Kieran Webber
Director and Founder of CLUNK Magazine, CLUNK Events, and other CLUNK affiliate businesses. You’ll probably find me tucked away somewhere sending emails, listening to music, and creating content.
The artist first platform has today announced its stance on generative AI, banning it from the popular platform
Bandcamp has today become the very first streaming platform to outright ban generative AI, a huge win for creativity and humanity. In a blog post titled ‘Keeping Bandcamp Human they announced the new policy on generative AI on their platform.
It reads:
“Bandcamp’s mission is to help spread the healing power of music by building a community where artists thrive through the direct support of their fans. We believe that the human connection found through music is a vital part of our society and culture, and that music is much more than a product to be consumed. It’s the result of a human cultural dialog stretching back before the written word.
Similarly, musicians are more than mere producers of sound. They are vital members of our communities, our culture, and our social fabric. Bandcamp was built to directly connect artists and their fans, and to make it easy for fans to support artists equitably so that they can keep making music.
Today we are fortifying our mission by articulating our policy on generative AI, so that musicians can keep making music, and so that fans have confidence that the music they find on Bandcamp was created by humans.”
Stating their policy as such:
- Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp.
- Any use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles is strictly prohibited in accordance with our existing policies prohibiting impersonation and intellectual property infringement.
Finishing their statement as follows:
“If you encounter music or audio that appears to be made entirely or with heavy reliance on generative AI, please use our reporting tools to flag the content for review by our team. We reserve the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI-generated.
With this policy, we’re putting human creativity first, and we will be sure to communicate any updates to the policy as the rapidly changing generative AI space develops. Thank you.”
This can only be seen as a massive victory for all music fans and creatives across all sectors. AI does not belong in creative fields to replace human creation, something that is wholly unique and beautiful. Now, we just need other streamers and industry leaders to step up and take a similar stand.
Especially, Spotify, who King Gizzard caught hosting AI slop versions of their music after leaving the platform themselves.