Picture source: Generated by Unbounded AI

"Seven Days of Love", an AI divine song originally created by programmers has become popular.

Creator "Yapie" used tools such as DeepSeek to input keywords such as "Jay Chou's Music Style" and "Fast Food Love". It took only 2 hours to complete the entire process of lyrics, arrangement and mixing, and uploaded it to NetEase Cloud Music.

Soon, the number of songs collected in NetEase Cloud Music was over 1,000, and it brought Yapie a daily income of 150 yuan. On February 24, Yapie claimed that she had sold the copyright of "Seven Days Lover" for five figures. As of March 4, the creator posted a video claiming that the music has played more than one million, and it has become a small hit that is comparable to well-known songs.

In an era when AI deeply influences and transforms the world, it seems that it is no longer surprising that any industry is "invaded" by AI. The emergence of "Seven Days of Love" has added anxiety to ordinary creators who were shocked by AI.

Is the era of AI transforming the music industry really coming? Perhaps, by looking back at the creation process of "Seven Days of Love", we can understand that there are many factors that have nothing to do with the music itself in the popularity of "Seven Days of Love". At present, instead of worrying about AI grabbing jobs, musicians should think about how to use AI well.

Why is the AI ​​divine song popular? ‍‍‍‍‍

"The temperature of the convenience store is just enough to thaw my timidity. You said that the ice American style is too bitter and I have to add half a spoon of my compromise."

The song "Seven Days Lover" is the most trembling of these lyrics created by AI. Although careful reading can reveal obvious formulaic routines, AI's deep learning of existing lyrics still allows it to fully learn the poetic transformation of consumer symbols and the emotional projection of household items. Although what was finally created was "canned lyrics", it can still fill the listener's emotional expectations.

The "popularity" of this song comes to some extent from the widespread dissemination of lyric screenshots on the Internet. People spread various lyrics and golden sentences with black background and white words, and sighed that the creators might have expected:

AI is really going to change the world.

But the weird thing about this song's road to becoming popular is that a song became popular just because of its lyrics? Even in the history of pop music, very few songs have become popular with their lyrics alone.

Those popular era music can stir up a melody in the minds of the listeners; even if some foreign music is not familiar with their lyrics, we can often hum a few sentences.

However, the melody and arrangement of "Seven Days of Love" can hardly be found. Some industry insiders believe that the composition and singing level of "Seven Days of Love" is average, which can only represent the level of ordinary people using AI to make songs.

A song that became popular because of lyrics has already pointed outThe essence behind this song's popularity:

The reason why "Seven Days Lover" became popular is not because of the quality of the lyrics and music, but because it has become the core element of popular short videos: the audience does not really like the song "Seven Days Lover", but is moved by the "gimmick" of AI creation. They can't wait to listen to this "AI Divine Song", and driven by curiosity, it was sent to the altar with a playback volume of more than one million.

In fact, the two videos published by creator Yapie on TikTok that introduced the process of AI creation "Seven Days of Love" both received more than 150,000 likes. According to the 1/100th like viewing ratio, the total number of views of the two videos exceeds at least 30 million, and the number of views is far greater than that of "Seven Days of Love" itself.

Are users interested in "Seven Days of Love" or are they interested in AI creation "Seven Days of Love"? The answer is already obvious.

AI creation, which has already begun. After completing the song "Seven Days of Love", yapie quickly shared the entire process of producing "Seven Days of Love" with fans on his homepage, and even shared the benefits: at the beginning, the average daily average of 150 yuan, and tens of thousands of broadcasts were played every day. Later, the copyright fee income was five digits, with a total playback volume of millions.

This kind of things that seem simple and easy to learn, low cost and high returns quickly attracted many imitators. Many people have learned YAPE's teaching guide and posted their works in the comment section. But obviously, so far, no second song "Seven Days Lover" has appeared. Is AI music suffering from aesthetic fatigue so quickly?

