AI is transforming the way I create playlists—but not in the way you might think.
Since January 2024, I’ve been posting new playlists for BJJ every week, usually Mondays. And now, for the first time, I’m pausing that.
Temporarily.
I promise.
What’s happened is simple. The wife and I have a separate project that suddenly needed our full attention. For the first time since the beginning of 2024, I missed the weekly update.
I felt bad for a second, but priorities are priorities—and this other thing can’t wait.
As we ramped up work on it, Jessica and I started using a few AI tools to help with project management, troubleshooting and research. What started as a casual curiosity quickly turned into something useful.
We built a shared system—an assistant, really—that divided responsibilities based upon what we were good at, generated specific task lists, tracked notes and helped us stay in sync without endless back-and-forth and bickering.
This last part was impressive because we have completely different communication styles.
Then, in the middle of a conversation at the day job, while someone important was talking to me, an intrusive thought popped into my head like the Kool-Aid Man bursts into a room.
It completely derailed my train of thought and I had to stop the person. I covered this by explaining I needed to write this down and got out pen and paper but the first line was a summary of what just popped into my head.
Most of the time I spend on Lolakana isn’t actually about music, or the other creative side like making playlist covers and writing.
It’s the backend: formatting posts, resizing cover art, updating metadata, managing links. Stuff that’s necessary to hit the standard I care about, but has nothing to do with the why I started this in the first place.
Since the pause a couple of weeks back, I haven’t stopped listening. I haven’t stopped curating. I haven’t stopped the note taking and collecting visual references.
What has changed is how I’m dealing with the parts that I don’t love.
The 10+ hours of logistical work that used to come with every playlist?
That’s been going into the other project.
But I’ve been sticking a pin in any of the tools we’ve used there that might overlap with helping Jessica and I make things run more smoothy around here. Tools that will eventually turn that hours of logistical work into minutes.
Why? So I can get back to the fun parts.
Listening deeply. Curating. Putting some thought into the covers I design, and writing the posts about why I like something or what I’ve discovered putting together a new playlist.
We’re living in the age of a new technology, AI, that can churn out all sorts of endless, derivative mass content. But Lolakana was never built for the masses. It’s for BJJ players and anyone else who might like something around here for workouts or any other time they need a soundtrack to a moment in their lives.
It’s a human-first project and it’s going to stay that way.
Here’s the promise:
- Every playlist here is built by me
- Every song will be handpicked by me (or maybe one day, another BJJ player who’s as much, or a bigger music nerd than I am)
- Every cover image will be made by me
- Every post—typos and all—will come from me
If you like what we do around here, you can still trust it’s shaped by real taste, not a bot at the push of a “generate” button. The automation is only touching the parts nobody ever sees and I never enjoyed anyway.
Updates will pick back up again soon.
Thanks for sticking around.
But Before You Go…
Leave a comment below and let me know what sort of music you like at the gym. It’ll help me prioritize new playlists going forward.