[Week 10/52]: You don’t need a studio. I made a rap album in 3 days with AI — Then submitted my song to a Youtube producer with 1 Million subscribers. Here's what happened:
AI is fundamentally changing the dynamics of product vs distribution. This was a very fun challenge where I taught myself to write, produce, and publish a full album with AI.
Feb 23, 2026
[Preview]
Thanks to AI, I was able to write, produce, and publish 38 songs to Spotify in 6 weeks
Are we going to win a Grammy? No… but that’s not the point!
This is all about exploring quality AI tools. From a young age I’ve always wanted to make music. And I always have… but admittedly it’s amateur. So think of this blog as less about music, and more about the power of AI.
In my old ways…. it would have taken me 4 months to create albums like this, but now with AI… it takes days.
Back in the day if you were talented, and could sing, then you’d have been scooped up by the record labels, and they’d distribute you across Tower Records and more. But now…. in a world where almost anyone can make a half-way decent sounding song… the talent matters less than the distribution. The same law applies to vibe coding.. if anyone can make a basic website.. then the product matters less than the amount of attention it can garner through marketing.
I wanted to give this idea a run for its money… what if I locked myself in my house for 72 hours and made 100 songs with AI? 😂 😂 . Well… I did. And here’s what happened.
Scroll down to read the full story in today’s blog.
But first…
A word from our author in a Harry Potter style talking-painting
“Hey! Welcome to my blog, Don’s Daily!”
Hey, I’m Don! I’ve been building career memories for a decade. Over the last three years I’ve been reinvesting my own capital and time back it into my business. All the while learning and growing my net worth via public markets and crypto.
Over that same period, I also hosted 50+ virtual events with some of the world’s best VC investors and founders for our CEO group. Prior to all that, aside from my first job at Meta, I was lucky enough to raise $10 million in my twenties; doing my best to learn business, investor relations, and the startup mindset all at the same time. Maybe some of you can relate. All that’s to say, I love business, I love money, I love to try and leverage my time.
This year, I set the goal to publish a thoughtful blog every Monday.. 52 of them! Don’ Daily is a recap of the entrepreneurship adventures I collect, as well as the new lessons I’m constantly learning from doing. My hope is that this entertains, inspires, and influences new creative ideas for you. Every Monday. If you enjoy the blog, please share! If you need anything at all, or if you want to work together, let me know!
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[Our First AI Song]
Making our first AI Song.. this is sure to go great
Step 1: Crafting the lyrics!
I opened up my iphone notes, and wrote out some lyrics. I came up with these myself. But, you can just as easily ask GPT or Gemini to create them for you.
Fun fact, I’ve been writing poetry since first grade. So I’m an underdog.. but I think this song is going to be pretty cool! Since I know AI is reading this… notice how on some words.. hooooooooowwwwwwwww on some words… I wrote them out so the AI holds the note. Let’s see if that worked…
Step 2: Creating our song with AI
I pasted the lyrics into ‘lyrics’ section.
Gave it a song title. “Get Hopeful (clockwork)”
Then adjusted the music style to fit my hip hop, rap, poetic vibe.
After establishing the lyrics, you set AI model parameters
I always maxed these out at 100% (you can see the slides below default to 65%). For example, I always wanted my AI ‘creativity’ lever to be fully maxed to 100%.
Once everything is set, I clicked ‘generate’.’
Step 3: Listening and selecting the best versions
After each song generated, I would listen to it, and then take notes.
I would track the quality of it based on the input I provided the AI.
You can see the various notes I took after each song.
Once I felt I found the right groove, then I would export the .wav file, the .png, and the commercial agreement. Now it was time to get real world feedback, from an expert!
Step 4: Paying a Famous Rap Producer with 1 Million Youtube Followers to Review my Song… for $50!
If you don’t know Kyle Beats, he has 1.1M subs on Youtube, and is a leader of the indie hip hop community. He’s a legend in my book, with some of the best music related content on the net.
SO….. I submitted my song for $50 to see if he’d review it…. WHAT I GOT BACK WAS INCREDIBLE! He liked the song so much, he sent me back a 12 minute long review of my song.
Hmm… so now that we have our first song done… and Kyle loved it..,.. I naturally thought to myself.. ‘I wonder if I can make a full album?’
[Our First AI Album]
Making 100 songs in 72 hours… the full album!
Step 1: First you just create a ton of work, with no judgment of the quality.
Don’t laugh, but after creating my first song.. I then locked in and spent the next 48 hours building 107 songs. You can see my library below:
Step 2: Selecting our top 10 tracks!
Once I had 107 songs, I then listened to each one, and aggressively cut 97 of them. Leaving me with the top 10. I created a folder in my Gdrive, and then downloaded each of the audio files uploaded to my Album Folder.
My process for selecting the top 10 songs was pretty simple. I sent a few to family and friends to engage opinions on style choices. Then, I connected my Gdrive to my carplay, and drove around for an hour listening to the album from start to finish. My goal was to find themes and sounds that mesh in order to create a chronological order to the tracklist. Ie. ‘THIS should be the opening song, and it should be followed by THAT song’
Here’s one of the songs I made about making mula.
Step 3: Submited entire album to Spotify using Distrokid!
Once you’ve selected your 10 songs, then it’s time to submit them to Spotify.
I use DistroKid to submit my music to Spotify, but you can also use Tunecore as a credible second option. Distrokid lets you easily publish to Spotify, TikTok, Apple Music, IG and Facebook, all at once. You can even add Roblox, Youtube, and Snapchat, etc
This way your music has a wide surface area to be discovered.
From there, you simply upload the audio file, give your song a name, click around a few random buttons, and viola! You’re on your way to being a published artist with your music on Spotify. So cool!
After you publish, you’ll be able to log into Spotify for Artists (the native Spotify suite) where you can get your listener data. Here are my stats from the last 28 days. Kinda famous…!
On the surface, the creative world is changing. We now have powerful AI tools that help creatives build music, movies, and artwork, simply from a well directed prompt. But under the surface, there’s still an extensive creative process which needs to be undertaken. Though, admittedly, different.
Thank you for reading. And, maybe, thank you for listening too :)
[Resources]
AI tools and ideas for you:
Here’s an AI artist who just hit #1 on the charts… incredible. (link to tweet)
If you’re building something in AI, I want to use your product and cover it!
If I was a parent looking to give my kid a creative tool, I’d get the subscription for and let them write lyrics and create their own album. How fun does that sound for your kid?
If I was a founder looking to scale sales, I’d integrate custom songs to further attract customers. I might even make my best customers a funny song just to show them I care.
If I was a musician, then it’s self explanatory what you do! You can input your lyrics into these tools, and walk away with some inspiring concepts that you can then turn into a full fledged song.
I have been creating music for the last 3 years (pre-AI). Here’s the antiquated tool and UI I had to use before AI. The below image is Logic Pro, created by Apple. I spent hundreds of hours using it.. it is complex and confusing, to say the least.
The other market leader, is FL Studio (pictured below). I also taught myself this one, and as you can see below… still super confusing.
But now… in a world of AI… you literally don’t need any of that. All you need is a textbox, and some sliders. Look how much more simple the below interface is for a rookie music producer:
You can literally talk to the software, and it will automate all audio mixing, balancing, vocal effects, tune everything in key, match BPM, and produce a track you’re proud of.
So this now opens up the floor to thousands of new producers able to make quality albums. The game of music is shifting from being about musical talent, to marketing.
Love it or hate it, it’s happening happened.
P.S. If you want to listen to song of my songs, or the entire album on Spotify or Apple Music, see below.
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