AI News

From Prototyping to Music Production, the Best AI Still Thrives on Great Ideas and Hard Work

Credit: dormway.app

Key Points

  • While AI can accelerate execution, it cannot fix a bad idea and will only help produce a bad product faster.
  • Ethan Kaplan, CDO at Universal Audio and Co-Founder of DormWay, offers a model for the creative process where the human leads and AI models act as "subcontractors."
  • This framework frees the creator to focus on the overall vision and final polish, rather than get bogged down in low-level tasks.
  • It allows teams to build and test ideas with incredible speed, enabling a "fail fast" strategy that responds quickly to customer feedback.
  • Kaplan’s advice to creators was to focus on doing the work, finding an audience, and making good art, regardless of the tools.
Ethan Kaplan - Chief Digital Officer | Universal Audio
Nothing replaces making good products. If you don't know what constitutes a good product, you will create a bad one, simply because you won't know what to look for. An AI tool will just replicate the patterns it has been trained on, so it will only make a bad product worse.Ethan Kaplan - Chief Digital Officer | Universal Audio

Whether it's building products or making music, the rule doesn't change: bad ideas stay bad, no matter how fast you execute them. AI can accelerate cycles, sharpen execution, and expand possibilities, but it cannot supply vision or craft. The test remains the same as it has always been. Success depends on having a strong idea and doing the hard work to bring it to life.

We spoke with Ethan Kaplan, a leader who has spent his career building at the intersection of technology and art. He is the current Chief Digital Officer at audio designer and manufacturer Universal Audio and was previously Fender’s first CDO, where he built its digital division into a nine-figure business. Kaplan is also the Co-Founder of DormWay, a collaboration and productivity platform designed for students, and for him, the hype around AI misses a fundamental truth. His philosophy, shaped by years in product development and echoed in music, is that technology works best as a tool that builds on human ingenuity rather than replacing it.

  • The 'bad idea' amplifier: "Nothing replaces making good products. If you don't know what constitutes a good product, you will create a bad one, simply because you won't know what to look for. An AI tool will just replicate the patterns it has been trained on, so it will only make a bad product worse," said Kaplan.

  • Hard hat required: "I think of AI augmentation not as replacing coding, but as having subcontractors. I'm the architect and general contractor saying, 'You handle the windows, you handle the doors.' At the end of the day, I'm the one walking through with the blue tape saying, 'There's a ding in this wall,' making it all come together."

    Ethan Kaplan - Chief Digital Officer | Universal Audio
    It's the same advice I gave during the disruptions of file-sharing, iTunes, and the transition to streaming: Make good music, find an audience, have multiple revenue streams, and do the work. Be talented and do the work.Ethan Kaplan - Chief Digital Officer | Universal Audio

    For leaders who embrace it, this process offers a practical advantage: it allows teams to test new ideas based on customer feedback quickly and with far less commitment. Kaplan offered an example from his DormWay project, where his team pivoted in response to a user request, building and launching a new web version with additional features in nine days.

  • The nine-day dash: "We went from the request 'I need a web version' to a full web version in nine days. It started on a call where we decided to just try it. We threw the AI against the API endpoints and saw that it worked. Then it was, 'What if we created a little word processor in the browser?' That worked, too. It just went on from there."

  • An externalized brain: "We had to build our entire process around creating this 'externalized brain.' We feed it all our documentation and discussions so the output it generates already has the full context of the project. It becomes your ground truth." This kind of setup enables a true fail-fast strategy, where features can be tested with a handful of users and quickly discarded if they don’t resonate.

That same principle applies beyond software. For Kaplan, the conversation around AI is part of a much longer story—because, as he put it, "art and technology have been in a dialogue forever." He drew parallels to past technological changes that once seemed just as disruptive, noting that through each of them, the core of musicianship has remained essential. The debate continues over whether AI is a tool or a co-writer, but Kaplan’s perspective is clear.

  • A new synth: "When the Fairlight synthesizer came out, it didn't replace the need to be a talented musician; it just created a new sound. Pro Tools didn't replace the need to be a good producer. Melodyne and Auto-Tune didn't replace the need to write a good melody; they just made it easier to sing on pitch."

When asked how artists should adapt, his advice was direct: "It's the same advice I gave during the disruptions of file-sharing, iTunes, and the transition to streaming: Make good music, find an audience, have multiple revenue streams, and do the work. Be talented and do the work."