Hi,

Happy new year. I can’t believe it’s January 1 (though I say that legitimately every single year lol).

I’ve been thinking a lot about the year ahead & with it being New Years Day, I thought it’d be fitting to share some of my predictions for 2026. These ideas encompass music, AI, general creator entrepreneurship, and social media.

Let’s explore below.

Let’s dive in ⬇️

1) The rise of the AI native record label - the emergence of purely AI record labels: AI-generated artists, no staff (maybe 1 or 2) and AI for everything (including A&R). The music will be from fake artists.

2) Touring middle class collapses (top 10% & bottom 10% survive) - rising costs of touring and getting on the road, fewer artists wanting to take the risk, and more artists protecting their energy. As the economy goes up and down, there may also be less fans with discretionary income to spend on concert tickets. More artists without financial support will completely remove this from their careers while superstars like Taylor Swift, Drake, etc will still be able to continue.

3) More fans transition off social media to IRL - this has been happening but more listening parties, release parties, run clubs, workshops, meet-ups, etc.

4) The AI flood gates open and start to become normalized - AI-generated music bursts wide open this year. AI-generated artists become more normalized with less controversy around each major moment. (ie Billboard charting or viral song)

6) DSPs will introduce specific playlists for AI music - DSPs start implementing the inevitable and create their own playlists for AI-generated music. It begins the process of mass disclosing music made with AI. Spotify introduces a suite of playlists for different moods, all music generated by AI.

7) SUNO creates a bifurcation in producers - producers get split into 2 categories: a) those who produce beats themselves and b) those who create beats using AI systems and prompting.

8) Superfan stays a buzzword - very few people know what it actually means but everyone continues to talk about reaching them.

9) Sora and Veo3 start to become implemented by directors - music video + content budgets continue shrinking with smaller crews. Directors evolve and start learning AI prompt engineering to help scale content creation.

10) Social media slowly transitions back to quality over quantity - gone are the days of sh*t posting and throwing 5 posts at the wall per day. Social becomes less about volume and more about quality.

11) Music managers become COOs - more managers become partners, not just traditional managers. (ie J. Cole & Ib with Dreamville, Brent Faiyaz & Ty Baisden)

12) More creators become founders - creators don’t just sell attention, they start selling products from companies they own. Think CatGPT’s Physical Phones for example. Creators go from selling low-ticket digital products to actually founding + running companies and using their audience for distribution.

13) People pay (big) money to go offline - offline becomes the new luxury because people are so burnt out. Think silent retreats, phone-free events, no content allowed spaces, etc.

14) Creators tour like artists - talks, meet-ups, live podcasts, etc. They add another revenue stream with IRL events.

15) Long-form writing starts to make a comeback - AI floods short form, people seek more depth from long form. Long-form writing also becomes more relevant with impacting SEO in ChatGPT, Claude, etc.

16) Rise of faceless creators / avatars using AI - just like how music marketers market songs to “faceless” pages, more “faceless” or avatar creators emerge that aren’t branded to real people.

17) Education becomes entertainment again - people start following creators to actually learn, not just for entertainment.

18) Major recording studios decline - more and more artists prefer to own the process themselves and buy their own home studios. Some use AI tools to create, mix, and master their own music.

19) AI content becomes indistinguishable from real life - it becomes almost impossible to distinguish AI content from real, human-made content. Content from Veo3 and Sora becomes that good.

20) Burnout no longer becomes a badge of honor - hustle culture starts dying and burnout starts removing creators from the game. Creators will start losing to exhaustion, not other creators.

21) Creators + artists start prioritizing wellness as much as content- sleep quality, mental clarity, removing dopamine, etc. People start shifting their output + how they live their lives to maintain energy.

22) Health-focused communities continue to grow -more run clubs emerge, wellness clubs, etc. More artists + creators introduce wellness community building into their brands and careers. Gunna and Diplo set the stage for artists with their own run clubs.

23) YouTube introduces more AI-assisted editing within the platform - maybe YouTube introduces Veo3 directly within YouTube and allows users to create videos directly from prompting within YouTube.

24) X completely turns into a chaos platform - X continues shipping features at a fast rate and fully embraces being a platform rooted in chaos where communication and conversation travel at lightning speed.

25) D2C continues to grow - more artists become upset at the lack of revenue earned from streaming and go direct to fans. Creator led digital products decline unless they are high quality and actually of value.

26) Billboard Charts lose relevancy - with YouTube pulling its data, Billboard no longer becomes an accurate source of truth that encompasses the whole playing field. Either other charts emerge or Billboard starts to lose relevancy.

27) Artist media brands - more artists start their own media platform and launch podcasts or shows (ie Jim Jones, Dave East, Maino, Fabolous - “Let’s Rap About It”).

28) The first $100M AI company built by a solopreneur - the first solopreneur builds a $100M company using AI, by themselves with no team. Vibe coding starts leading to millions.

29) The AI goldrush continues - early AI movers take advantage of outdated businesses operating like dinosaurs. They completely replace their tech stack, rebuild their websites, etc and upcharge a premium for work that becomes scalable and repeatable.

30) OpenAI makes a play for medical - OpenAI introduced lots of app integrations last year with Shopify, Expedia, Spotify, etc. I predict this year OpenAI (or another AI company) tests medical integration where users can start tracking their medical reports in one place / integrating doctor’s exams. It becomes a massively controversial topic in regards to data breach and privacy / safety concerns.

What do you think happens next year?

Hopefully this was helpful on your journey.

Thanks for reading, until next time.

_{The Vault}

 1) Emergent - my cousin actually introduced me to this one! It’s similiar to Lovable, a platform that can be used for building web applications with AI but Emergent has more integrations. For example, it recently just integrated with Claude Sonnet 4.5 More info HERE