I am a musician/music profucer who made trance music (subgenre of electronic music) for 18 years. I had my ups and downs in this scene, a few releases accumulated during that period, occasional breaks etc… but nothing had me prepared for what was to come.
I had already noticed an infestation of AI generated cover art in the past years. While it was quite deplorable, I figured the music itself, at the very least, was safe. Knowing how passionate this community can be about what is “real trance” and what isn’t, I figured that any kind of “AI music” or anything AI related being used in the genre would be met with universal rejection and controversy (similar to how back in the early 2010s there was massive backlash over the “housification” of trance music as a result of the EDM boom in the USA).
Boy, I was SO wrong and naïve in thinking like this.
Late last year on Facebook, a relatively well-known music producer had posted an (obviously Chat got generated) announcement late last year that he will be using “AI generated vocals” in his music going forward. One of the biggest trance music forums had a discussion about this and based on the posts I saw there, the main opinions ranged from “you can’t stop AI” and “what u gonna do about it, start a civil war bro” to outright full on support of generative AI. Barely anyone was calling this out as unacceptable behaviour from a producer and a terrible thing to do in general for the health of the scene. I found that that same forum is being moderated/administered by pro-AI shills, as one of the admins even had a post encouraging people to “post their AI generated tracks here”.
All of this was incredibly disturbing and heartbreaking on so many levels… it made me deeply unmotivated to continue making any trance music, as well as deeply depressed, a depression I am STILL suffering from. What’s the point of making this niche music? Why spend 10+ hours on a single track only for it to be listened to by pro-AI shitheads that would gladly throw you and everyone else under the bus for some pitiful crumbs of dopamine? Why throw pearls for swine?
Every day was full of mental suffering. Back in spring this year it got so bad I was nearly ready to end things… until I mustered up the mental strength to simply… let go.
Letting go of my attachment to this beloved music scene was incredibly difficult. I had pretty much grown up with this scene, spent my adolescence and young adult years listening to trance daily and producing it myself under a couple of different aliases. Seeing the community just blatantly accept AI slop invading, even mostly supporting generative AI in general, it was incredibly heartbreaking.
– On a related note, I’ve also lost two close, longtime friends, both trance fans, to AI psychosis. I never expected those people to ever end up and be this way, it came as a shock.
The first one (let’s call him K) was also a trance producer-turned-metalhead nowadays leading a metalcore band. I noticed last year in 2025 already that K was using AI generated slop on socials promoting his bad, using it for covers and also for “female vocals”. I confronted him about it only for him to get angry, call it a “small issue” and make bullshit arguments about how AI isn’t even that bad, how it’s actually “greener than traditional art” etc. I temporarily stopped talking to him after this conflict hoping that maybe he would come to his senses and realize the error of his ways.
I later found out that K is an active user on a Reddit subreddit that defends AI “Art”. He even made posts about me there about our fallout over his use of gen AI, hoping to have the other lunatics give him validation about how he is in the right and I’m insane for calling him out. Reading all the insults and labels the AI defending lunatics commented about me (“chronically online” “12 years old” “not a true friend” etc.) was difficult. Of course I cut off all contact with him after this. At the time I didn’t really let this whole thing get to me, I figured that this would be just an isolated case.
Then, back in spring this year (during the peak of my severe depression because of gen AI), I lost another friend (let’s call him N). He was a diehard trance fanatic since the 90s, and a long time supporter of my own music, a confidant in a way. When I complained to N about my depression caused by the trance scene being destroyed by AI slop, N completely tone deaf to my woes and concerns. I tried to tell him about how bad gen AI is for society, how it is built through theft, how evil billionaires are supporting it… he wouldn’t listen. He would tell me about how “there are more important things to be concerned about, like Donald Trump” etc. and labeled me as having “bipolar disorder”. I couldn’t really understand why N was acting this way. Then, I found out on Facebook, purely by coincidence, his posts in certain Atheism groups. The posts were AI generated “comics” he generated with one of the widely available online generators. Now it all made sense – it turns out he had already taken a bite of the forbidden apple himself, and was actively generating AI slop and publishing it on various Facebook groups, no wonder he was reluctant to even TALK about this subject. Another friend lost.
