AI Tools vs. Underground Entertainers: Why Collaboration May Be Our Best Defense Against Automation
In my last discussion about AI and music, I focused heavily on what concerns me about this technology: endless generated songs, disappearing opportunities for working musicians, algorithmic slop flooding our feeds, and a future where making something technically “good” becomes so easy that being good isn't enough anymore. Those concerns haven't disappeared, especially for independent creatives competing against machines that can produce content at a speed we could never match. But somewhere between refusing to touch AI tools and using them to generate everything is a much more interesting space.
We can still determine the meaning, taste, story, culture, identity, and purpose behind the work. At the same time, Artificial Intelligence can speed up editing, experimentation, variations, arrangements, and other repetitive parts of production. Instead of replacing artists, it can become another tool we use. Maybe the strongest combination moving forward isn't human versus AI. Maybe it's human creativity combined with Artificial efficiency.
Your New Creative Assistant Costs a Lot Less
Think about how many responsibilities the average independent creator is expected to handle. Most of us don't have a marketing department, editor, designer, or advertising team waiting around. A handful of people often end up doing the work of an entire creative company.
Many who read this page are underground artists; imagine rehearsing and getting your set list ready for a Friday night show while promoting a new single. A producer can still make the record. A photographer can still come shoot the show. A designer still creates the promo posts. Meanwhile, AI can caption and upload rehearsal footage, resizes promo videos and fliers for the week leading up to the show, organize clips, clean up audio, and turn one night of footage from a team into a week of content, instantly. Instead of replacing the people who make the scene possible, AI could help a small team operate as if its a whole radio station.
Think About It Like Photoshop
One comparison I keep coming back to with how we could be using AI to enhance our content is how we also use Photoshop. Photoshop didn't eliminate photography. It changed the tools photographers use, and eventually it changed what the viewers considered professional photography. Although it may follow a path that's not too far off from it. Generating an entire song, image, or video from a prompt still feels impressive because it's new. That novelty won't last forever. When everyone can generate something, the ability to generate it stops being the impressive part.
Then we're right back to the creative questions that existed before AI:
What should exist? Why should it exist? Who is it for? How does it connect to everything else you're building? And most importantly, how do you make somebody care? AI can speed up production, but it can't automatically give something taste, purpose, identity, or cultural meaning. The tools may change. Those decisions are still human.
AI Might Actually Make Creative Direction More Important
This is where I think some artists misunderstand AI's biggest advantage. The value isn't necessarily having AI make one perfect thing for you. It's being able to explore ideas much faster.
An independent artist promoting a single could take the same footage and experiment with aggressive, nostalgic, cinematic, or comedic versions, changing the music, opening seconds, captions, pacing, and editing. Suddenly, smaller creators can test ideas in ways that previously required much larger production and marketing teams.
But there's a major difference between using AI to explore your ideas and allowing AI to decide who you are. If your identity comes from whatever a generator gives you, eventually you risk looking and sounding like everyone else using the same tools. AI can provide dozens of possibilities, but somebody still has to decide which one actually represents the artist. When everyone can generate options, taste and creative direction matter more.
The Underground Has Always Worked Like This
The underground has always survived through collaboration between everyone's collective skills. A rapper knows a producer. The producer knows an engineer. The engineer knows a videographer. The videographer knows somebody throwing shows. Before long, you have an entire creative ecosystem built around people trading skills, opportunities, audiences, introductions, and ideas.
That's how social scenes are built, and we don't have to let AI destroy our system. Instead of looking at it and thinking, “I can generate everything myself now, so I don't need anybody,” I'd rather ask, “What can we build together now that all of us have better tools?”
An indie filmmaker can use AI to sketch out a concept based on the film idea before working with a musician on the soundtrack. An artist can experiment with visual concepts and photo generation before bringing the main idea to a photographer or designer to knock out the final product with a human touch. AI can handle some of the groundwork without replacing the person who gives the idea character.
That's where I think this gets exciting.
