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Thinking Out Cloud

Thinking Out Cloud

By: Thinking Out Cloud Podcast
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About this listen

A show about how tech is changing culture, music, work, and the way people live.

Thinking Out Cloud is what happens when three people who live inside this stuff sit down and try to make sense of it without the buzzwords. Not a lecture, more like a sharp group chat that forgot it wasn’t private.

You get three angles every time:

  • Kevin Rodrigues / ShAIkh Kev (@shaikhkev) - the builder who breaks things just to understand them, and has zero patience for hype.

  • Yuvir Pillay / Sketchy Bongo (@sketchybongo_official) - brand brain, culture reader, will immediately call out a take if it wouldn’t survive the timeline.

  • Niquita J (@Niquitinha_) - art and artist-first operator who tracks the emotional and ethical side of all this, especially when tech moves faster than people do.

All views are personal.

The show covers whatever tech is bending the culture that week. Sometimes it’s AI and music. Sometimes it’s platform politics, creator economy drama, or weird little shifts in how people behave online. If it’s shaping the hustle, it’s in play.

Copyright 2025 All rights reserved. Art Economics
Episodes
  • Is AI Killing Music or Just Killing Gatekeepers? | Thinking Out Cloud Ep. 1

    Is AI Killing Music or Just Killing Gatekeepers? | Thinking Out Cloud Ep. 1
    Nov 24 2025

    Hosts: Niquita J (TT|@Niquitinha_), Kevin Rodrigues (TT|@shaikhkev), Yuvir Pillay (TT| @sketchybongo_official) Show: Thinking Out Cloud – a conversation about how tech (especially AI) is messing with culture, music and the hustle. All views are personal.

    In this first episode, the crew sit down in Dubai and ask the question a lot of artists are low-key panicking about: Is AI killing music, or just changing who gets to make it?

    They get into: Why there’s suddenly so much mid AI music on the timeline? The difference between “press one button” AI songs and actually using AI in a creative process? How @shaikhkev has been making AI-assisted tracks from his own lyrics and family stories?| Where producers like @sketchybongo_official are already using AI (demo vocals, mastering, workflow)? What makes albums like To Pimp a Butterfly or Songs in the Key of Life feel “human” and if tech can ever touch that? The messy part: copyright, training data, major labels, and who should get paid when AI learns from recorded music? Access and education – from bedroom artists in South Africa to anyone trying to understand their rights in this new wave?

    If you care about music, creator economics or just want to understand what AI is actually changing (beyond the headlines), this is the ground-floor conversation.

    🔔 Subscribe to Thinking Out Cloud on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 💬 Drop your take in the comments: is AI killing creativity, or are we just seeing more of what was always there?
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    55 mins
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