Life hasn’t really been the same since. I used to be a passionate person full of hopes and dreams but now I feel like an empty shell of my former self. Losing my two closest friends, and the music scene I had surrounded myself with so long has severely impacted my quality of life.
Is there any hope going forward?
TLDR: Musician of nearly two decades, AI slop infested my niche music scene and most people in the scene either completely don’t care or even support AI slop; how I lost two longtime friends over gen AI.
Mod here. Lots of reports about this thread and comments in it and particularly the line of conversation around the OP here possibly being a bot account posting LLM output.
After looking over everything, there’s one rather belligerent comment that I removed, but beyond that I’ve decided not to take any action. First, I don’t think there’s a strong case that OP is a bot, nor do I think OP really did anything to bring on that suspicion except I guess that this is OP’s first post (but every active user has to make their first post sometime). Though I also don’t blame Grimy for the comment pointing to the similar Reddit thread and I don’t really consider that “doxxing” as Reddit threads usually aren’t really traceable back to any real-world identity.
I’m hoping a bit of transparency in the mods’ (or at least my) decision making process is appreciated.
OP is my SO. I can vouch for them being a real person (imagine me finding out this way I’ve been lied to all those years lol). Thanks for the transparency and trying to stay rational.
The reddit post was created a while back, true. But after being disillusioned with all these insensitive people over there, I tried introducing them to Lemmy instead. Why wouldn’t they share their views on this platform as well? They’ve already put the effort in to write the original post, so I don’t see anything wrong with reusing one’s own prior work. Breaks my heart a bit seeing how some of the same kind of people here are now acting in the same belittling and insulting manner.
Dear friends: Just because a post contains more than two paragraphs does not automatically make it LLM-slop. Please get a grip.
How did you people manage to never participate in Lemmy and write any comment in 3 years?! I mean at least your account has some voting history to it so it might as well not be a bot.
Oh ffs why did I not see this coming…
You are aware that just blindly going around and insulting others, or rather implying things without knowing any better is actively hurting people and societies? What do you have to gain by doing so? I’d really love to understand what makes you tick this way.
And fwiw, I did not know it’s been written into law that lurking, enjoying one’s time, but not creating/posting/commenting is illegal 🤨 Different people live different lives, you understand?
Maybe you should look in the mirror first next time before throwing around baseless accusations.
What did I accuse you of? Or insult you with?
Edit: I mean you do realize how AI works on social media? There will be some bots stirring up people. For example with identity politics. Or Kremlin-funded bots who tell people to vote for Donald Trump. And the “great” thing about AI is how they can not only post relentlessly, but also manufacture agreeing comments. Making it look like there’s some large consensus amongst people, or some lie is truth. While in reality it’s a single dude manipulating discourse with their AI army. And then you get society being seriously damaged. …Happens all the time.
Not sure if you’re aware of how AI manipulates people online?!
So you’re conceding that you feel like you’ve been manipulated by this post? A post where someone was opening their heart, sharing their feelings, their story, and how things have affected them? Please enlighten me why anyone would LLM-generate a message like that, disregarding the fact that ‘machines’ and ‘having feelings’ don’t go hand-in-hand. This would imply that some AI-bro was putting out a piece about how bad AI is? Nah. The math ain’t mathin.
Regarding “what did I accuse you of?”: The exact thing you just expanded upon in your edit. Surely you understand your own actions better than I would, so I don’t have to explain that to you. And frankly, I find the audacity to compare someone sharing a heartfelt message to war propaganda simply despicable.
Do yourself a favor and next time, take a step back and think through your argument first before reaching for the keyboard.
Sorry about that your friends, however you’re not describing AI psychosis.
