Tariffs & the music industry, with EarthQuaker Devices CEO and NAMM president

[bry4321]

Feel free to comment or critique but please don't make this political. Just sharing in case anyone is interested. 

 

"Tariffs are affecting many parts of society, but how are they changing the music industry? This highly globalized industry is a finely tuned ecosystem, harmonizing the craftmanship of high-end manufacturers with the mass production capabilities of countries like China and Indonesia. Musicians, whether world famous or in aspiring garage bands, must have access to instruments that suit their skills and budgets. What are the effects for musicians when exports of musical instruments are disrupted? How can tariffs, unpredictability, and unreliable supply chains be addressed? And if instruments become more expensive, do higher prices affect music education in schools? How do we strike the right chord?" 

 

 

[Whoismarykelly]

Julie is one of the best in the business. 

[hamerhead]

We don't need schools, instruments or talent. AI will take care of all of that.

[crunchee]

I don't worry about tariffs when it comes to music gear.  I do what I pretty much have always done...buy used, and try to snag good stuff in the process.  If I can't afford it, then I pass.

Edited November 19, 2025 by crunchee

[LucSulla]

1 hour ago, hamerhead said:

We don't need schools, instruments or talent. AI will take care of all of that.

The most striking thing to me about Generative AI has been realizing just how mediocre and uncreative so many people are. So much of what I see people, particularly in business, marvel over, I usually find myself thinking, "That impresses you? Really? Like, you really don't see how superficial almost all of that is and questionable about 1/2 of it is? Wait, you're actually going to base spending money on something based on this?"

I've started telling students that I now understand why pie charts are still so ubiquitous. Yeah, if you think the pie chart is the pinnacle of data visualization, then sure, I bet LLMs do blow your fucking mind. 

And people who produce music with them and then proudly claim, "I created a song!" Jesus wept. I actually question if you have a soul at that point. 

What a fool I have been. I actually thought most people were doing "just good enough" because they knew it was enough to get by. I never would have guessed so many thought it was actually really brilliant stuff. 

 

[crunchee]

Like the old saying goes: 'Garbage in, garbage out.'

One thing that strikes me about Generative AI is that 'grunt work' employees are likely to be the least at risk of losing their jobs, because humans are the ones that will probably still end up doing that, at low wages.  The jokers pulling in six figures or more, on the other hand... 

Edited November 20, 2025 by crunchee

[velorush]

I've been using the paid version of ChatGPT (5.1) for a couple of months. The paid version ups what you're allowed to do with files and such.

What has impressed me the most so far is how utterly incapable it is. It will promise, "yes, I can do that" and then it churns, sometimes overnight, and never does what it says it can and will do.

Most of what I have fed it has been simple, repetitive stuff in Excel or a PDF that I can delegate to people, but it's terribly boring and repetitive - exactly what an AI should be tasked with. I'm going to give it another month or so and if I don't get better (or improved) results, I'm pulling the plug (so to speak). 

ETA: regarding the tariffs, for me the issue hasn't been the added cost (the only thing I personally import is tea from Japan), it's been the holdup in Customs since there no longer remains a de minimis - everything must clear. My $150 box of tea is piled in with every single thing coming into FedEx Memphis (see previous rant about Memphis in the USPS thread). Meanwhile, they haven't seen fit to add personnel to Customs, so I pay for FedEx overnight and receive the package a week to ten days later. [/amended mini-rant] 

Edited November 20, 2025 by velorush

[LucSulla]

3 hours ago, velorush said:

I've been using the paid version of ChatGPT (5.1) for a couple of months. The paid version ups what you're allowed to do with files and such.

What has impressed me the most so far is how utterly incapable it is. It will promise, "yes, I can do that" and then it churns, sometimes overnight, and never does what it says it can and will do.

Most of what I have fed it has been simple, repetitive stuff in Excel or a PDF that I can delegate to people, but it's terribly boring and repetitive - exactly what an AI should be tasked with. I'm going to give it another month or so and if I don't get better (or improved) results, I'm pulling the plug (so to speak). 

ETA: regarding the tariffs, for me the issue hasn't been the added cost (the only thing I personally import is tea from Japan), it's been the holdup in Customs since there no longer remains a de minimis - everything must clear. My $150 box of tea is piled in with every single thing coming into FedEx Memphis (see previous rant about Memphis in the USPS thread). Meanwhile, they haven't seen fit to add personnel to Customs, so I pay for FedEx overnight and receive the package a week to ten days later. [/amended mini-rant] 

I've been paying for since GPT 4.0 was released because I wanted to be familiar with what I was criticizing. Universities are in a panic to look hip with the times, so we're unquestioningly shoving this into everything right now. I instinctively thought it was kind of bullshit, but I am a bit of an iconoclast by nature, which means I am also aware sometimes I'm let my skepticism turn to unwarranted cynicism. I wanted to bring some actual experience into these departmental arguments about possibly playing a role in a hype-cycle that may end up hurting a lot of regular people if it's a bust. How do we engage with this in a way that makes it look like we're both serious but not selling out?

I just had an adventure with it last Friday where it kept losing a word doc, and then when I got around that, it couldn't give me a word doc back. When I got around that, it completely ignored my prompt to "only edit this for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. Do not edit for clarity or add content. Stop at the reference section."  What I got back out 10 times was a completely different paper with entire sections on topics I never even mentioned. It would apologize each time and then do it again. 

My deal with it is that it will make some tasks more efficient, provided you are already well acquainted with anything it is summarizing or expounding upon. Because it still makes up all kinds of stuff and isn't particularly good still at separating stuff it learns from Reddit from actual legitimate sources. It also has a poor understanding of how date of publication can affect reliability of data. I've had it pull stuff from 20 or 30 years ago and pass it off as recent. But all that aside, it does save time for some things.

BUT!!!!

It's also being heavily subsidized. I'll spend $20 a month to save a few hours on a week's worth of PowerPoint slides, but that $20 a month doesn't come close to covering what it is costing them to do that. Nor does the $200 a month tier from what I've heard - nowhere even remotely close to profitability. I wouldn't spend $200 a month for that as is, and certainly not even more. 

[crunchee]

Sounds llike GPT 4.0 wins the 'Incompetent Employee of the Year' award.  

[scottcald]

In my work (small biz IT consultant), I have to get in touch with Google or Microsoft or other companies.  Nearly all of them now have an AI chatbot.  In 2025, only once did I not have to keep repeating 'chat with human' or 'chat with agent' and that's after about 3-5 minutes of it trying to answer my query.  We see so many buzzword things come and go, but it'll definitely be a bubble, some say bigger than the dot com bubble when it finally bursts. 

Side note -  if you have Apple devices and want to try out ChatGPT, and you're have concerns about privacy, sign up through the main settings.  I was told from Apple that if you do it that way, your account is bound by Apple's privacy agreement with OpenAI, which is more restrictive than the one directly between OpenAI and users. 

[crunchee]

4 hours ago, crunchee said:

Oops, wrong  topic, sorry!

 

Edited November 21, 2025 by crunchee