Would you identify an AI song if you pressed play on one? Colm Cahalane and Niall explore what's happening in AI and music now, with an example drawn from the Irish music scene in recent months.
Echoing the early Wild Wild West streaming era that we discussed last week with Liz Pelly that gave rise to Spotify's dominance, our chat this week with Colm Cahalane of Irish music Substack blog Fourth Best / Cork label Hausu finds parallels with what's happening with AI and music right now. AI is breaking new ground, and creating new problems and moral issues in doing so.
Colm recently posted a ruminating article on AI on Fourth Best, which talks to an artist called Kawaii Hoe who inadvertently, and relatively innocently duped me into covering their energetic AI-generated hyperpop music on the site - Like I said it's the Wild Wild West.
We talk about this scary new world of not knowing whether an artist is making music entirely with AI or not, and the implications and creative quandary of generated art.
Because you can now make a full music project with AI, does that mean you should? Are AI musicians just really gifted at prompts? Are the outputs music?
As AI music flooded streaming platforms, social media and we cannot put the genie back in the bottle, what’s next? As Liz Pelly’s book shows, Spotify will do what it can to reduce royalty rates so what’s to stop it from replacing real artist’s music with AI-generated music? Isn’t this already happening whether they allow it or not?
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1:12:10
Mood Machine - A conversation with Liz Pelly about Spotify
The music and cultural critic Liz Pelly's new book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist is a deep dive into Spotify's often contentious position in music today.
Liz has been a philosophising on issues brought about by the streaming era's cultural impact for about 10 years now so the book collates a lot of work, thoughts, research and investigative reporting on Spotify and the way it operates.
We talk to Liz about the Swedish streaming giant's outsized influence on the music industry, its gatekeeper effect on trends in music, and how Spotify has emphasised mood and passive listening above discovery and initiative.
We talk about the vast collection of user behaviour on the platform that has lead to artists chasing a more homogenous "streambait pop" sound, how Spotify uses fake "ghost" artists and their Perfect Fit Content system to reduce royalty rates and squeeze out real artists on the platform's popular algorithmic and editorial playlists.
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1:04:57
Our best of February's music
Our monthly episode in which Nialler and Andrea Cleary talk about their favourite music of the month.
The Best of the Month episode is now Patreon-only. Public subscribers get the first 20-25 minutes or so of the episode as a free preview. Members get to hear the whole episode on their member feeds or on Patreon direct.
Discussing new albums from Oklou, Horsegirl, Maria Kelly, Puma Blue and songs from Djo, Car Seat Headrest, Deep Thrills and breaking news - nepobaby Lola Kirke.
We also chat about films we've seen lately including A Complete Unknown, Civil War, Companion and pick an Italo Disco classic that featured in The Brutalist and an even better song from the same act.
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26:45
Ólafur Arnalds on making a record with Talos before his passing
The composer and producer, and multi-instrumentalist Ólafur Arnalds met the Cork singer-songwriter Eoin French aka Talos after he ran a marathon in Iceland. A friendship was struck, that quickly developed into a musical partnership, as seen at Sounds From A Safe Harbour in Cork in 2023, when the festival director Mary Hickson put the pair together for a collaboration.
Now six months after Eoin's death, Arnalds and French's family, friends and collaborators have been celebrating the artist's creativity and legacy with the stunning song they wrote together 'We Didn't Know We Were Ready'. The song was performed on The Tommy Tiernan show on RTÉ in January under Arnalds' Opia community banner with vocals from Niamh Regan, Ye Vagabonds, JFDR, The Staves, Sandrayati Fay, Dermot Kennedy, Laoise Leahy, Memorial, Christof Van Der Ven and most poignantly of all, Eoin’s wife Steph French.
In our chat with Ólafur today, he recounts meeting Eoin, their creative time spent together and the instructions he received from Eoin before he died to finish the record they made together, which will be released later this year.
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Songs referenced on the Nialler9 Podcast Spotify Playlist
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34:27
The new 2025 season of Music is really good so far isn’t it?
Niall and Andrea are running our mouths over what's been happening in mainstream music to this year.
Episode #276 is a grab bag of topics and events in music so far from Kendrick Lamar's Superbowl Half-Time Show, the Grammys to the music highlights of 50 years of Saturday Night Live.
We talk about Doechii's live performance at the Grammys, Robyn and David Byrne performing together and Lauryn Hill and Wyclef coming back together on stage at Radio City Music Hall to perform some Fugees and Lauryn Hill classics.
Then we delve into the archive of SNL's musical performances, prompted by Questlove and Oz Rodriguez' Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music documentary and come up with notorious SNL moments like Ashlee Simpson's lipsync farce, Sinead O'Connor's Pope-ripping a capella, Rage Against The Machine getting kicked out of the show for upsetting the advertisers and Republicans, Elvis Costello switching it up live without telling the producers.
Then we highlight some of our favourite performances on the show from The White Stripes / Jack White, Chance The Rapper on Kanye's 'Ultralight Beam', Janis Ian and Billy Preston on the 1975 debut of the show and more.
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Songs played on the Nialler9 Podcast Spotify Playlist
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