The Indie Music Toolkit, Reimagined
Every tool solves a real problem
The musician and builder known as BigBadBird has designed a free toolkit with independent musicians in mind — the kind of practical, no-frills resources that can make the daily work of creating, promoting, and managing music a little easier.
In this conversation, BigBadBird talks about the idea for building the tools, the rise of AI music, and where music tech still needs to do better for artists.
What inspired you to build BigBadBird, and what problems were you trying to solve for independent musicians?
My wife (Nelle And The Willow frontwoman) is currently releasing an album, and I saw her becoming really bogged down by all the various admin elements surrounding a release.
Most artists are happiest when creating music, NOT when doing all the sort of mechanical / sometimes tedious tasks that are required to successfully release a project.
Having worked in tech for many years and also being a musician, I felt well-positioned to create this toolkit because I understand both worlds.
The hope is that these tools can save artists significant time, allowing them to focus more on their craft. That really is the crux of it.
The AI prompts have been deeply researched, so they should help artists avoid common pitfalls when pitching, writing a bio, or handling any number of other tasks the tools can help with.
The AI Tools are free and made for musicians, not corporations. How did that philosophy shape the product decisions and features?
Honestly, I feel like musicians have been taken for a ride by Big Tech. Tech had so much potential to make things fairer for artists, but instead, we got a system that is even more unfairly distributed than the "good old days" when big record companies dominated everything.
This is my small way of trying to even out this imbalance. I worked closely with my wife and other musician friends to identify real pain points and then used my skills to address them. That will always be the north star here.
Which tool in BigBadBird best reflects a real pain point you experienced as an independent artist yourself?
Without a shadow of doubt it's the 'Artist OS' tool: https://bigbadbird.music/tools/artist-os.
I have gone REALLY deep into the AI rabbit-hole when it comes to trying to learn more, optimize my time & get the most out. of what I do in general. After working with Claude Opus for a while, I kind of stumbled onto it creating what it called my personal "Ecosystem Strategy".
Now, each time I ask any AI agent to help me with anything regarding my music, business goals, creative direction, whatever, I upload this doc every time and it has an absolutely bulletproof understanding of who I am, what I want to achieve, why I want to achieve it, and so much more.
I found that it makes the responses infinitely more helpful and meaningful. This tool literally consolidates months of research into a questionnaire that outputs an ecosystem strategy (now called the Artist Operating System). This one does take the longest to fill out, but I can't stress enough how valuable it's been for me, and I really hope that it can help others just as much.
What are your thoughts on AI music: where do you see it helping independent musicians, and where do you think it creates real risks?
Ahh… the elephant in the room! Even as a web developer / techie, I was massively sceptical about AI initially. I thought it was going to take over absolutely everything and make life dull.
But the more I dig into it, the more I realise that it can be an extremely powerful extension to our lives, helping with mundane tasks and allowing us to do more of what we love.
When it comes to AI music specifically, I'm not the biggest fan (currently) but I could see it having a place in production. For example, if you are a solo producer / musician and you need a very specific piece of music as a layer in a song, trying some AI outputs might help you achieve your goal quicker and at a lower cost.
Conversely, I believe AI-generated music might not have the effect many people anticipate. I believe this will encourage more people to seek out REAL music made by REAL people. I see this with my kids and their friends in some ways already. They are wanting CDs and vinyl again. I don't think the human spirit can be crushed so easily.
These things will always swing around in ways we probably won't foresee. I am positive that everything will have its own space.
More broadly, what changes in music technology are most exciting to you right now, and what do you think independent artists still need that tech hasn’t solved yet?
The story of how badly the music industry treated James Blake really hit me hard. I can't get it out of my head.
As far as I understand, he is now one of the drivers behind https://indify.io.
I think that any tech that helps to cut out bad actors and gets musicians to the right place (without having to sell their souls & finances) is a real win. I worked in the crypto industry in a past life, and although it nearly destroyed me, one of the great things I witnessed there was the power of community.
I believe that we need more tools that help "ordinary" people to work directly with artists to align common goals between fans & musicians.
I am actually working on something around this, but that's a topic for another day.