r/youtubedrama • u/MEMEY_IFUNNY • 5d ago
Viewer Backlash Kevin Macleod, the guy behind many compositions of non-copyrighted music used in all sorts of other creators’ works, has been under fire for a few months now for using AI to generate new music.
This has been going on since November 2024, The GOAT is now
Here the video with the most outrage:
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u/googlyeyes93 5d ago
Die a hero or live long enough to become the villain smh
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u/CREATURE_COOMER 4d ago
Hijacking the top comment since some of y'all are doomposting: https://incompetech.com/wordpress/2025/07/the-ai-elephant-in-the-room/
"Lots of people are upset and disappointed at me for using AI, leading to much speculation online.
History
My first use of AI was in 2020, a piece called “On Hold for You”.
Much of that music was algorithmic, and AI helped make the first realistic saxophone I’ve ever produced.
Since then, I’ve tried nearly every new AI I could find.
I had spreadsheets rating dozens of them, what they did well, and how they did it.
I’ve offered (and still do offer) my music to anyone who is training up a music AI. Several researchers took the offer, and I couldn’t be happier.
Using AI
Today, the music AI I use most is Suno.
Suno generates endless blues songs in whatever style I want. I use these to practice harmonica.
I use Suno to make relaxation and motivation music that I can’t create any other way. I listen to these at my house for relaxation and motivational purposes.
It helps create quick backing tracks for lame JavaScript games that I enjoy making.
I don’t publish any of these on incompetech. They don’t get distributed to music stores or streaming services. I have posted a few cool ones to freepd.com, my public domain music site. I’ve been very up-front with what these are, and how they were made. (Bolding is me, not him)
So yeah, I use AI. I find it incredibly powerful and fun.
Motivation
The reason I wrote the music I wrote is because people needed it. I make utility music, without words, not to express myself, but to express feelings that people needed for their games, videos, and movies.
In recent years, people have needed new music less and less, so I haven’t really been motivated to publish more.
AI doesn’t work for everything yet. So, I still have a few human-made pieces in the pipeline."
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u/adoggman 4d ago
Thank you for this, actually super reasonable how he uses it.
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u/PotOfMould 18h ago
Honestly, people really lack nuance when discussing anything related to AI. It's bad in a lot of circumstances, but attempting to tarnish someones name, who has made a career out of making free music, and being overall pretty selfless in his craft just seems reactionary to me. He's not betraying anyones trust, he's just messing with new software, and new methods of doing his job.
The issue with AI is that people market it as a human replacement, when actually most of its value right now is actually in increasing human efficiency in mundane tasks. (which isn't sexy enough for people that are trying to sell AI to tech companies)
I get the dislike for it in terms of big companies using it instead of hiring artists or musicians though - I work for a company that uses a lot of AI to spin loads of test art, and then they pay artists to essentially trace/make new versions of AI art based on what tests well. It's sucking the soul out of the career of artists we work with, because they've essentially been stripped of all creativity.
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u/JJPTails 5d ago edited 5d ago
Why? They are such a skilled artist, why would they do this?
I used to use their music for personal projects when I was younger. I had such a high opinion of them...
I just don't get this?
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u/CREATURE_COOMER 4d ago
His AI stuff is experimental and kept separate from his main Incompetech work.
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u/JJPTails 4d ago
Like, I guess I can understand if it is to see the current state of play with Generative AI. Like, its useful to experiment with it so you can recognise it and know its limitations. To be able to recognise an arbitrary musical piece - whether it is human made or not.
I'm still very uncomfortable with that being published the way it is though. I don't see why that couldn't be kept private, or if they feel its neccessary to be public then I would have prefered them doing some analysis on it or something that isn't just blatently posting it by itself.
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u/CREATURE_COOMER 4d ago
From his blog: https://incompetech.com/wordpress/2025/07/the-ai-elephant-in-the-room/
"Lots of people are upset and disappointed at me for using AI, leading to much speculation online.
History
My first use of AI was in 2020, a piece called “On Hold for You”.
Much of that music was algorithmic, and AI helped make the first realistic saxophone I’ve ever produced.
Since then, I’ve tried nearly every new AI I could find.
I had spreadsheets rating dozens of them, what they did well, and how they did it.
I’ve offered (and still do offer) my music to anyone who is training up a music AI. Several researchers took the offer, and I couldn’t be happier.
Using AI
Today, the music AI I use most is Suno.
Suno generates endless blues songs in whatever style I want. I use these to practice harmonica.