Do you have a link to your music so we can have a look?
I’ve been doing software development for 30years processionally, 40 years in total
I love software development and its been my job one way or another for my entire professional life. Even as CTO I still daily got my hands dirty because I just can’t stop development
That is, until 4 months ago when a project manager stabbed the then current CEO and best friend of hers in the back, got that CEO fired, and became the new CEO herself. (That entire event is a Mexican soap opera with chapters in on itself)
First thing that new CEO did? Fire my ass, fire the entire IT department, hire two new AI viber bros, or whatever they call themselves now, and all the software i produced over the past 5 years got scrapped immediately without replacement because fuck knows why.
And so I go look for a new job and there is nothing
I mean, there seem to be jobs, I applied for everything, literally at this point, and haven’t even gotten a single call in 4 months now
Its fucking depressing, I stopped working on my open source project, because I’m just too depressed to enjoy it.
I am seriously considering becoming a gardener
I mean, there seem to be jobs, I applied for everything, literally at this point, and haven’t even gotten a single call in 4 months now
Contacts are king, if you don’t know someone working for a company currently hiring, good luck actually finding the job post which would hire one of the applicants rather than a contact of someone working there.
I got laid off early this year, after half a year of applying. Got two interviews through network. But they looked for a different skillset (one of them also turned out to just be building their catalogue of potential future employees) and none from regular applications.
The few job posts that seemed genuine, all went something like. Sorry we didn’t bring you to an interview, we had 150 applicants and four people had everything we asked for in the job posting.
Which was fairly few job postings that actually responded like that, but I assume they’re the only ones not filled internally.
I’ve kind of wanted to go into education for the past three years, but I had some pretty unique perks that made me very comfortable. So this summer I did the easy thing of starting a bachelor rather than continually throw myself against a wall
Unfortunately I think the current job scene is an arms race between applicants using AI and employers filtering with AI, if you just applied normally you’re screwed
I think a lot of us need to think about different career paths. It’s the only logical thing I can think of.
I LOVE trance, and I HATE AI with all my life.
With me you’ll always have at least one supporter. And in this community, even more.
Thank you ✨
Love and peace 🫂
if people are using Ai to form relationships with AI BFs/ GFs theres very little you can do.
Someone is running bots, this is a slightly reworded Reddit post.
It’s deleted now.
Has it never occured to you that maybe that post and this one comes from the same person??
Eff off with your bot accusations I’ve only recently been more active here after getting tired with Reddit and the toxicity over there.
clanker
Removed by mod
How did you find this?
Op’s account was created in December 2024 and this is the first post. I can’t comprehend what purpose this post achieves. Sick pleasure of fooling anti ai people with ai generated posts?
💀
The fucking irony. Nice job spotting that shit.
Man, that sucks.
I grew up in the punk scene, played in a few bands, had a distro, used to produce gigs, knew shit tons of people, but later I moved to a city that has nothing, and I kinda left Facebook in 2018 and I never joined Instagram, so I lost contact with majority of them, and right after the pandemic lockdown I got some new responsibilities so I haven’t left my town since, so I’m very distant from the “scene” now. I recovered my Facebook acc recently to look for some old contacts and, man, every fucking flyer, every fucking cd cover, or “single” cover (for spotify or whatever) is AI slop, it’s so fucking sad to see, because all those bands have very political lyrics… as punk is “analog” music, I think it will be harder to be taken by AI, but bands could be covertly playing covers of music they made with AI too…
Hey OP, the electronic music scene is awesome, my brother was a raver in the 90s, my cousin still travel to those rave parties in farms in the middle of nowhere, when you get your strength back, be positively hostile to AI, that’s gonna be your scene, I’m sure tons of people are sickened by that shit as well, and you will all find each other, death to posers.
