How To use AI For Music Marketing: Five Key Takeaways

AI has quickly become one of the most talked-about topics in the music industry. But for most record labels, managers, and small teams, the big question isn’t what’s possible — it’s where do I start, and how do I make this actually useful for my day-to-day work

That’s exactly what we tackled in our latest Revelator Industry Insights webinar, featuring Justin De Marco — Co-Founder of GrooveDesk, and former Director of Marketing & Digital Strategy at Red Light Management. Justin has led campaigns for ODESZA, Duke Dumont, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Mind Against, and many more.

Instead of chasing hype, Justin shared practical ways indie teams can use AI to save time, reduce admin, and build repeatable workflows that support creativity instead of replacing it.

Here are the key takeaways from the session

1. Start Small and Build Up

AI adoption doesn’t have to mean re-engineering your whole workflow. The value of starting with a single repeatable task.

Justin use case example: a DSP Pitch project in Claude. By pasting a release marketing plan into the project, he could instantly generate a ready-to-send pitch — and even a table version formatted for Apple Music. After dozens of campaigns, that small automation still saves hours of manual rewriting.

Takeaway: Instead of tackling “AI marketing” as a whole, begin with one workflow you repeat often — DSP pitches, captions, or press release drafts. Once it works, build outward.

2. Automate the Boring (Formatting) Work

Much of music marketing isn’t creative — it’s admin. Copy-pasting, reformatting, and repackaging the same information for different outputs.

Example: Justin’s Project Blurb Generator takes an artist quote, a sonic reference, and a short description of a release, then produces three polished blurbs in the style of a music editor.

Another example: his team uses n8n to pull data from Spotify, Songstats, and Google, then automatically formats a weekly campaign report. What used to take 1–2 hours now takes 1–2 minutes.

Takeaway: If the task is moving information from A to B, or formatting the same details in different ways, let AI or automation handle it. Free your team for creative and strategic work.

3. Context Is Everything

Prompts aren’t magic spells. Without context, AI outputs are generic.

For one campaign, Justin built a context hub for artist Lou Phelps: transcripts of manager calls, past interviews, bio, market data, related artists, and examples of past plans. Feeding that into Claude meant the first draft of a marketing plan came back structured, artist-specific, and on-brand.

Takeaway: Treat AI like a new team member. Give it examples, references, and brand guidelines. The more context you provide, the more useful the output.

4. Experiment With Tools, Don’t Chase Hype

There’s no single “best” model. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini each have strengths — but they overlap heavily. What matters is how you use them and whether they’re integrated into your existing systems.

Justin leans on Claude for natural writing tasks (pitches, blurbs), while using Custom GPTs when he needs actions (like querying the Spotify API or pushing data into Google Sheets). The lesson: pick the tool that fits the job, not the headline.

5. Choose the Right Tools for the Job

Not all tools are equal — but it’s less about hype, more about fit.

• Claude Projects: Great for structured campaign hubs (DSP pitches, PR templates, artist blurbs).
• Custom GPTs: Useful for connecting to external APIs, like a Spotify tool that pulls label data from playlists.
• Zapier / n8n / IFTTT: The glue for workflow automation, from reporting to distribution tasks.

Takeaway: Don’t chase the “best” AI. Choose what fits your workflow and integrates into how your team already works.

Where to Start: Resources and Learning

If you’re ready to build your first workflow, here are some free places to dive in:

• Start small — try automating one caption or pitch.
• Listen & learn — Claire VO’s How I AI podcast.
• Free training — Google AI courses, Anthropic AI Fluency OpenAI Academy,
• Learn with others — Youtube, Reddit and LinkedIn communities where other marketers share workflows.

The Bottom Line

The future of AI in music marketing isn’t about chasing every shiny new model. It’s about using these tools to clear the clutter so teams can focus on the creative and strategic work that actually grows artists. Start with one repeatable task, build context into your prompts, and treat AI as a collaborator — not a replacement.

Missed the session? Watch the full webinar replay here: