Welcome to The Manager’s Playbook, my personal newsletter where I share insights from Music Executives and Artists for aspiring and emerging music managers, executives and artists on how to navigate the music industry. This newsletter is brought to you by Mauricio Ruiz.

A lot of people in music sound dug in right now. Either AI is the future and you better adapt, or it’s going to ruin the whole thing.

Chris doesn’t really sound like either camp. He sounds like someone who’s been around long enough to know the business changes whether people are ready for it or not.

That doesn’t mean he’s blindly embracing all of this. He’s not.

He’s pretty clear about where the line is for him. If people’s voices, lyrics, ideas, and style are being used to train these tools without credit or proper pay, that’s a problem. A real one.

At the same time, he’s not acting like technology changing music is some brand new crisis. It isn’t.

One thing he said that stuck with me was,

It’s a sharp line, but I knew what he meant.

The industry can argue ethics, quality, fairness, all of it. Consumers still decide what they want.

And if people are listening to AI-assisted music, or fully AI-generated music, then the market is going to move there whether artists, executives, and songwriters are comfortable with it or not.

That doesn’t make it right. It just means it’s happening.

And once you accept that, the question becomes: now what?

That was the real thread running through the whole conversation. Not denial. Not surrender. Just perspective.

There’s only so much time you should spend obsessing over forces bigger than you, especially when you’re still trying to build something.

For a developing artist, it’s easy to turn every industry shift into a distraction. You can spend months talking about what’s unfair and still not make the songs better, still not get clearer on the release plan, still not give people a reason to care.

That matters.

And honestly, there was something refreshing about hearing someone in the business say, more or less, stop acting surprised.

The music business has never exactly been fair.

AI didn’t introduce exploitation into music. It just brought a new version of an old problem into the open.

Where Chris really came alive, though, was artist development.

That felt bigger than the AI conversation. Bigger than headlines. Bigger than whatever everybody is arguing about this week. He kept bringing it back to the artist. The person. The growth. The work that still has to happen away from the noise.

That’s really the whole thing.

Technology can help people make music faster. It can help someone sketch an idea, clean something up, get unstuck, or get started in the first place.

Fine. That part is real.

What it can’t do is create somebody worth caring about.

It can’t give someone depth. Or taste. Or self-awareness. It can’t tell them who they are, what they’re trying to say, or what kind of career they actually want. It can’t sit with someone after a release flops and help them understand what missed. It can’t build resilience. It can’t give someone conviction.

That’s still human work.

And honestly, that may be why artist development matters even more now.

The easier it gets to make music, the more important it becomes to make something that actually means something.

The more noise there is, the more valuable clarity becomes.

The more tools everybody has, the easier it is to tell who actually has something real to say.

He’s also not pretending the concerns are fake or overblown.

What he’s saying feels more grounded than that. Pay attention. Learn what’s changing. Protect yourself.

But don’t spend all your time fighting battles you can’t control while ignoring the work that is yours to do.

That’s the part I keep coming back to.

While everybody else is arguing about where music is going, somebody is out there getting better. Writing more. Releasing more. Figuring out their voice. Learning the tools without leaning on them too hard. Building an audience. Building a point of view. Building a career.

That’s probably how the future gets won anyway.

Not by the loudest person in the room. By the one still doing the work.

Watch Episode 65 with Chris Anokute LIVE NOW

To celebrate 50,000+ subscribers on YouTube and 50+ podcast episodes, we turned the first chapter of The Manager’s Playbook into a digital magazine issue.

But before anything, thank you. If you’ve watched, listened, shared, or even sent one message saying “this helped,” you’re the reason we’re here. You didn’t just support content. You helped build the community around it.

Inside the issue is a curated rundown of every episode, the biggest takeaways, and the lines worth revisiting when you’re building in real time. Think of it as a reference guide you can save, share, and come back to whenever you need clarity.

Read the 50th Edition Magazine below.

Bio

I’m Mauricio Ruiz, the host and creator of The Manager’s Playbook podcast, dedicated to demystifying the world of music management, and Founder/CEO of 8 Til Faint, an Artist Management company with over 5 billion audio streams worldwide. Our past and current clients include Grammy nominated, Juno Award winning multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter Jessie Reyez, Skratch Bastid and more.

I am also the Co-Founder of Mad Ruk Entertainment, a content agency with over 3 billion long form video streams worldwide. Our client list includes The Weeknd, Eminem, and Celine Dion, along with renowned brands like Nike, Pernod Ricard and the NBA.

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