+1 to this. A staunchly anti AI scene will / is emerging from all of this. Those will be our people now 🤘
The trance, and specially psytrance, community is shit full of Zionist hippies. Doesn’t surprise me at all that they embrace and accept AI art and music for their superficial spiritually art. Sadly is not only trance but basically every electronic music out there. Spotify is full of it. I use mainly latincore and related, from artists that I can verify that exists or that release in labels with a reputation to defend, so I think I’m kinda free of AI music, butnot sure how much that is going to last.
Kudos for you for denounce it, hope you keep doing music and experimenting. Share your SoundCloud I check out.
I have to admit, I was shifting my focus to psytrance after my ordeal with the mainstream (uplifting, progressive) trance scene, due to certain similarities it has with the music I had been doing.
It occurred to me that it is WAY worse over there – every single goddamn release cover is AI generated, and every single event poster is psychedelic/pseudo-spiritual AI slop with obvious ChatGPT generated text. Wouldn’t be surprised if nearly every new track contains some form of generative AI slop in it through samples, fake AI vocals, fake AI generated instruments or even fully generated slop tracks.
Like, holy shit… if any music scene is totally lost to gen AI it’s PSYTRANCE.
Damn I know. I really like PsyTrance but I don’t even know where to start any more to not get Zionist or AI-pilled crap. I’ve switched from Spotify to Qobuz (since Spotify actively produces their own slop, and probably so does YouTube), but I’m not sure how to find artists to trust.
fwiw Bandcamp forbids AI-generated music.
Nothing really to say except that I’m very sorry you lost those two close friends. And that I hope you can beat the depression and find your passion again (either for trance music or for something else that inspires you). I think there will always be a core who appreciate human-generated content. But that fruit hasn’t fully ripened yet.
Wow, is trance really considered niche? Your music is a perfect fit for so many aspects of life, and it’s awful that the genre is completely flushed out with AI chill/focus/study playlists. I personally listen to Blue Turtle’s AI-free fantasy playlists while I work. Back in the age of CDs I had so many trance mixes that I’d listen to driving or just zoning out in my bedroom. It’s an incredible type of music that I hold near and dear.
The influx of AI everywhere IS distressing, but it’s good you’re in a better spot mentally now. I’d encourage you to keep creating. If not music, find an outlet to express yourself, even if The Plagiarism Machine can do it 1000x faster. Because creating is clearly important to you, or any artistically minded person. I enjoy TTRPGs and it’s so satisfying to worldbuild, come up with scenarios for my players, and improvise at the table. Making stuff will both keep you sane and benefit those around you.
I love Trance, for over 30 years. You do what you love doing and know you have fans who are not interested in AI-generated “art” of any kind. I’m not up on new music but I’d love to hear your work :)
I’m a trance (and EDM in general) fan. I deplore generative AI for all the reasons you’ve stated, so I won’t get into it again right here. So I’m behind you. There are at least two of us.
My advice, tone deaf though it may be (ha), is that if you love to do something enough you can do it anyway and to hell with what shitheads have to say about it. That’s an inherent part of all art in some capacity, I think. The math is muddier when you depend on doing that art for a living. But if you still want to do it even if it can’t be your day job, go for it.
My audience will never be millions-wide. I implicitly limit my potential viewer base by only publishing (and advertising) in the Fediverse and even then only on Lemmy. So be it. Work is what you do for other people. Art is what you do for yourself.
Then, there will come a day when this all comes crashing down. Some of us will still have our skills afterwards. When it’s all derivative, when it’s all grey noise that sounds the same, who is going to be able to come up with something truly new?
You.
Depression sucks bro and its hard to see the light from the tunnel.
I am seeing wildy successful posts of thirty hand drawn signs and “AI free” art. It could be your new selling point.
While you might not see people being openly anti AI in your community they might not be as brave as you to speak out.
If you need to also seek support, the brain is like any body part that can be hurt and need professional care.
Don’t lose hope man.
PS do you have a link to your music, people here would love it I’m sure.
You are the hope going forward. It can only be people like you.
