Where we started
When The Bugcast first graced the podwaves back in 2008, our music choices were governed mostly by a) what we were permitted to play on the show without fearing a copyright strike, and b) what sounded good. As time progressed, “a)” became our desire to promote independent musical artists to give them exposure in places where they wouldn’t otherwise be heard.
Almost all of our music choices have been Creative Commons sourced – usually from Jamendo. A small percentage of music is sourced directly from independent artists who don’t or can’t apply a Creative Commons licence to it. This has worked well for us, as it still fits our governing criteria.
Where we are now
Our stance on this has not changed. We still want to promote musicians and musical artists because of what they do and how they do it.
We do not have any desire to promote prompt engineers who tell a GenAI model what they want to hear. There is very little art in this, and – in fact – what art there is has likely been unwittingly contributed by other musical artists who have had their own material used to build up the GenAI model. Often without their consent.
The Bugcast will continue to support and promote genuine musicians and musical artists through our weekly podcast. We will make best efforts to ensure that we’re not featuring AI-generated music, although this is becoming increasingly difficult. Often those who engineer it take steps to conceal the fact by applying a backstory that leads you to infer that the “artist” is actually genuine.
However
In the interests of full disclosure, we have knowingly played music that has included elements of AI in its composition. These instances have been specifically artistic in nature. For example, an artist using a vocalist’s voice to build a model. This model was then used to feature that vocalist “singing” a second verse that didn’t already exist. This was done with the full consent and permission of the vocalist. We view this as a reasonable use of GenAI as it was used to enhance and augment an existing piece of music that was created by genuine artists.
Inspired by: /ai manifesto
Written by: a human