Win your own music track for your game, including distribution rights!
Seeing as it is Christmas, I am feeling festive.
I have a pro subscription to Suno (the music making website) and will make 10 tracks for 10 writers. All you need to do is reply here with a link to the book you are writing. I will then make tracks for the first 10 people to reply. You supply the lyrics and give me a style and I’ll work with you to form your track. Once complete, the track is yours. You own all the rights to it and can do with it as you please.
Example work (copy the link and post in a new tab. Sadly I can’t link it directly here for some reason!)
This is for Kepler Colony: Induction https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/18lbva4vp17kx22uy674m/remember.mp3?rlkey=v0crwag150swhjzrx9gr2cepy&st=nhwigivi&dl=0
And this is from The Wings of the Sabrefly https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/j0luk5xa5fbsx38s9vp48/Two-suns-burn-low-where-shadows-crawl.mp3?rlkey=zbjrocm9p1l2iwmhxzijqjfyx&st=eok85jx9&dl=0
Conditions:
Small print
The track must relate to a game you are writing in Choicescript. The track cannot contain any bad or offensive language.
Edit 2:
The comments in this thread, while not related to my writing, are extremely demoralising. I’m at the point now where I’m debating whether to continue writing or not - it’s hard work and I only have so much free time. Why give it to this community if I get so chastised for trying to do a good thing? People should really think carefully about the words they use.
I’m not sure about that. Personally, I don’t mind AI as long as the creators are honest about it. However, I’m not interested in using AI music myself, and also, CoG would probably ban the use of the music in the game, so it could be used at best in, I don’t know, a book trailer?
It’s great that you’re trying to do something nice for other authors, but you need to understand that it’s extremely unlikely anyone would be allowed to use the tracks you create for them. Even a tool like Suno, which requires a rather significant degree of human creative input, is in shaky territory at best in terms of copyright laws. CoG’s policy is not to publish anything made with generative AI; this has come up in the past in connection with writing and artwork, but there’s no reason to believe it wouldn’t be an issue with music as well.
If you want to use your Suno subscription to create game-inspired music for fun, that’s up to you. But you and anyone who takes you up on this offer need to proceed with the understanding that what you’re making cannot be used in the published game.
First, I’m surprised by the backlash. I was just trying to do a good thing. After reading through CoG’s policy on everything AI, I can see that there’s little point in continuing with AI music.
This is a shame for several reasons:
It is good. The quality of the AI songs is exceptional. I write the lyrics, create a persona, direct a style for the music, then let the AI do its thing. It is my creativity being sped up.
US and UK Copyright laws are not clear, but favour the input that I am doing. Both suggest that ownership of the AI work should be somewhere between the AI software owners and the lyric/style writer. With a paid Suno subscription, this is bypassed and full rights are given to me, the lyrics and style writer. Hence, the competition.
Unlike writing, which I can do, and art, which I can do, music is something that is much harder to achieve (although I have been successful here too, with @Samuel_H_Young’s music which was all composed by myself, albeit only instrumental music). This AI tool makes that much easier.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the AI haters have it wrong. I’m the first person to say that AI is being used incorrectly - it should NOT be used to take away the creative aspects of humanity. We are denying ourselves fun and the speed and quality of AI will affect the lives of artists, musicians, and (after reading this thread, writers as well, it seems. Instead, it would be better if AI was used to do menial jobs and allow us all more time for those creative pursuits. However, that’s not the world we live in. AI is here and before it destroys itself, we should be using it to our advantage.
Not writing of course. I don’t use any AI for writing at all. The closest I get is googling a word to check the spelling (I don’t use a spellchecker, I google search with the spelling I think it should be, then scoll down past Webster to the OED. I am British, after all). Reading that people are using grammarly, for example, was an eye-opener. My only interaction with that has been annoying ads that pop up! I didn’t realise that it was actually used (I’d launch into a tirade complaining how education standards have dropped, but this post is already getting long).
I guess I will remove this competition and turn the thread into another AI discussion. Music wasn’t mentioned once in the policy thread I read, so perhaps this thread can be used to clarify the do’s and don’ts of AI music.
Finally, I love the irony in being told I can’t use AI music by @AletheiaKnights whose own profile pic is admittedly AI generated. Don’t worry, Aletheia, I’m not having a go. I’m just mildly amused.
What I am seeing is that you chose to cite something I wrote three years ago as a gotcha. A quick skim of that thread would reveal that my views on AI have evolved quite a bit since then, as I’ve learned more about how it works and seen how it’s edged into the creative world in some genuinely harmful ways. The profile pic I was talking about in the comment you cited isn’t even the one I’m using now! As it happens, this one is AI-generated too, because one thing I’ve never wavered in is that it’s a fun toy for making pretties.
I replied to your comment because I wanted to help. I thought what you were offering to do was kind, and I didn’t want you to waste your time. I didn’t want your generous gesture to result in anyone getting in trouble during the publication process. I didn’t want you to come under attack by people on this forum who demonize any use of AI for any purpose whatsoever. So I explained what the policy is. Maybe I should have gone into more detail, because CoG actually does allow the use of AI “art” as a placeholder in WIP threads, as long as it’s replaced by actual human work in the final product. I didn’t tell you generative AI was a pure abomination from the pit of hell, because I don’t believe it necessarily is. I didn’t tell what you could or couldn’t or should or shouldn’t do, I explained the policy of a publishing company, which doesn’t apply to me because I do not have, and am not seeking, a publishing contract with them. I even pointed out specifically, though perhaps in too subtle terms, that what you do with AI for your own personal enjoyment or non-commercial use is nobody’s business but yours.
And somehow you still saw fit to make me out to be a hypocrite, or at the very least blithely and mindlessly inconsistent. Oh, but you’re not having a go at me, you just genuinely think it’s funny that a person who isn’t completely opposed to every possible use of AI understands where someone else has chosen to draw the line? Would it also amuse you if I made a case against the recreational use of opioids, considering that I took oxycodone regularly for a full 24 hours after I had surgery? C’mon, you’re smarter than that.
Which might also leave legal blame for plagiarism in cases like these landing partly on the company, rather than solely on the person asking for e.g. a rap of “there’s yogurt on this letter already, Bob’s confetti.” I wouldn’t bet against the Marvin Gaye estate, for obvious example, if they went after Suno in US court. They’ve won in cases of a lot less obvious “vibe” copying than the AI rendition of “when I pet that ceiling, I want textual Hee Ling,” would likely present.
And I sure don’t blame CoG for keeping the potential liability (and rage from a segment of the fan/author base) at bay by a blanket policy on this stuff.
What do you think makes writing fundamentally different from music here? If people using AI for writing is a tirade-worthy sign of education failure, why not art or music? Those skills can also be taught to a high level. AI is a shortcut in all those cases, letting people put out a polished product without having to put in the practice hours to learn the polishing skills.
Not trying for a gotcha here – I imagine you’ve got an answer, and I’d be interested to hear it.
Edit: and if it’s just the “hard to do” thing you mentioned in your point 3: do you think other people might legitimately find writing harder than you do, and thus be justified in using the text equivalent of Suno to realize their ideas?
