Hi,

I know last week’s newsletter was a little foreboding, exploring what a potential music industry zombie AI apocalypse might look like.

Without making this newsletter too AI-heavy (I know there are lots of mixed feelings about the subject), I thought it’d be worth sharing a tool that has massively helped me in my everyday life.

Let’s explore below.

Let’s dive in ⬇️

Generally speaking, most people I know in creative industries have the same relationship with AI: they open ChatGPT, treat it like a Google search prompting a one-sentence question, get their answer, and close the tab.

Unbeknownst to them, the average person isn’t coming anywhere close to fully utilizing tools that could make them 10x more productive and powerful.

As someone who loves tech, I find myself testing a fair amount of AI tools. I try to stay up to date on AI news, spend a few hours per week experimenting with different platforms, and am constantly thinking about how to make these tools work for me without taking away from the art or authenticity.

One tool that has been a game-changer for me is Claude Code. It is by no means a brand new platform (it’s been around for a few months), but as I’ve continued to use it, the capabilities are light years of ChatGPT and it has legitmately changed the way I learn, find new information, and make decisions.

Before diving into why Claude Code specifically, it’s important to understand what it actually is. Some people may confuse Claude Code with Claude - Claude is Anthropic’s AI, the same way OpenAI owns ChatGPT. It’s clean, simple, and browser based.

Claude Code is a little different - it’s not a website you visit, it’s a terminal that lives directly on your computer. You install it once and then it runs forever. To download Claude Code, visit claude.ai/code and follow the instructions.

Why Claude Code

For most people, ChatGPT is the default. It's what most people use because it was first to market and grew the fastest. It's genuinely good for basic tasks - drafting emails, writing bios, brainstorming ideas, etc.

That said, there are a few things that separate Claude Code:

1. The reasoning is different.

Claude Code thinks through problems in a way I’ve found ChatGPT doesn’t come close to. When giving you answers it…

• factors in context

• considers second and third implications

• pushes back on your assumptions

• helps you arrive at something smarter than what you started with

One of the issues with ChatGPT is that it makes decisions in a very narrow-minded way, sometimes almost blindly.

On many an occasion, Claude Code has answered my prompts with ideas or context I didn’t even think about.

For creative professionals who are constantly navigating nuanced, high-stakes situations (brand partnerships, audience growth decisions, creative direction), that level of reasoning is the difference between a tool that produces decent advice and a tool that helps you make an excellent decision.

2. It can read the internet in real time.

This is the biggest one for me and one of my biggest frustrations with ChatGPT.

ChatGPT's knowledge has a cutoff date - it can't read or scan links. It can't go find current information from the web. It knows what it was trained on and for the most part, that’s it. I can’t enter an article and ask it to scan the article, digest the information, and come back with a thesis - it’s just not built for that.

Claude Code can scan links, read articles, digest real-time information from the internet, and incorporate it directly into its thinking.

I know what you’re thinking…okay Mike, that sounds kind of nerdy lol.

What does that actually mean? You can:

• Paste a link to a competitor's latest content and ask it to identify gaps that you could own.

• Send it an article about a trend in your industry and ask how it applies to your specific audience.

• Share someone's recent articles before a call and walk in more prepared.

• Feed it your own analytics and ask it to find patterns and opportunities you're missing.

You're working with something that can get current information, process it, and share reason within the context of your specific situation.

3. Skills - this is crazy lol.

Claude Code integrates what are called skills - essentially custom tools that people can build, you can download, and run in your prompting. Almost like a plugin.

The one I use constantly is called Last 30 Days - you give it a topic, and it actually goes and scrapes Reddit threads, Twitter posts, and live web sources from the last 30 days aggregating what real people are saying, debating, and recommending right now.

For example, I’ll prompt this: /last30days music industry problems

It will then essentially search Reddit, Twitter, and the internet for content + conversations around “music industry problems” from the last 30 days and aggregate that information for me in real time. It basically scans the internet for me.

For creative professionals, this might be a game-changer.

How to use it

Okay Mike…this all sounds well and good, but how would people actually use Claude Code?

So many artists and their teams are grinding and searching for clarity. There’s so much information out there, it can be confusing and hard to know what’s legit and worth listening to. Many people pursuing music and creator careers have lots of unanswered questions.

The problem isn't a lack of information though, it's actually the opposite. There's actually too much of it and most of it contradicts itself. Also, very rarely does it apply to your specific situation.

Claude Code (at least for me) changes that dynamic.

You can brief it like you'd brief an advisor who actually knows the industry. Give it your specific situation. Your numbers. Your goals. Your genre. What you've tried. What hasn't worked. Ask it a real question and push back on the answer until it's actually useful for you.

Here's a few examples of prompts:

1. "I'm an independent R&B artist, no manager, based in Atlanta. I've been releasing music for two years. My latest single is getting 800 streams a day, I have 4,200 monthly listeners on Spotify, and 6,000 Instagram followers. Here is the link to my Instagram and Spotify profile. Is this trajectory good, average, or behind for where I should be? And based on these numbers, what should my next three moves be?"

Not "how do I grow on Spotify." A real question with real context that produces a real answer - not generic encouragement, but an honest assessment of where you actually stand and what specifically to do next.

2. "I just got an email from a manager who wants to work with me. I'm going to paste it below. Can you help me evaluate whether this seems credible, identify any red flags in the language or terms, and give me a list of questions I should ask before I agree to anything?"

For an artist without a lawyer or an experienced mentor in their corner, this prompt alone could be career-saving. Paste the email. Push back on the response. Ask follow-up questions. You now have a second opinion from something that has processed thousands of management contracts and industry norms.

3. "Here are the lyrics to my last three singles. Here are the captions I've been posting on Instagram. Here's a short bio I wrote about myself. Based on all of this - what is my story? What themes and narrative threads run through my work that I'm probably not seeing because I'm too close to it? And what angles should I be pushing in press interviews that I'm currently missing?"

Most artists spend years figuring out how to talk about their work by trial and error - bad interviews losing the thread of what makes them interesting. This prompt short-circuits that. You walk into your next interview knowing your own narrative better than the journalist does.

4. "I want to know what's actually happening in [your genre] right now: not blog posts, not industry reports, but what real fans and artists are talking about on Reddit and social media in the last 30 days. What conversations are happening that my next release could enter? What are people frustrated about, excited about, or debating?"

5. A publicist building a press narrative:

"Here's my artist's story, their latest project, and links to their three most recent interviews. What narrative are they repeating that's getting stale? What's the most interesting angle in their story that no outlet has explored yet? And which specific journalists or outlets would be the best fit for that angle and why?"

The Prompt Is Everything

As I’ve experimented with tons of AI tools, one thing has continued to stand out to me - the quality of what you get out of AI is very much determined by the quality of what you put in.

Most people prompt AI like they're Googling lol. Short, vague, and with no context.

"Write me a bio based on this…"

The people getting real value brief it like they're briefing a smart new team member who just started and doesn't know your world yet.

Context, nuance, goals, constraints, tone, audience.

Overall

Okay…I promise this is not an ad for Claude Code lol.

I just enjoy sharing things that help me and it feels like no one in the creative space is talking about it right now. It really is like using Google on steroids.

The ability to scan the internet, pull real-time information from social media, and synthesize it to your exact situation is a game-changer.

Even on a simple level of asking it to digest and scan links to interviews of your favorite artist and show you themes or patterns that run throughout. Or analyze why certain things are trending vs. others.

I’d be curious if you’ve tried it yet and what your experience is.

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