Mitchell McCain

Hello all! I'm a Gen X indie artist who has endured the pains of the ever-changing traditional music industry first-hand. It used to be that for the average artist, industry gatekeepers controlled access to record deals, marketing budgets and large scale distribution of physical albums.

In today's landscape, music distribution is no longer the problem; now its over-saturation and lack of monetization opportunities due to its non-tangible format, low barrier of entry to the major digital streaming platforms and their "pro-rata" payout system, where all music usage and royalty payments are aggregated across the platform and paid out disproportionately to artists on major labels. On average, indie artists with a small to medium-sized fanbase will earn a fraction of a penny (.004) per stream, and in most cases, will not surpass 10,000 streams a year (do the math). This leaves an entire demographic of artists with no direct access to monetize their art effectively. It also encourages artists to mimic the styles of existing, seemingly successful artists in a desperate attempt for financial gain instead of prioritizing creative expression and authenticity - thus cheapening the sound and integrity of the entire music industry as a result.

AI dev tools are evolving crazy fast , every few weeks there s a new must-try for vibe coders.

Some people are building full products with @ChatGPT by OpenAI and @Replit , others swear by @Cursor and @Claude by Anthropic , and a few are mixing @Lovable + @v0 by Vercel + @bolt.new to ship apps in record time.

I ve been refining my own vibe stack lately, trying to find that sweet spot between speed, control, and creativity.
It made me wonder ,what does your setup look like right now?