{"id":442737,"date":"2026-01-30T09:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T09:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/442737\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T09:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T09:57:09","slug":"napster-is-now-a-slop-farm-for-ai-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/442737\/","title":{"rendered":"Napster Is Now a Slop Farm for AI Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to AI slop<\/a>, the hits just keep coming, and Napster<\/a> (yes, that Napster) is responsible for the latest banger. Much to my chagrin, everyone over 30\u2019s favorite music piracy site is back from the dead zombie-style, and this time it\u2019s billing itself as a platform where people (not people I care to know) can go and create AI music slop together.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what the new CEO, some guy named John Acunto, has to say about all that:<\/p>\n

\u201cNapster was born to break boundaries, and we\u2019re doing it again. We see this as a declaration that the age of passive consumption is over. Fans aren\u2019t here to be fed a playlist. They\u2019re here to co-create, to fuse their identity with AI artists in real time, and to shape the soundtrack of a new era.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure, whatever you say, John. Because if there\u2019s one thing people hate, it\u2019s listening to music. So pass\u00e9. You can go ahead and delete Spotify<\/a> or Apple Music<\/a>, everyone. Thanks to zombie Napster, you\u2019re co-creators now, not just a sheep who merely (scoffs) listens to music.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s, regrettably, a lot to unpack in the new direction for Napster, but the gist of it is that you can download an app (or use Napster on the web) to dive in and start generating music as you would on similar music slop apps like Suno<\/a>. If music isn\u2019t your thing, then you can also generate podcasts, which is an even more depressing thought somehow.<\/p>\n

Napster doesn\u2019t just want you to listen to AI slop on its platform, though; as we already established, it envisions you as a collaborator, meaning you\u2019ll have the option to interact with its slop-generating chatbots. Naturally, I gave that harrowing idea a whirl, so you don\u2019t have to. I had the pleasure of interacting with slop specialist \u201cNia Jenkins,\u201d whom I prompted to make \u201cAI slopo,\u201d which is a typo of \u201cAI slop\u201d that I didn\u2019t bother to fix.<\/p>\n

\"Napster\u00a9 Napster \/ Screenshot by Gizmodo <\/p>\n

After a few minutes of \u201cthinking,\u201d Nia generated me a song about AI slop, which was pretty meta if I do say so myself, and it sounded, well, a lot like AI slop with a hip-hop\/R&B styling. I also made the mistake of allowing microphone access, which lets you speak to the chatbot and prompt it with words out of your mouth. If you\u2019ve ever had a conversation with ChatGPT, it\u2019s the same vibe. Do I regret giving Napster access to my microphone? Yes. There\u2019s no second leg to that statement. I just regret it.<\/p>\n

The whole thing is as deflating as you\u2019d expect. You type some words, and Napster\u2019s chatbot churns out some sounds that I\u2019m told are meant to be music. To no one\u2019s surprise, Napster doesn\u2019t give any insight into what data its chatbot is trained on, but if I had to guess, it\u2019d be copyrighted music. In that way, the new Napster embodies the same spirit as the old Napster, which at its core was all about stealing. Unfortunately, this stealing just isn\u2019t as fun as the old stealing. I mean, at least the other Napster pissed Metallica off.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Napster\"\u00a9 Napster <\/p>\n

If I\u2019m being honest, the whole thing just feels very hollow, but I\u2019m not sure what one would expect from a platform that is predicated on taking the creativity, skill, and soul out of one of the greatest artistic mediums ever to grace humankind. I mean, just look at this official zombie Napster picture (which I am going to assume is AI-generated). The AI image generator literally tried and failed to steal an iconic Nirvana shirt<\/a>, folks; you can\u2019t make this stuff up.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know, man, maybe I\u2019m just not reading the room here. Maybe we all just hate making music now, and zombie Napster is the next big thing. Maybe John whatshisface is on the precipice of laughing his ass all the way to the AI-generated bank. Or maybe zombie Napster is destined to wind up the same way as the original Napster\u2014as a footnote in the long and sordid history of music versus technology. Just a much, much,\u00a0much smaller one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it comes to AI slop, the hits just keep coming, and Napster (yes, that Napster) is responsible…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,341,183108,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-442737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-napster","15":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}