We are only a few short weeks into 2026, and I’m already tired of the C word.
No, not ‘content’, although that’s bad enough. For this is the year we stop thinking of ourselves as engineers, or producers, or guitarists. To get ahead in today’s world, you need to be a creator.
The recent 2026 NAMM Show was positively crawling with creators, who had their own dedicated area on the show floor. But what is a creator? As far as I can tell, it’s someone who does more than just music. Creators are multi‑disciplinary animals, who dabble in everything from live streaming to video production in a bid to hustle their way to public attention.
Creators are multi‑disciplinary animals, who dabble in everything from live streaming to video production in a bid to hustle their way to public attention.
Some people no doubt relish the opportunity to spread their wings like this. But many more feel they have no choice. As our recent survey with Sonarworks showed [see SOS February 2026], music professionals are now having to expand their skill sets to survive — and AI is the main force driving this change. The manufacturers developing AI tools insist that they will support human creativity, not replace it. But tell that to the drummer who gets less work because AI can lay down a part in seconds. Tell that to the graphic designer twiddling her thumbs because AI can produce something adequate for free.
Musical genius has long been underpinned by the work of specialists: orchestras and conductors, session musicians, engineers, producers and so on. Yet the premise of the creator economy is that this underpinning is disposable. Where yesterday’s artists employed teams of skilled practitioners, tomorrow’s creators will instruct AI bots.
You have only to watch rock stars act to know that talent is not transferrable between artforms.
Personally, I think this is asking too much, both of creators and of AI. You have only to watch rock stars act to know that talent is not transferrable between artforms. Encouraging musicians to tackle everything from cover art to immersive mixing themselves is a recipe for mediocrity, not genius. And while AI bots will produce competent, generic musical performances, they can’t make the original contributions that session players do. They can’t work as a team to create something greater than the sum of its parts. They can’t inspire and guide in the way that a great producer does.
Technological change has always sidelined skills relating to older tech. Not many of us can still line up a tape machine, or bias a valve amp. But AI threatens de‑skilling on a completely different scale. Creators will still want and need orchestration, mastering, audio editing and so on. But if it doesn’t pay for humans to acquire that expertise, it will be lost. We’ll be left with AI or nothing, and music will stagnate.
I am unconvinced that the creator economy is good for artists. I’m even less convinced that it’s good for art.
Sam Inglis Editor In Chief