The advantage isn't that one person can suddenly do everything alone. It's that a few talented people can now do much more together. Small underground teams can attempt projects that once required bigger budgets, bigger crews, and resources they didn't have.
The $500 Problem Still Exists
There is still an uncomfortable economic problem underneath all of this. A company that once paid an independent producer $500 or $1,000 for custom music may now decide an AI subscription can create something “good enough” for a fraction of the cost.
Smaller gigs matter. They pay rent, fund the next project, buy equipment, and give the spaces to create and build relationships that lead to bigger opportunities. That's why we need to be careful not to repeat those same behaviors of being a "Lone Wolf" in the industry.
If artificially enhancing our content can save us time or money, the goal shouldn't always be removing another creative person from the process. We should use AI to streamline our progress and leverage it to stretch the budget or handle repetitive work. The creative pieces should be handled by the producer, photographer, designer, editor, or musician where their artistic idea matter. The opportunity isn't to stop paying each other. It's to make our limited resources go further while we keep building together.
AI Music Could Help Creators Find Their Sound
YouTubers need intro music, podcasts need transitions, independent media outlets may want a catchy sound for their interviews. AI can make the small musical needs faster and more affordable. What interests me more than random background music, though, is the chance to build a consistent sonic identity. Think about Netflix's “ta-dum.” A few seconds of sound and you already know who it belongs to.
Independent creators could build smaller versions of that idea: a food creator with a recurring cooking theme, or a media platform with different sounds for interviews and documentaries. Instead of generating another disposable song for every video, AI could help creators experiment until they find a sound audiences actually associate with them. And finding that sound doesn't mean musicians are completely removed from the picture.
Maybe AI can generate 20 rough drafts before a producer takes the best one somewhere unexpected with their unique mix. Maybe a singer is what gives it personality. That's a better use of the technology, I'd think. AI can be the beginning of the collaboration instead of the end of it if we can manage to take it that direction.
Human + AI May Be the Better Duo
This is ultimately where I've landed, at least for now. I don't think fully AI-generated entertainment is the most interesting destination. But I also don't believe every creative process needs to remain completely manual to prove a human being worked hard on it. If a musician spends four hours removing noise that software could clean up in minutes, those extra hours don't automatically make the song more meaningful. The same goes for an editor manually creating subtitles in several languages or a filmmaker spending half a day on repetitive production work.
For smaller creators, that saved time matters. Most of us aren't working with unlimited budgets or large teams. If it lets artists attempt more ambitious ideas with the camera and mic set they have, or shoot a professional-scale music video from their phone, I don't think that's really a bad thing.
The question is which barriers we're removing. Technology should remove the unnecessary friction around creativity without removing the reason we create in the first place. That's the balance that makes the most sense to me: let the human determine the meaning, taste, story, cultural context, identity, emotion, and purpose. Let AI help with variations, editing, and experimentation with content, and all the repetitive pieces of video production for promoting music. Then that is where we come back into the most important position: keeping entertainment in the hands of people, and pressing the go button on what actually deserves to leave the computer and enter the culture.
Don't Fire Your Photographer Because AI Tools Learned To Photoshop
This is probably the part I care about most. If these tools keep getting better, independent creators will be tempted to look around and decide they don't need each other anymore. Why hire the photographer if you can generate an image? Why call the producer if you can generate a beat? Why work with an editor if software can assemble the video?
Sometimes the cheaper option will make sense. But if we turn every new AI capability into an excuse to remove another person from the creative process, eventually we aren't just cutting costs. We're cutting apart the communities that made the underground interesting in the first place. The underground has never survived because we had the biggest budgets, largest teams, or best technology.
We, as an uprising, survive because your local videographer shot your first video. An upcoming website gave you your first interview. A city event organizer puts you on a show. A college arts student designs the flyer. Your friends share the record. The other local talent introduces you to the next opportunity that changes your career. AI may help all of those people work faster, experiment more, and stretch tiny budgets much further. That's an incredible advantage if we use it that way.
So, I say use the tools, save yourself the time, make your next project bigger than your budget should realistically allow. But don't let better technology convince you that you don't need the people around you.
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