Modern times are upon us, they said. And everything will turn for the better, they said. But – will it? I think we’re about to find out. Because so many ‘actors’ are fucking around with this already, I fear we’ve already lost control. Skynet beckons you, mark my words. But let’s stay with our musical background for now and explore the impact of this newest technological development on the RMR zine.
“Crisis? What Crisis?”, an age-old, long-defunct band once famously crooned.1 Nobody took them quite seriously back then. Yet, it looks like the music industry is about to step into a big pile of horseshit all over again, pardon my French. The recording business has navigated numerous existential predicaments since the Y2K bug didn’t hit us. But now, a new storm is brewing, and it ain’t looking good. A crisis of epic proportions may well be lurking in the offing. One that has the means to reshape the way we make music and earn money from it yet again.
And that is the arrival of AI in the production studios and beyond. A revolution that’s right upon us like an invisible tsunami. The RMR zine is impacted as well, and it is time to start establishing some policies and standing rulez for this crew to adhere to.
A very short step into the recent past!
As you may recall, the last upheaval essentially came in two prongs back in the early ’00s. First, the infamous Napster incident signaled to the world that music should be free for all. A thought that hasn’t quite died down yet. Spotify and their ilk followed as a close second. And that, together with the acceptance of MP3s by the mainstream,2 sounded the death knell on traditional money making in the music industry.
Napster and its acolytes bluntly declared that artists’ livelihoods should be used to feed the greedy masses with music that didn’t belong to them anyway. In other words, they became masters of the pirate copy, sold to their clients as a legitimate business. Never mind existing laws and copyright rules. Unsurprisingly, this movement took off like a friggin’ steam machine on steroids. Meaning, the masses hungered for – well- anything free, actually. And success loudly screams. Napster sported some 80 million subscribers at the height of its race to fame. Until the courts stopped those evil shenanigans, that is.
Right after that, legalized services such as Spotify, Apple, even a new whitewashed incarnation of Napster reappeared. These fledgling streaming services started to build huge databases of whatever was available on that global musical smörgåsbord, and sold this wealth of data to customers by subscription. In fact, they were and still are barely legal and incredibly unscrupulous, paying bands a pittance, far, far away from the fair share necessary. A (mal)practice that still continues to date and may get worse.
The arrival of digital music into the mainstream (EP3, FLAC, WAV, etc.) made matters worse. Suddenly, sales of physical album copies dropped dramatically and bands were and still are forced to tour excessively with lush merch offerings to get at least something out of their hard work. Thus, the landscape of how the industry works and makes money has totally changed. And not for the better.
The arrival of AI is now about to revolutionize things in ways not currently imaginable. And that means new Standing Rulez for the RMR crew.
A Matter of Policy: RMR’s AI Rulez!
First, let’s understand that AI will not leave the building anymore. It will stay with us – forever. After all the good ol’ algorithm just morphed into some version from hell with a voice, pseudo opinion, and a vile streak. And not all of it is bad with a killer instinct. Many features are useful and should be used. Others should be ignored or relegated to metal hell straight away. Don’t be bullied.
RMR Shalt NOT!
- RMR will not review music from AI artists. Ever. And what for? This is music for the masses produced by some soulless machine based on data it stole from real artists. If ever you should discover that we inadvertently covered an AI artist, let us know. The RMR crew will sometimes ban its very own posts under strenuous circumstances. This one will justify.
- This zine will not have an AI write the review first and then adapt it further. True, this would save us a ton of time and money. But we like content written by humans. Besides, these days AI models are hardly capable of doing this in meaningful ways. To illustrate, the head of ChatGPT just stated that the AI’s newest version has a much improved ‘hallucination rate'3. Holy moly. In other words, today’s models are good at stealing data and then concocting some badly established analyses. And we don’t have endless funds to get an AI worth its salt. Besides, they may not even exist yet.
RMR Shalt!
Some of you may be offended by some of the points listed here. But total refusals of new epic tools will not work in the long run. And any past industrial revolution – big or small – showed that deniers got left in the dust. So, get real or try to find an island in the ocean to live on.
- RMR will use the good services of AI to create images and animations to be posted on our zine. We’re aware that this will mean less business for real artists, of course. But funds are tight over here, as blogs like RMR are not getting paid. And thus, said artists would never have gotten any business from RMR anyway. Besides, the often ridiculously bad illustrations of some version of AI will still beat the worn use of some legally accessible image, drawn from the interweb somewhere.
- AI will be used for basic research of all kinds by the RMR crew. The zine will, of course, always verify what the AI spews forth. After all, some of them lie worse than Donald Trump. And why does Grok4 come to mind all the time?
- RMR will make use of AI to improve the look and efficiency of our website. Artificial intelligence is good at writing code for tools, apps, gimmicks, and – yes – whole websites. One still needs to control what exactly it did, and the potential for mischief is vast. But let’s face it, AI is a tool pushed upon us, and it has its uses.
In Conclusion!
Like it or not, AI is here to stay. RMR will try to keep pace with the development and integrate whatever is useful for the operation. And we’ll continue to cover AI as it relates to RMR over the foreseeable future. Given the rapid pace of AI development, this document will surely see many future iterations. So, stay tuned.
The Olde Footnote!
- Supertramp – 1975, album of the same name. For those not in the know.-↩
- The currently used MP3 format for music came on board in 1995 and is still in use today.-↩
- Article CBS news, August 2025 | https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/07/openai-launches-gpt-5-model-for-all-chatgpt-users.html.-↩
- X’s in-house AI.-↩