It's been a few days since I returned from Beats for Love Festival, who graciously hosted me on their conference track called Talking Beats.
I had the privilege to speak about artificial intelligence in the music industry during prime time.
The discussion was interesting because it really wasn't about applying artificial intelligence to the areas of music that actually matter when you want to become a successful musician.
I didn't really realize that until after the panel.
My realization was this:
The combination of music industry and artificial intelligence is still far behind where it could be. People don't really perceive it that way because there are applications like Suno AI that can give you really impressive results from a single prompt.
Fun fact: I hadn't really prepared with Suno beforehand.
So when the moderator, who was incredibly well prepared, pulled up Suno on the screen, my reaction was basically:
"What the hell? It looks like a DAW."
My second reaction was literally:
"Oh, shit."
Then came another realization while I was looking at the screen. This creates so much room to confuse prompting AI with actually making music. This isn't just a tool for people who have no clue how to make music but have something playing in their heads. They can prompt Suno, get a result, maybe be happy with it, maybe even release it. (Whether that's going to become a real thing is actually a really interesting question for the future.)
But there's another "opportunity" here. An opportunity for musicians who actually do know what they're doing, but are looking for shortcuts... or excuses.
Because it really looks like making music. There are tracks. There are waveforms. And if I understood it correctly, the Pro version mainly adds a prompt window where you simply tell AI what tracks and instruments to create, and maybe even let it mix and master the whole thing. I honestly don't know. As I already admitted, I hadn't explored Suno before that day.
But there are so many other areas where AI can help musicians tremendously, that are not a shortcut.
Building your brand.
Creating assets.
Writing copy.
Finding your voice.
Discovering your style.
Helping with music selection and music discovery.
Generating brand assets.
Managing yourself.
Coaching yourself.
Those are premium services that, traditionally, only the biggest names in the industry could afford.
And they paid for them because the return on investment was worth it. Imagine having a coach that you can reach out to in any situation. That coach used to be one phone call (and a very hefty retainer) away.
Now that could simply be an AI at 20 bucks per month (not the free version, these are awfully limited).
Not a human being, but a virtual one that has access to an enormous amount of musical knowledge and experience.
And when I started talking about all the possibilities beyond simply cheating your way through making music, I realized something.
There's probably no better way to teach intentional AI in the music industry than simply showing it on my own career.
I'm a father.
That's my biggest career right now. My second biggest career is being a startup co-founder.
There isn't much room left for making music.
And there's definitely no room left for managing an artist brand.
Unless...
Unless AI manages that brand with me.
Then maybe it actually becomes possible.
Is it possible?
I honestly don't know.
But I sure as hell wanted to try.
So I built a very rudimentary AI loop.
This is actually the first concept I started teaching on Instagram.
Loops are simply prompts that do things for you automatically.
Instead of opening ChatGPT every morning and writing:
"Give me the biggest leverage task I can do today to move the needle in my music career."
...and waiting for the answer...
You simply create a loop that runs every morning.
Maybe it sends you a Telegram message with exactly that information before you even sit down at your computer.
Because if you're sitting behind your computer chatting with ChatGPT, you're most definitely not making music.
That's the loop I built.
That's what I launched.
And that's what I started sharing on Instagram.
Of course, I'm basically starting from scratch, so most people seem to be watching from the sidelines.
But there have already been a couple of breakthroughs.
The first one surprised me: Your goals might not actually be the first thing that needs to be defined.
It starts with very small actions.
Simply taking inventory of tracks and mixes.
Listing the tracks you're working on.
Understanding what already exists.
But before any of that, the AI actually tried to understand who I am, where I want to go, and started building context around me.
That's the second concept.
Context
An AI that has context about you is much less likely to hallucinate.
As a matter of fact, if you build a solid root context, it becomes remarkably grounded.
And maybe your very first task isn't writing goals at all.
Maybe it's simply:
"Help me build context about myself."
That context can be photos from previous gigs.
Quotes.
Festival lineups.
A description of what you want to achieve with music.
Even a list of what you don't want to do.
Some producers don't want to DJ.
Some DJs don't want to produce.
That's perfectly fine.
Drawing that line is also context.