When the music created by AI loses the freshness brought by AI gimmicks and returns to the music itself, it is easy to find that AI is still far from independently creating a popular pop song.

But the attempt of AI to assist music creation at various levels is no longer new.

For example, AI can be used to generate vocals in music. A more special case is that the divine song "The Beater Better Beater" is popular on Douyin almost the same time as "Seven Days of Love", and the divine song "The Beater Better Beater and Younger" is also popular. This magic song and various video scenes are quite "versatile" and can form a contrasting funny effect. And the unique AI voice is one of the sources of this electronic sense of humor.

AI can also imitate the voices of well-known singers, forming a fantasy linkage that fans have never seen before. Suno V3.5 big model can extract the singer's voice clips to achieve the effect of Xu Song singing "Manjianghong" and Faye Wong singing "Xiaofang".

Although this kind of creation is still controversial at the current legal level, AI's learning and imitation of sound has not stopped for a moment. In the future, will singers authorize AI to use their own voices to recreate? This may just be a matter of digital transactions.

Big model in the music fieldtype is also rapidly evolving. For example, the Tencent Qinle big model can refine the multi-track score, and in April last year, the United Nations Style Orchestra held a concert; Tiangong SkyMusic can replicate the main chorus structure and drum rhythm of the original music; Udio can control the music elements according to the prompt words; Tianpu music model can adjust the voice and breathing mouth, etc.

In short, AI has been involved in all aspects of music creation, which is of great significance to improving the efficiency of music creation from multiple levels and reducing the threshold for music creation. "Seven Days of Love" is the first hit music created by AI, and it will definitely not be the last one.

No need to be afraid that AI

As a hit music, "Seven Days of Love" does not have the ability to truly shake the industry, but as soon as it appeared, it still made the music circle take a breath. Before AI transformed the music circle, the art circle was already flattened: AI completely destroyed the jobs of some underlying artists through the replacement of simple demand.

The lessons from the past have caused considerable controversy in the music industry.

Musician A Duoduo called for boycott of AI creation on public videos, and suggested that musicians sue Yapie for "unfair competition." She believes that AI creation "deprives music of human nature" and impacts traditional copyright trading markets (such as customized song business). Some musicians posted short videos on social platforms that "AI creation destroys the industry ecology", saying that "the album that has been polished for three years is not as good as AI two-hour works", and were worried that traffic and revenue will be tilted towards technology.

Although the statements vary, it is clear that these boycotts represent a common panic: AI is making many people unemployed by transforming the traditional art industry, and now this wave has swept into the music circle. The "custom song business" mentioned by musician A Duo is the first area to be threatened.

You should know that the Party A of this business may not expect to get a unique song, but rather hopes to get a promotional song or a customized song that meets the requirements. The creators who originally made a living by this are obviously likely to be replaced by obedient and easy-to-use AI, and Aduo's panic originated from this.

However, unlike related industries such as art or design, music is an industry with extremely prominent pyramid effects, and the "28 Law" is very obvious. Industry surveys in 2019 show that 20% of the top artists in the music industry account for more than 80% of the resources and income.

The main output value of the music circle, such as concerts, copyright income, brand endorsement and cross-border cooperation, is almost all created by top artists. And these are precisely what AI cannot replace. In other words, the reason why AI can create good lyrics or melodies is precisely because a large number of songs created by Chinese pop singers over the past few decades provides a rich learning basis.

Eating meat on the head, drinking soup in the middle, and struggling at the tail is the music industryAn inevitable status quo. This is not a fair industry, but it is precisely because of the brilliant success of top artists that countless people who pursue their musical dreams have entered it. Many of them, the goal at the beginning was not to be a creator of customized songs.

Just as the birth of new tools such as steam engines liberated human productivity and made technology more rapid progress, AI's replacement of inefficient creation may instead help talented creators bring new songs with more creative and imaginativeness.

At this time, compared to AI as a tool, perhaps embracing AI and following the trend can better exert inspiration and create works.