In recent years something has happened. Where I used to find fun mixes and playlists of artists in a genre, made by fans and put online; I would now find channels that upload 3 hour playlists everyday for the past 3 months. This was a little suspicious. Had I only seen 2 or 3, sure, I could chalk it up to someone with an amazing collection finally putting it all online after hoarding it. That can happen! It's how they find a lot of old drawings from artists, half written works by novelists, work-in-progress videos from aspiring filmmakers and so on.
But, this was different. I understood instantly after seeing an argument in the comments. It was all AI generated music. Since then I learned that there was generative LLM's for music, but only since a year or 2/3 has it been improved enough to pass for 'real' music. Well, I knew somewhere that something like that existed, we had that whole Voice AI hype a few years back when this also started popping up. You may have also heard about Spotify hosting AI generated music that's been passed off as real bands.
I cannot know for certain why these are created. My first guess is someone wanted to make quick ad-revenue, digital album sales or just get some prestigious numbers under their belt. I have to assume get-rich-quick schemes and a form of creative laziness before I assume something more malignant. I have seen arguments of people going "It's the future!" and maybe some people do believe that removing the human element from something inherently human makes it ... better? I can't get on the same page, but I suppose I can vaguely understand what they might be gesturing at. That "Everyone can be an artist now, even without the skills" thing you see sometimes. I do not agree with that though. Everyone can already be an artist if you commit a little and try. You don't need a machine to do the work, you just need a machine that runs Magix Music Maker or a drawing program with layers.
As someone who poorly plays electric guitar, bass, acoustic guitar, messed around in a bunch of music maker programs and admires a lot of artists, I was insulted. I've been listening and finding little loose songs from people who are learning instruments and figuring out their style for ages. I love it! Raw human expression and all that. Sure, people will always take more to higher production values, but more people then you might think do care for the genuine expression someone is trying to send out there in music form.
So, spotting AI music on Youtube!
As my examples I'm going to use a lot of Drum&Bass, Jungle and Breakcore playlists and mixes. These are the ones I come across the most as I let them autoplay in the background. I sometimes come across Death Metal and Grindcore playlists, but I've been out of the loop of those genres so I need to study every vid that comes my way. case-by-case and all that.
As I threw out there at the start, excessive uploads of long durations on a fresh channel is a strong indication. Sometimes people will have a backlog of their art, sure, but it will be kinda apparent when it's not the case.
The description on the channel is also something to look at. Often for these channels there's a very mundane "We/I make cool mixes for video game drum and bass!" and then links to a place to donate and a slightly niche or just hidden Bandcamp. I'm not sure on Bandcamp's stance on AI music at this time, I would like to imagine they are against it and these small accounts get found out sooner or later. But I don't know.
A lot of the time the thumbnails are generative AI as well. But they stick to generic "anime girl with heavy crt and glitch filters" images for a lot of these. I've seen a few Death Metal versions too where they can hide more 'wrong' details because you're not supposed to be able to read the band name off the cover anyway. It looks like a pile of sticks so you're not gonna notice as fast if it's just a mistake on the machines end.
Sometimes when pressured, an AI channel uploader will respond to call-outs. What I have seen a few times is that they drop a link to an Instagram with AI art. The artist will have a generic ___Arts name and no other links or socials. They do not repost others or show up in their stories, they have no known identity before this account. None of the work you see it really in the same style or has the same details as the album cover you might be looking at.
Descriptions for videos! A lot of the time different channels will use the same variation on the same text. It will say something like:
"We're 3-6 guys who live in the same house/apartment and make music all day. We each make 3 tracks per day and then put them together on Youtube."
Already a little sus, do you know that half-meme about the group of NEET guys who live in the same house off benefits and play WoW all day? And then 1 dies and they just have to carry on? That last part is unrelated, but the first half is the picture it paints. Anyway.
One of the first things that pops out with the descriptions is how none of these members are referenced in any way ever, not even a mention of their online name or platforms they might be on. No 'official' social media account either. It's a Venmo or Paypal link and then a Soundcloud or Bandcamp one. Something a little less mainstream. All videos will have the same description Whether they be from last year or last week.
Song names and tracklists.
What a lot of real uploaders do is add the tracklist to the description. Sometimes they even timecode it themselves. The Youtube AI itself will also try to at least divide the video in chapters per song name, checking for silence and your video description. The AI channels will do this too sometimes, but the names really stand out when it does. You can instantly see someone asked a AI bot to come out with titles around 1 or 2 concepts. They have no flow, they are written in the same cadence or prose and searching for them solo results in nothing.
Song length is also something to look at. Sure, sometimes people make concept albums, something like The Residents' Commercial Album, where the gimmick is that all the songs are 1 minute long. But sometimes you will look at these channels and see daily uploads of 3 hours mixes that all follow the exact same formulae. I find it very easy to see that is not just some actual person committing to the bit for 300 days in a row. Another thing to look for is the last song of the mix. What a bunch of these AI channels do is that the last song is supposed to be a reprise of the first one, only 2 hours long. If you see this once or twice, you think "Sure, whatever, the guitar player for Slayer also loved playing solo's every waking moment" but when you see it across various channels and almost hundreds of mixes, it becomes very apparent.
Botted comments are a thing. A lot of these are simple "Wow, we making it out of 1999 with this one" or "wow, what an amazing music, I can really feel music when I hear music". This kinda lures in unsuspecting people very easily. A lot of comments on real drum&bass mixes are the same. There is a key difference though! What I never see on AI videos is people recounting festivals and such, I only see those on real videos. Because those people know the names of the artists they're looking for and the real mixes show up when they search for those. Sometimes it's someone recounting their first time at a gig of one of the artists in the mix.
This is impossible for AI music of course, I assume the bot commenters can't make up such a story without hallucinating too much. They would be saying they saw deadmau5 and Jimi hendrix at the superbowl in 2164 and they loved the music they drank. It would be too obvious and ruin the legitimacy the AI channels are trying to feint.
While this is not 100% on the Ai music channels, I do get so sad when I see comments from what I assume are real people being fine with soulless music being mass produced. I'll see arguments where someone points out it's AI and a reply being "who cares."