Context can even include something as simple as the number of hours you realistically have available every week.
That was my case.
My AI actually asked me that question while trying to understand my situation.
And then, on Friday morning, something happened.
I woke up to a Telegram message that felt not just a little scary.
It basically said:
"You have a track called Timeless. It's been sitting in your drawer for a couple of years. Your task today is to set a release date."
And you know what?
I did.
And it felt...
Easy.
I felt incredibly light after.
The moment I entered the release date into my release management system, I actually started believing this whole system might work.
There was one more thing that really stood out over the week.
Consistency.
I saw something very interesting happening with this AI coach. It wasn't just giving me tasks. It was actively trying to force consistency. And I think that's where the real value might actually be.
When I started this project, I thought it was mostly going to be about me making music while AI did everything around it. Today, I already know that concept is flawed. What I actually need to do is still perform these small tasks myself, and that's okay.
But what I need to be (and what AI will probably never substitute) is consistent.
I have to admit, that's a fresh realization, so I'm not yet 100% sure where to take it.
Let me give you an example:
On Monday, I mapped out how I wanted to approach this. I wanted to post every single day. It didn't happen.
I struggled on Tuesday, so I had to catch up on Wednesday.
Then on Sunday, I suddenly realized I was missing content for two days, including Sunday itself, which also had to include this blog post.
Right now, I'm trying very hard to still make it for Sunday.
What my week was not: consistent. And that gave me a very valuable lesson.
Today I know I have to allocate time for this in my calendar. It's generic advice, but it works. At least for me. (There might be people for whom it doesn't, and that's perfectly okay.)
It also gave me one success metric that I want to start tracking.
Consistency. Badum tss.
Basically, the number of days in a row... the streak... that keeps me moving forward.
And you know what the next thing I'm’m going to do is? I'm going to add one small piece to my AI loop. Every morning, in the message it sends me, I want it to include my current streak. The number of consecutive days that I actually followed through. This might be one tiny update with a really big impact.
People love streaks. I definitely do.
And I think that's it to conclude week one.
I have to be honest: At some point, I thought there was going to be more.
I thought the high-leverage tasks were going to be... well... more high leverage.
On Monday, I imagined I'd be publishing a mix by Tuesday, reaching out to people by Thursday, and things like that. I still think those things will come. But the high-leverage actions are actually starting very small. They've adapted to the way I work and to the circumstances I have.
Remember, I'm a parent. I'm a father.
And it actually looks like this journey is starting in a really nice way that might lead to really good results. So I'm genuinely excited to start week two tomorrow.
I feel like this is going to be a journey over roughly eight to twelve weeks, based on my experience with AI.
So I think there are going to be a lot more videos over the coming weeks.
And, in a very weird way, I've actually started to love Instagram Reels and short-form videos. So I'm simply going to continue.
I also think I'm going to start planning topics a little more ahead of time instead of just reacting to whatever happened during the day.
And if I'm not mistaken, that timeline finishes just before ADE. So now I'm wondering whether I'll be able to talk about the whole experience at ADE for Startups. (I was part of the ecosystem last year, but it felt a little weird because I didn't really experience much of the ecosystem itself. I'm going to try to change that this year.)
I'm also going to try reaching out to ADE to see whether there's room for me to talk about this journey. Because I honestly feel that whenever I talk to people about artificial intelligence in conjunction with music, they look at me like I'm from Mars. AI is here. It's incredibly powerful. And music is a surprisingly deterministic discipline. In my head, it's actually much closer to software development than people think. And software development is probably the biggest ROI use case for AI today. I think music could be next.
Full disclaimer, though: I'm not talking about Suno or anything like that.
What I'd really love to show is how you can use AI intentionally, even if you're not coding. Because I think a lot of people are afraid there's going to be a lot of code involved. At this point, throughout this whole music journey, I've written exactly zero lines of code myself. And I probably won't write any anyway.
So, to conclude this post:
I'm really excited about week two. I have no idea what's going to happen.
But I do know I have one week behind me that already had an impact on my music career. And if I simply keep going, this might actually become something really, really big.
Stay tuned.
And if you have any ideas, advice, or concerns, let me know. Right now, Instagram is probably the best place to reach me.