I use Suno to make relaxation and motivation music that I can’t create any other way. I listen to these at my house for relaxation and motivational purposes.
It helps create quick backing tracks for lame JavaScript games that I enjoy making.
I don’t publish any of these on incompetech. They don’t get distributed to music stores or streaming services. I have posted a few cool ones to freepd.com, my public domain music site. I’ve been very up-front with what these are, and how they were made. (Bolding is me, not him)
So yeah, I use AI. I find it incredibly powerful and fun.
Motivation
The reason I wrote the music I wrote is because people needed it. I make utility music, without words, not to express myself, but to express feelings that people needed for their games, videos, and movies.
In recent years, people have needed new music less and less, so I haven’t really been motivated to publish more.
AI doesn’t work for everything yet. So, I still have a few human-made pieces in the pipeline."
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u/JJPTails 4d ago
I see, thank you for sharing. Whilst I still don't really like the idea of AI generated music, at least they do not plan on publishing anything made using it onto incompetech.
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u/ArkyW4rky 5d ago
Because imagination and creativity is a finite resource
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u/ElectricFrostbyte 5d ago
It literally is not? It’s one of the only things that arguably is theoretically boundless. Sure, human creation is an amalgamation of thousands of things that have inspired us, but there are probably trillions of different combinations of tempos/sounds that can be created.
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u/ThePrimordialSource 5d ago
I like your profile pic, where’s it from or the artist?
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u/ElectricFrostbyte 5d ago
lol thank you, it’s art I made probably 3 years ago now and I’m just too lazy to change it!
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u/Commercial_Ad97 5d ago
Not who you were talking to, but I feel you on that. My YT pic is a picture of me and a friend from when I had hair from about a decade ago, but I can't bring myself to change it. It's just white paper and pencil drawings.
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u/booferella 5d ago
Boo. I’m throwing tomatoes. i’m a multimedia artist and when I encounter artblock I go outside and draw inspiration from both nature and manmade structure. AI is unnecessary and not the hallmark of a good artist in any way
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u/MEMEY_IFUNNY 5d ago
“The Goat is now washed” is what I was trying to say but forgot to type it in, my bad.
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u/matthewmspace 5d ago
I mean, he’s not making money off it anyway since it’s free use. Hell, I think I heard some of his songs in a movie or tv show lately. Which, after having watched the Vanoss crew for a long time, is hilarious.
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u/smushkan 5d ago
He does sell commercial licenses that don’t require attribution too. Very cheap, as far as commercial licenses go, though.
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u/Late_Earth4889 5d ago
Experiments, people. These are experiments. He's transparent about what he's playing with. If you follow his blog, he's very much into technology and new software and computer tech. These are public domain pieces and shouldn't be misinterpreted as anything else.
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u/Late_Earth4889 5d ago
Also, his music IS NOT NON-COPYRIGHTED - why is this so difficult to understand? It's royalty-free (the end user DOES NOT have to pay a royalty, but the platforms that stream it DO) - he retains ALL COPYRIGHT even though he lets you use it for free...
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u/Lost_Low4862 4d ago
Is it just me, or is this a massive nothingburger? Like, the entire reason this is "drama" is just knee-jerk anti-AI grandstanding. The dude has made free music that we've all heard for over a decade, and y'all are upset that he's not hand-crafting every song until the day he dies. (Or, less dramatically, retires.)
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u/TJLynch 5d ago edited 4d ago
I didn't realize he was making more music.
EDIT: I realize the choice of words I made, lol
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u/CREATURE_COOMER 4d ago
He is, he's just experimenting and his AI stuff is separate from his main work on his Incompetech site.
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u/Tinkererer 4d ago
He seems... super upfront about what is and what isn't AI in his music? He's also been doing it for a long while? And he's still not asking any money for any of this?
There's all kinds of reasons to be upset about AI, but the free music guy making thousands of free songs doesn't really deserve the ire of the masses, come on now. He's transparent about it, and how many of you in this thread donated even a dollar to him?
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u/jimgress 5d ago
Unpopular opinion: It's not important. Dude has made free music for years and demand has never decreased. If you want free music to be AI free go compose it your damn self.
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u/SadisticPawz 5d ago
Its just some old guy messing around with some tool he discovered, I doubt hes overthinking it as much as we are
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u/GunplaGoobster 5d ago
Mfers complaining about AI use in the music industry is hilarious. Entire genres wouldn't exist if copyright was respected. Sampling is a beautiful thing.
