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The story
Singer-songwriter Sada Masashi (74) was asked about AI-composed music at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan on September 15, 2026, and replied, “It actually makes pretty good stuff. It just doesn’t have philosophy in it.” Coming from someone who has released over 650 songs across a career spanning more than half a century since his debut, the remark drew a mixed reaction on 5ch: some agreed that “nobody’s asking music for philosophy,” while others pushed back with “it all depends on the prompt” and “tweak the parameters and you can get it closer to human-made music,” splitting opinion over both the quality of AI-made songs and whether music needs “philosophy” at all.
9/15 (Tue) 16:50
Singer-songwriter Sada Masashi (74) held a press conference on September 15, 2026, at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Marunouchi, Tokyo. Having released more than 650 songs and continued creating and touring energetically for over 50 years since his debut, Sada shared his views — with occasional laughs — on the value of AI-made music and how to face the loneliness deepening in modern society.
As PCs and AI lower the barrier to making music, how will the value of music and musicians change? Asked this by a reporter, Sada paused for a moment and said, “Now that’s a tough one.” He continued: “When you have AI make music, you know, it actually makes pretty good stuff. It just doesn’t have philosophy in it.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
It's basically the musical equivalent of Irasutoya clip art. (Irasutoya: a hugely popular free clip-art site famous for cheerful but generic illustrations.)
Tweak the numbers and you can dial it closer to or further from human-made music. That kind of adjustment is doable.
Komuro's music is shallow? Since when?
Huh? What on earth are you talking about?
Music seems likely to get there faster than illustration or video.
Human-made stuff can keep circulating too, I don't really care either way. Good is good, that's all there is to it.
Is composing dying? Is songwriting dying? Is arranging dying? Please, enlighten me.
https://youtu.be/vPGWcaZ-fMY?si=wd5Peal3Jm4swobd
That's funny precisely because Sailor Moon and reggae already existed as reference points. The real question is whether AI can create a hit on the level of Sailor Moon or reggae completely from scratch.
Re: #18 This person's remix was good too.
YouTube's flooded with AI tracks, but aren't they mostly 'take an existing famous song and do it in the style of X'? My impression is the only ones that actually go viral are built around celebrities or events, like the Yajuu-senpai meme songs. Has there ever been a case of AI creating a hit completely from scratch — true zero-to-one? Well, maybe a genuine zero-to-one AI hit will show up eventually as the tech improves. (Yajuu-senpai: a famous Japanese variety-show meme figure who's inspired countless fan remix tracks.)
Maybe the philosophy is… in the prompt.
Humans can already barely beat AI at senryu and tanka, so it should be able to do that too. (Senryu/tanka: short-form Japanese poetry.)
You're better at trolling than AI is. Current AI can't even judge the right number of 'w's to use. ('w' is Japanese net shorthand for laughter, like a string of 'lol's.)
Background and points of contention
Sada Masashi debuted in 1976, and his comment reflects the gut feeling of a creator with nearly 50 years in the business — it wasn’t meant as a blanket dismissal of AI technology itself. Where the thread split was over how to interpret the word “philosophy”: one camp argued listeners don’t need it at all, while another countered that prompt engineering and parameter tuning can push AI output closer to a human style — a fair point given how much a generative AI’s direction can shift based on its instructions. Others pointed to Sada’s own signature songs, like “Tsugunai,” as lyrics rooted in specific lived experience and historical context that AI can’t easily replicate — which is really more a question of where the source material comes from than whether “philosophy” is present. Note that comments amounting to personal attacks on Sada’s talent or track record have been excluded from this roundup.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “Sada Masashi on AI composition: “It actually makes pretty good stuff. It just doesn’t have philosophy in it.”“
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