The tracks you're not making

Ten days on the road. LA, downtown, Joshua Tree, a lot of driving in between.

Here is the thing I cannot stop chewing on.

I spent a few days inside Davis Elen, an ad agency in downtown LA. Big one. Brands you would know. I was there presenting work I have been building with them, and I cannot tell you the specifics.

What I can tell you is what the room was actually worried about.

Not budgets. Not output. Their creative people were spending their days on things that had nothing to do with being creative.

That was the whole problem. That is what they are paying to fix.

I got to follow the president around for a few days and hear it from the floor. People telling me where their week really goes. Most useful few days I have had in months, and almost none of it was about advertising.

Because I have been hearing the exact same thing from producers for fifteen years.

You know this feeling

You sit down Saturday with eight hours and every intention.

Then you go looking for labels that might actually want this one. Twenty tabs deep trying to work out who still runs what. You write the same demo email for the ninth time and change three words. You go hunting back through your DMs for the promoter who said hit me up in the summer. You start a list of people to send it to and give up halfway down.

Ninety minutes left and nothing in the tank.

Then you tell yourself you are lazy.

You are not lazy. You are buried.

And not one thing on that list is why anybody will ever care about your music.

Now, some of you are going to tell me you make music for yourself and none of this applies. Fair enough. Genuinely.

But most people who say that to me also have a folder of finished tracks nobody has ever heard. That is a different problem, and you know it is.

The wall that actually came down

When I started, the wall was knowing how.

You learned in a room with somebody who already knew, or you got the gear and worked it out on your own over years. Getting near it at all was the whole barrier.

That wall is gone. Not going. Gone.

Every technique you could want is a tutorial now, and none of it costs a thing. YouTube, TikTok, Reels, some Discord where people actually answer you. A sixteen year old can learn a trick tonight that took me two years.

That is a good thing. I mean that.

It is also why competent is worth nothing anymore.

And notice that has nothing to do with AI. Learning stopped being scarce, and the floor came up with it.

What is left is taste. Knowing what to make. Knowing what to cut. Having a point of view somebody can recognise in four bars. Years of hearing what moves a room and what empties it.

Nothing can generate that for you. It is the only part of you that is actually rare.

Kevin O'Leary keeps saying the creative people are going to be the most valuable people in any business going forward. Love him or hate him, he is right.

But follow that all the way down.

If the creative part is the valuable part, then every hour a creative person spends on something that is not creative is money being set on fire.

That is not a motivational line. That is a balance sheet.

What they were actually after

So go back to that agency for a second.

They were not bringing AI in to make the ads. Nobody in that building thinks a machine is going to have the idea.

They brought it in to get everything that is not the idea off their creative people.

That is the whole play. And it maps onto you almost exactly.

Look back up at that Saturday. Working out which labels are actually right for the track. Keeping a contact list that is not two years out of date. The follow-up you never sent. Turning one thing you already filmed into a week of posts. Remembering which DJ said what about the last promo. Getting something out to the people who already asked to hear from you.

None of that is creative work. All of it eats your week. And it is the exact stuff a machine is genuinely good at right now.

Not the record though. Never the record.

Point this at the music and you have automated the only part that was ever yours. That is the one line I would not cross.

The bit that will annoy some of you

If your position on AI is that you are against it, I would ask where you got it. Reason your way there and I will listen all day. Pick it up off your feed and that is not a position, that is weather.

And I am not selling you a clean story here. The energy footprint is real, I am pro-environment, and I have no good answer for it. I use these things anyway, eyes open.

Small and practical

Take one week and write down where the hours really go. Not where you think they go. The actual log.

Then draw a line down the middle of it. Left side, the things only you can do. Right side, everything else.

The right side is the bit to template, systemise, hand off, or hand to a machine.

Every hour you win back goes into the only part nobody can copy.

That is the whole thing.

Which is a fair moment to tell you properly about Send-Music.

I have been building it for about a year and a half. Slowly. It is a labour of love and it is personal to me, so I have been in no rush to throw it at everyone and see what sticks.

The point of it is fewer moving parts. One place your music lives. One link to send it. Your press kit built as you go. Short-run drops that collect emails and Instagram followers while you get on with something that actually matters. Quirky, low touch, punk rock.

Send-Music, the coolest way to send music on the internet

I am onboarding test users slowly, on purpose. Small groups. Real conversations. Feedback going straight back into the build.

So if that sounds like your kind of thing, tell me and we will talk about getting you hands on with it. I would rather grow this with a handful of people who genuinely care about it than launch it at a wall and hope.

send-music.com

Hit reply with either of these. Or both.

One. The bit of admin that is eating your studio time right now. Not the philosophical answer. The actual annoying thing.

Two. Say the word if you want in on the test group while this is still being shaped.

I read every one.

Nice one.

Jimi
Pitch.Audio

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