By Tal Gonen of Fiverr
When fans learned Olivia Rodrigo had commissioned artists to create handmade art and animation for the lyric videos for her new album, the love spread across socials within days, turning a routine production choice into news. In an era where AI slop seems to be everywhere, Rodrigo's choice was a breath of fresh air.
She didn’t stop there.
Rodrigo also partnered with Etsy to launch a collection featuring merchandise from independent female artists alongside an immersive fan experience, putting human creators at the center of another major release.
The Industry Is Pushing Back
The same instinct driving Rodrigo to commission human work is playing out across the music industry, where venues are banning AI-generated flyer art, and across social media platforms, where YouTube, Substack, and LinkedIn have all announced recent efforts to cut down AI slop.
These aren't one-off stories, they're part of a broader shift in how artists and the people around them value human work, and a guide for how any creative, marketing, or business team should be thinking about who does the work in an AI-saturated market.
What's easy to miss is how many distinct trades this industry actually runs on.
- A subtitler translating lyrics into another language.
- An animator hand-drawing a lyric video frame by frame.
- A session musician laying down strings remotely for an artist they'll never meet in person.
- A topline writer shaping the melody over someone else's beat.
Most fans never think about any of these jobs until one of them gets credited by name, and lately, that's happening more often.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
As a global freelance platform, we have insight into the services most in demand worldwide. When it comes to freelancers working in the music industry, the data backs up the broader trends we're seeing. Demand for topline writing is up 466%, strings are up 116%.
Even as AI becomes part of the creative process, artists aren’t handing everything over to AI — songwriting has climbed 426%.
+Read more: "Upcycled Tour Merch Is Live Music's Next Green Frontier"
Behind the numbers are real jobs and real people. Andrea Sacchi, a freelancer was hired to provide Spanish subtitles for Ed Sheeran's YouTube channel and official videos. Her work puts a human translator's judgment between an artist and millions of fans who don't speak English. Beau Vallis, a Grammy-nominated music engineer, has earned $1 million on Fiverr working with artists like Pharrell and Lil Wayne.
This isn't limited to global pop stars. New Zealand singer Kirsten Morrell worked with Fiverr animator Upa H on the lyric video for her single "Hoping & Wishing," a tribute to a mentor who'd recently passed. "Collaborating on this video was deeply intentional," Morrell told Rolling Stone. “It's a moment to speak to the heart."
The same instinct that drove Rodrigo's rollout is showing up at every level of the industry, from stadium acts to working artists releasing music on their own terms.
Beyond the Music
The pattern isn't unique to music. Searches for freelancers who can "humanize AI content," such as rewriting chatbot scripts, marketing emails, and website copy so it sounds like a person wrote it, are up 641% in the last six months, compared with the previous six-month period.
Gabrielle Gerbus, a freelance brand strategist, told Fiverr:
"I thought my copywriting services wouldn't be as needed following the roll-out of ChatGPT. However, I get almost daily requests when it comes to editing AI-written copy so it still sounds human."
What's happening here isn't complicated, even if it cuts against a lot of assumptions about where the industry is headed. When artists and the people around them are faced with a choice between a human and an AI doing the work, humans are increasingly the preference, and audiences are pushing them there. Visible AI shortcuts are starting to cost trust, and audiences increasingly want to know a person is behind the creation of the content.
The industry has always run on human craft. While other industries race to automate, this one is visibly pulling in the other direction. Budget for human collaborators the way you'd budget for a producer or a venue, as a line item, not an afterthought. Treat "handmade" as a marketing asset in its own right, not a production decision nobody notices until it's gone.
Rodrigo didn't need to make this choice. She's already one of the biggest pop artists in the world. That she did anyway, and that fans noticed and rewarded it within days, says something about where audiences' heads are right now. That kind of trust can't be manufactured. It has to be built, visibly, by people.
Tal Gonen is a Verticals Manager at Fiverr and a marketing and business leader with a focus on growth strategy. Over the past 11 years, she has worked with more than 18 global brands across 22 markets, developing and executing global marketing strategies that drive business growth. Her expertise spans identifying new market and business opportunities, building strategic growth plans, and translating them into actionable initiatives.