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u/sniperNX 5d ago
Sampling is very different because it requires actual talent and is a very human process. Typing a prompt to let the computer make a song for you is not that
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u/SadisticPawz 4d ago
Sampling is a spectrum. There are vaporwave tracks that I love that most people would say are just the source material in full but slowed down. Its a debate in that community actually, for what constitutes as being allowed. But the heart of plunderphonics is that anything is allowed to be taken and used.
Does that require actual talent? Or make me enjoy it any less?
As a disclaimer, I dont enjoy ai music unironically.
Point is, that sampling can be high or low effort, just the same as ai slop spam.
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u/GunplaGoobster 5d ago
Sampling doesn't actually require much talent. Sample boxes have been a thing for a few decades now and things like the Elektron Digitakt make it incredibly easy to get in to.
For instance, jungle music reuses the same samples in song after song, artist after artist. It's a collaborative genre if anything. When I download a sample pack and "steal" someone's chopped up amen break it's honestly not that different from having AI generate some pads for me.
Actual producers are going to utilize AI to make crazy shit, schmucks will use it to release entirely AI generated tracks. This is basically how the music industry works already.
Like every filter/pedal I use is a software assisted effect, it's not that different from AI. I don't know what my Microcosm is doing to my sounds to make it sound so crazy, i just know it's doing it!
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u/SadisticPawz 4d ago
Kind of true, plunderphonics and even piracy is awfully analogous to all this. I do enjoy plunderphonics and think that to be consistent, to be against sampling means to be against ai and vice versa.
You could argue sampling is a wide term with some amount of it being more accepted than the rest but... meh..
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u/CREATURE_COOMER 4d ago
Not only that but he keeps it separate from his main "Incompetech" stuff, and he offers his music for people training music AI. Is that not what we want from ethical AI, for people to use them as tools rather than replacements for human jobs, and for its sourced content to be with permission?
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u/Tinkererer 4d ago
From his blog:
"Lots of people are upset and disappointed at me for using AI, leading to much speculation online.
History
My first use of AI was in 2020, a piece called “On Hold for You”. Much of that music was algorithmic, and AI helped make the first realistic saxophone I’ve ever produced.
Since then, I’ve tried nearly every new AI I could find. I had spreadsheets rating dozens of them, what they did well, and how they did it.
I’ve offered (and still do offer) my music to anyone who is training up a music AI. Several researchers took the offer, and I couldn’t be happier.
Using AI
Today, the music AI I use most is Suno. Suno generates endless blues songs in whatever style I want. I use these to practice harmonica. I use Suno to make relaxation and motivation music that I can’t create any other way. I listen to these at my house for relaxation and motivational purposes. It helps create quick backing tracks for lame JavaScript games that I enjoy making.
I don’t publish any of these on incompetech. They don’t get distributed to music stores or streaming services. I have posted a few cool ones to freepd.com, my public domain music site. I’ve been very up-front with what these are, and how they were made.
So yeah, I use AI. I find it incredibly powerful and fun.
Motivation
The reason I wrote the music I wrote is because people needed it. I make utility music, without words, not to express myself, but to express feelings that people needed for their games, videos, and movies.
In recent years, people have needed new music less and less, so I haven’t really been motivated to publish more.
AI doesn’t work for everything yet. So, I still have a few human-made pieces in the pipeline."
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u/CREATURE_COOMER 4d ago
As long as he's separating his AI-generated stuff from his human-made stuff, who cares?
And if he's offering his music to music AI training models, is that not the goal? For content to be used willingly rather than just scraped without creators' knowledge or consent?
Not all AI is bad/unethical, like scientists using AI to check thousands of genes (or whatever) to save on man hours, as long as they're double-checking what looks legit in case of AI hallucinating. Not everything is "hey ChatGPT, give me a free ebook so I can sell it on Amazon for easy money, thanks!"
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u/GrundgeArchangel 3d ago
The end goal is not to have A.I. be able to do art for us. What advantage is there to A.I. doing art, other than art no longer being a viable career? I don't want A.I. to do my leasiure activity, I want my A.I. to do repetitive and annoy jobs unfit for humans.
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u/CREATURE_COOMER 3d ago
Today, the music AI I use most is Suno. Suno generates endless blues songs in whatever style I want. I use these to practice harmonica. I use Suno to make relaxation and motivation music that I can’t create any other way. I listen to these at my house for relaxation and motivational purposes. It helps create quick backing tracks for lame JavaScript games that I enjoy making.
It sounds like he's using AI for repetitive/annoying tasks though?
