's an 80/20 rule, i bet you could run out the easiest 80% pretty easily.
If it's EDM and pop style music, sure, that's gonna be a blurry line as there is such high production there but even then you have a couple easy checks.
Is this a real person? Do they have a profile, social media. If you're an artist today you probably have a Youtube or at least are putting up Instagram/Tiktok videos.
Ok check, but that can also be faked. Are they performing live? If you're a rock band
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They're still using Disney Haunted mansion tech for that, it's just bigger and easier now.
You could have at least said Hatsune Miko because I imagine that will be more popular and that could be AI pretty easily but I bet they'll still have actual humans making the music.
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It's a virtual music act, a cartoon pop star who they use video tech and holograms to put on concerts.
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And what if this real person with profile, social media, Youtube and live performances uploads an AI song? Are they allowed just because they also perform live?
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Now we are in a grey area as far as what Bandcamp is doing but it sounds like no, they wouldnt be allowed to put those on their site?
It's a real Loki's wager type of thing because what amount of "AI" is too much? I know Ai mastering is becoming popular and useful so maybe its really just at the point of composition.
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Yeah, I think you don't earn the right to upload AI to a non-AI site, only because you also contribute non-AI. But then we're back at telling AI apart by looking at the work and not by the creator. And that may not be that easy.
And we're not even in the gray zone. What would one do if someone remasters an older track using AI? Is the AI version allowed because it is based on a real one, or disallowed? And what does one do if someone records themselves singing an AI generated song? I think steam got it right
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That's the rub isn't, music is art and "low quality" in art and music is entirely subjective and the thing with AI is it won't put out bad music, like, not composed properly, cant play an instruement, low effort, but will put out just perfectly bland but reasonably composed music. Forgetful but not objectively bad.
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I think one of the problems of AI arts is repetitiveness. You can really simple create an artwork (image, music, etc.) of average (objective) quality, better than what most people would do without AI. But what you do not see when you judge the single artwork is, that everyone else is creating very similar artworks. And the consumer then sees a hundred artworks that are all similar and is bored after five and annoyed after the tenth. If everyone's first art piece would be the Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa would b
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A few years ago I watched a Grammy go to an insipid song. I got mad and decided to write one to prove how easy it was. I wrote and recorded it in a relatively short time and I ended up with a composition worthy of playing in elevators world-wide.
Lyrics and melodies tend to be simple and repetitive, and both vocals and instruments are snapped to beat and pitch grids.
Not that I disagree but it sounds like a lot of the complaints from Big Band fans about Rock music. And Rock fans about Disco. And Disco fans about Punk. And Punk fans about...well, everything, but that's beside the point.
Re: How will they know? (Score:2)
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admission of AI being better (Score:2)
Re: admission of AI being better (Score:2)
I wish someone could give me a blind sample of EDM music where they are a mix of the best human created songs and the best AI created songs. I would be really surprised if the AI songs would be my favorite, but I don't claim to know.
Re: admission of AI being better (Score:2)
To me, music isn't just about "this sounds nice, it doesn't bother me, can put that on in the background". I get *really* into the music and artists I like, and I care about what they have to say, where they come from, the life experiences they put into their music or lyrics. GenAI has, by definition, nothing to say.
It's not about whether one is able to tell the difference or not. It's possible that I could fall for a f
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To me this is just acknowledgement that AI produces as good a quality music as people and likely will surpass people in many cases.
Well it makes better music then I do. I can’t sing worth shit, and I’m not much better with instruments.
However band camp banning genAI can mean a lot of things, like genAI bothers band camp’s customers and they want customers to be happy. Or worse yet genAI is better at saturating the recommendation engines, but bad at closing sales so now Bandcamp is recommending stuff people don’t like, and won’t buy and that is crowding out stuff they would have bought.
If people actuall
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Won't work (see also: Email Spam) (Score:3)
The cost of creating AI music is virtually zero for the people who stand to make money doing so. As such it becomes a game of trying to stop spammers. I watched an interview with an "AI music artist" recently, the guy has his tracks constantly removed from Spotify, has been banned from Spotify for breach of the ToS several times, and yet still finds it a viable business model since it is absolutely trivial to create an account, upload content, and get a tiny payout for that content before being banned / removed.
When the cost to entry is nil you can't ban something, since the ban will be circumvented due to the low cost.
It's the same problem with email spam. You can't stop email spam because the cost of sending email is nothing. It means a spray and pray approach is viable as the you can stay financially ahead of the filter that is trying to ban you.
Re: Won't work (see also: Email Spam) (Score:2)
Bandcamp is much closer to a curated site than the everything goes, dump it all places like Spotify, though. They can probably prevent a lot of it already because they don't subscribe to the firehouse of major distributors, but artists and small labels directly. I don't know if it's even technically feasible to spam Bandcamp in the same way as Spotify.
Also, this may be a financial nece
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They don't against AI specifically. They do however have rules against impersonation and copyright infringement.
Bandcamp is much closer to a curated site
They are specifically doing no curation here and are relying 100% on user reports. Bandcamp doesn't have any real curation by any common definition of the word.
They can probably prevent a lot of it already because they don't subscribe to the firehouse of major distributors
Major distributors are not the one pushing AI slop. It's the "artists" directly. If you can post music there with little barrier to entry (which you can) then this is possible. Incidentally the fact that this is happening is why they are an
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Email should not be free.
Some have proposed a refundable "postage" fee, that once a valid recipient receives an email the postage is refunded. That would kill spam in no time.
band music (Score:2)
For how long? (Score:2)
I wonder when they will backpedal on that. Two years? Three?