AI Slop FM radio experiment puts machines on trial, one dodgy tune at a time
A Welsh music enthusiast has built an internet radio station that plays AI-generated tunes alongside human-made tracks without telling listeners which is which, to find out whether listeners really hate AI music or just the idea of it.
Key points
- AI Slop FM is the creation of Mike Chaffin, who built and runs the station single-handedly from Ammanford, Carmarthenshire.
- As for the toilet opera, it "runs through my head about once a day, whether I like it or not." Chaffin believes the sheer volume of music uploaded to streaming platforms means plenty of perfectly decent tracks never find an audience, whether a person or a machine made them.
- If the musicians win, then that's reassuring for them." He also wants to see how the station's eventual top five or top ten compares with the official music charts, although with submissions having only recently opened, there are no results to pore over just yet.
The most popular submissions will eventually make it into a weekly chart called the Slop 40, giving creators something that can be hard to come by in the age of streaming: an actual audience.
Additional details
- He's already been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the music submitted, although he still listens to every track to make sure nobody is trying to pass off Bohemian Rhapsody as their own work.
- Among the early offerings are what Chaffin describes as a developing genre of slightly rude protest songs about HR departments, along with an operatic epic about a blocked toilet.
- "We strip all that away, tracks are judged purely on the music." Whether listeners ultimately prefer human musicians or their algorithmically assisted rivals remains to be seen.
- The bigger question is what happens when listeners start rating AI-generated music more highly than the human competition, but Chaffin isn't particularly worried about that.
- "If the machines win then their creators clearly deserve to be heard, deserve an audience.
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