My optimistic outlook is that most of the musical spaces I reside in will likely shun or be immune to whatever norms develop regarding AI. I personally care deeply about the fact that the music I listen to is made deliberately and thoughtfully by a human being, and I like to think there are many others who feel the same way.

More cynically though, I’m worried about AI taking market share away from music “made by humans”. If this becomes the norm, maybe there just won’t be money in doing things the old fashioned way. Maybe the type of musicians I want to listen to would be discouraged from making music in this new climate.

I sympathize with this experience, but I’m not quite sure why you “need” to quit your streaming services in order to achieve the desired effect. I almost exclusively use Spotify, but I use it to listen to new releases from artists I like, listen to way more albums then I could afford to buy physically, and check out music my friends recommend to me. You don’t have to use streaming services as a playlist aggregator, there’s nothing stopping you from actively enjoying music on there.

Why bother making something new when perfection already exists?

(kidding)

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This band was recommended to me because I like stoner rock and doom metal. I made the mistake of listening first to their album Butterfly 3000, which absolutely isn’t either of those things and it completely turned me off of them.

Then their most recent album came out and I realized that they’re just a really weird eclectic group. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I’ve been meaning to check out some of their earlier music since then.

I hope some of that helps. Oh and also you can’t go wrong with Ed Sheeran. I still think his first album (+) is his best work.

I’m not quite sure what aspect of her music you’re trying to find more of, and it sounds like it might be multiple things.

If you’re looking for, specifically, modern popular country music sung by a woman about romance/womens issues, I’d recommend the album Plastic Hearts by Miley Cyrus, or Rainbow by Kesha (which sounds weird if you haven’t listened to her since Tik Tok, but her sound has really changed).

As far as artists endorsed by her, it looks like you’re already listening to Olivia Rodrigo, but definitely check out Sour if you haven’t heard it yet. I’d also recommend Lana Del Rey and Phoebe Bridgers, who have both been featured on Taylor Swift songs, and are both great story tellers (although they’re typically more somber than Taylor Swift, more like Folklore).

As for some more personal picks from me that are maybe a bit more out of the box: I really like Car Seat Headrest. They’re an indie band that has a bit more of a DIY sound, but their music is incredibly emotional and the storytelling is compelling. This song is my favorite from them, but most of their stuff is more about romance than this. I also really like the bands Modern Baseball and The Front Bottoms. Both are a bit more emo but they capture a lot of the heartbreak and teen angst that was present on early Taylor Swift stuff.

Perfect, she’s just in time to see streaming services fully adopt cable tv business practices

I’ve never loved the slowed down piano remixes they release. I feel like the band works best with high energy and these just remove that.

Costco has lines regardless of whether it’s self serve though

This is more of a meta thing, but relevant to a lot of comments I’m seeing here. Having an opinion about pineapple on pizza is the most uninteresting cultural phenomenon. I’ve spent the last 4 years on dating apps, and at least 1 in 3 people write in their bio about this “issue”. It’s not something that people truly have strong feelings about, it’s like straight men saying Ryan Reynolds is attractive, or people arguing over the definition of a sandwich. It’s an opinion that people hold as a proxy for being somebody with strong opinions.

Their drummer (Mario) is great

Returnal, a rogue like 3rd person shooter (sort of bullet hell) with a scifi alien setting and a mindfuck story. It’s one of my favorite games I’ve played in years, both for the story and gameplay. I can’t recommend it enough.

If you’re familiar with the story of the first Last of Us game, Last of Us 2 is great and is centered around Ellie.

I struggle to see how any music made by people for the enjoyment of people isn’t art

It’s still just a tool for engineers though. Half of the job is determining what the design requirements are, another quarter is figuring out what general scheme (i.e. water vs air cooling) works best to meet those requirements. Things like this are great, but all they really do is effectively connect point A to point B in order to free up some man-hours for more high-level work.

There’s a guy at this maker-space I work out of who’s been using ChatGPT to do engineering work for him. There was some issue with residue being left in the parking lot on the pavement and came forward saying it had to do with “ChatGPT giving him a bad math number,” whatever the hell that means. This is also not the first time he’s said something like this, and its always hilarious.