AI Dossier
-
-
Fabian Baßenhoff
Assessing needs, technical expertise, and attitude towards AI
Conduct a survey to gauge the attitude, needs, and technical expertise of the audience, which will influence the content and complexity of the dossier and the way it is presented.
It was important for us to conduct interviews with music companies in Hamburg and discuss their needs. We’ve reached out to 8 companies of different sizes and subsectors of the music industry, using a guideline with open questions to find about challenging and/or time-intensive processes within their company as well as their attitude towards AI and automatizations (see Template for Inquiry, Template Guideline for Interviews).
In general, our aim was to create a conversation-like situation. The interviews had a duration of 45 minutes to 1 hour. Where possible, we visited the companies to keep their efforts rather low. Using the guideline allowed us to stay on track during the interview but also to check back on certain answers that offered us an opportunity to dive deeper into a challenge or topic.
Defining the Aim
Choosing the format
Decide on a format for the dossier, considering frequency (e.g. monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, or any other interval) to balance regular updates with manageable workloads, ensuring it meets the demands of local music companies. You could also think of a one-time dossier that presents the technical state of the art.
In Hamburg, we asked selected member companies that we identified as innovation-interested which format and frequency they would prefer. We also asked them about their preferred format, which was a practical dossier or guidebook about what is currently possible for music-industry-related or more general workflows and processes.
Differentiation
Outline how this dossier will provide value beyond existing resources by tailoring content specifically to the needs identified through interviews with local music companies. Determine which features of AI tools or automatizations (cost, user-friendliness, specific industry applications) are most crucial to the target audience, guiding the selection of content for the dossier.
For us, most AI-related newsletters are quite informative, but not very tailored on the everyday challenges of companies. Together with our service provider we decided that it would be most useful to find about time- and error-prone-processes in music companies of different sizes and subsectors and present possible AI or automatization solutions.
Curation Criteria
Establish criteria for selecting AI tools based on their relevance to the music industry and productivity enhancement, involving experts in the field to ensure credibility and targeted curation.
As we are no experts in the field of AI, we hired specialists with a deeper knowledge of the AI sector. The company has an established newsletter that features general AI-related news with a subsection dedicated to tools for the CCIs. However, it was quite challenging to find the right experts, as there are currently a lot of fake experts out there. A proven product as well as meetings to discuss our ideas helped us to select our experts.
Planning the Execution
Resource allocation
Outline available resources, including budget, time, and personnel, and plan how these resources will be allocated throughout the project timeline from content creation to distribution.
When it comes to the field of AI, you have to take into consideration that it is as of date (2025) a dynamic field with new developments almost every week. This should be reflected in the plan for the content creation. It seems to be advisable to not focus solely on the newest developments but rather on exisiting, proved tools or processes that ease everday workflows and challenges in music businesses.
Distribution and feedback mechanisms
Detail the platforms and tools to be used for distributing the dossier and describe the methods for collecting and incorporating feedback from readers to refine future editions.
In Hamburg, we collected feedback through direct conversations with users of our AI Dossier, especially those who took part in the qualitative interviews
-
There is a plethora of new AI tools every day. Companies and employees lack time and expertise to assess which tools are useful for them. Current dossier formats like newsletters have more general approaches and aren’t tailored to CCIs and/or music business SMEs. Interesting tools can be directly music- or CCI-related or proven tools that enhance productivity in office applications and routines.
-
-