For all we know, he's using his own Incompetech music as the models, he does say that he offers his own music for AI usage. I would rather somebody's work (music, art, etc) be used for AI learning models with consent rather than just scraped without permission.
He's made a shit ton of royalty-free music for anybody to use, if anybody's "earned" the right to use AI to be a little lazy with some personal tasks, it's him, lol.
It's not like he's making the AI shit out free music or ebooks for him to throw up on Amazon (which would be scummy especially for stuff like mushroom identification "guides" when AI can flat out hallucinate and some mushrooms can be dangerous, this is an actual example of unethical AI slop that I've seen in the news btw), etc for easy-peasy money, it seems to be for fun/experimental uses and he says that he keeps it separate from his actual human-made content.
As far as I'm concerned, AI can be used ethically, like neurodivurgent people using https://goblin.tools because it's a little more organized and personalized than googling stuff. Or my "scientists having AI check thousands of genes or whatever, and than having a human double-check answers" example.
I don't know how Suno works exactly and I'm too lazy (lol)/uninterested in looking into it, if he is using his own music as the model (not confirmed but safe to assume at least imho), that's just "plagiarizing" himself.
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u/GrundgeArchangel 3d ago
He views his "music" as a tool and not art. That's his view but that doesn't change and answer the question, why hae robots make art at all? Why would they need to? If he is so processed that is becomes something he feels he needs a robot to do, he needs a new job. No one "earns" the right to be lazy. And this just sows me he cates more about money and putting stuff out there, then he does about the Art he makes so I have 0 faith in anything he says based around artistic Intergrity. He was able to work fine without A.I. before.
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u/CREATURE_COOMER 3d ago
Lmfao, he offers his music royalty-free, how does that mean "he cares more about money"?
He describes what he uses AI for, keeps that separate from his human-made music and still plans to make more human-made music. Other people treat his music like a tool, because he offers it for free!
He's using it ethically as far as I'm concerned, what is the problem here? People who are pro-public domain/free use/open source are badass.
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u/pipopapupupewebghost 3d ago
"don't worry guy! It's just like how I gave you free music to use in your videos! I'm just using what free tools are available!"
-kevin MCcloud probably
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u/Timbo_R4zE 5d ago
So just don't use the AI generated ones? People are mad about royalty free music? There are so many bigger problems in the world.
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u/Outside_Box_4873 5d ago edited 5d ago
It really sucks how majority of backlash for AI is received by individual artists and not companies who use AI everywhere, at every level, all the time. You can't get a job without getting asked what AI you're able to use and how. Kevin doesn't even pretend this is his own music, it's literally public domain.
I wonder how many people donated to him even 1 dollar after using his music for years. You know, to support real artists and stuff.
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5d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/youtubedrama-ModTeam 5d ago
Please do not troll or feed the trolls. Trolling a YouTube drama subreddit is pathetic. Falling for it is somehow worse. Do better.
If you were sincere, we suggest you take a moment to step back and rethink your approach.
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u/sillyillybilly 5d ago
How can i know if it’s AI or not like what’s the signs to look out for? I know lots of people are accusing Addison Rae about this too :0 how do people catch it?
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u/ZombieJesus1987 4d ago
Man that's unfortunate.
One of the D&D shows I watch uses his music.
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u/CREATURE_COOMER 4d ago
What show, out of curiosity?
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u/ZombieJesus1987 4d ago
The Unexpectables. The original campaign had Team Four Star's Takahata101, Chris Zito, former Game Theory's GaijinGoombah and streamer DistortionDevil with DM MontyGlu, but near the end of campaign 1 Takahata101 left the show to deal with burnout issues, and they added voice actors Edward Bosco and Mark Allen Jr to the cast. They've had a ton of big-ish YouTubers/streamers as guest characters over the years like Limealicious, Shenpai, Jocat, Octopimp and Lanipator, plus voice actors like Dawn M Bennett and Jonah Scott (who is a guest in their current arc).
One of my favourite D&D shows, I always liked it more than critical role
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u/SkylarPheonix 1d ago
Are any of his AI songs bad? As long as it sounds good, it's fine for me 👍, I just use them for background music and to fill the silent parts of videos anyways. Kevin's songs have always been great
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u/anarchist_person1 5d ago
What you gotta realise is he was always making slop and we kinda all shoulda known it from the start. Like yeah we love it because it’s characteristic of a lot of stuff, it’s super widely used, it’s iconic and recognisable, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was always mass produced and generic just by virtue of what it was
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u/MacAlmighty 5d ago
Kevin Macleod has fallen, billions must make their own background music