Paraboliccurve

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To play devil's advocate, this not being any sort of hill I want to die on, very little music by humans is truly original - that's how you get genres. Most of the stuff we listen to was people trying to copy Stax or Motown. And AI tracks are original, they're just not by people. To me it pretty much comes down to this: if you can create a new AI track that sounds as good as Count The Days then great, I'll listen, and if I was 20 again, and I didn't know it was AI (and I wouldn't if it's just some DJ's latest alleged cover-up) I'd dance to it, too. If you create the 4 Vandals, no ta. And computing power suggests the former will probably happen, and quite soon.

I take that point a bit, but the aim of the game is to produce music people like. If AI can produce music people like better (and I'm not sure it will, I think people will listen to it if it's free, but I can't see them paying for it) then those musicians, writers, singers, arrangers, producers etc will have to find something else to do - like buggy whip manufacturers and wheelwrights and stable boys did when the internal combustion engine made the horse and cart redundant, or vinyl pressing plant workers did when we moved to CD (and CD factory staff did when we moved to online). Along the way, don't forget, those musicians etc have benefited enormously from automation and AI in every other field... if cars were all still made by hand instead of robots most of them would be walking to gigs, for instance. Not to say there aren't concerns and worries - there are. I don't know how we'll adapt, but we always have before. In terms of music, it will probably put a premium on real music and live performances, so quality artists will survive and maybe even thrive. Who knows - it might even see a revival of small local gigs. I personally think it will be a bit of a flash in the pan - people will always prefer art made by other people.

I didn't say there were no auction records, I said there were no set sale items with known prices (and it's the known price bit that's wrong - though there's also nothing intrinsically wrong with auctioning cheap records, and it happens every week up and down the country and on eBay). There is a range of prices, and whether a given record sells at a given price on a given day depends entirely on supply and demand. What - for instance - is the 'known price' for Barbara Lewis I Remember The Feeling? If I were selling a copy I'd want £100 (and I'd get it if I waited long enough) but would probably settle for £75 (if I wanted to get rid of it) or £50 if I needed the cash for something. If I were buying I'd hope to get one for £25 (and I would if I waited) but might pay up to £40. Which of these is the 'known price'? Or would you suggest another price altogether?

Just to add a bit more. AI music may (or may not) enrich your life by producing sounds you enjoy listening to. Not very different to a trad record in that narrow sense. You can get plenty of human connection in other ways than from records - to be honest, the nerdiest collectors and soulies always seemed to me to be the most in need of connection with actual humans! Re the intangibles you list - you get some of this live, I agree, but the recording process is actually often quite stale... multiple takes, lots of fiddling with sliders etc. And I think we kid ourselves sometimes about passion and regret and all that (and even the great intangible, 'soul'); I have no idea whether Guitar Ray ever had a woman who was going to wreck his life or he was just summoning up ersatz 'emotion' in an attempt to gull blokes who'd just been turfed out by their wives into paying 25c for his latest single, but there has to be a chance that it's the latter. Surely every Delta bluesman didn't actually wake up every morning looking for a razor blade? In other words, artifice abounds

I wonder if people made the same arguments against the use of reverb to artificially enhance a recording? Or layering? Or clackers to replicate clapping? Probably. Dylan lost half his audience overnight by plugging his guitar in, after all. Ironically, the main reason I don't like much soul from the mid 80s on is the (often) artificial-sounding drums, and use of synths. I have never understood all this stuff about 'wasn't Soul music about us as humans finding connection with each other and the music as one?' Nope - it was about young black Americans having fun making music and trying to make a buck, and (in our case) mostly young white Brits dancing to it and collecting the records. I love the McKinney Magnetics. They didn't make very many records. If AI can hypothesise as to what else they might have made if they'd had the direction I'm all in. As long as I know it's AI, who loses?

This happens all the time (Up Tights) and has always happened (though I agree while a truly fantastic record I would never have paid that for it - I paid £4 for mine, albeit a long time ago). As you say above, supply and demand. I am NOT saying this is what happened there, but imagine that someone somehow finds out that only 500 copies of X record were ever pressed, so hazards a guess than maybe 200 survive in decent nick, AND at the same time that some influential DJ in Germany or Japan (or even eg Butch) is about to start hammering it. £800 might be a good investment then. There are what we might think of as reasonable ranges of prices, but there's just no such thing as the 'right' price for any record. There is only the price a given bloke is prepared to pay on a given day, while his wife is out with her mates.

I'm not sure what's hard to understand here - it's very simple economics, and a question of supply and demand. What's the 'known price' for a 'set sale item' like I Remember The Feeling by Barbara Lewis? You can't say, because there isn't one - I would guess (though it is only a guess, because like everyone else I am dealing with imperfect information, particularly those questions of supply and demand) that it's anywhere between £25 and £100. Just a quick addition to this: you've upvoted the following comment by Dylan, which seems to be arguing against you? It seems also that some items have a rough price between collectors but an auction copy will go way over it. and supply demand changes prices constantly

There is no such thing as a set sale item with a known price.

Presumably Bileo You Can't Win is the follow-up.

Just listening to them again. I've been collecting rare soul records since the mid 80s (like most on here, and many have been doing it longer). I reckon I know what a soul record is. I would have had zero idea, based on a couple of listens anyway, that they were not genuine records - especially at ear splitting volume in eg Hinckley Leisure Centre. More to the point, while I can no longer be bothered to go out to venues I do try to keep on top of new discoveries, and these are better than many 'newies', if that's still even a term. It's an interesting question whether I'd have been into them back when I was going to nighters *if I knew they were fake*, and to be honest the answer is probably no. But ours is a scene which has played plenty of pop rubbish and even country and western and stuff verging on doo wop, so I don't know that I'd have been right.

I'd have danced to tracks 1 and 5 on that at the 100 Club in 1985. Mind you, after I'd been to see Scouse I'd probably have danced to the speaking clock.

Basically mint, but I've played it a couple of times so m-. £425 ono inc special delivery (UK only, sorry). EDIT SOLD

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The US white demos are definitely real, yep