Ian Kreitzberg

And Universal announced a partnership with NVIDIA to, you know, quote, transform music experience, unquote, for their fans with NVIDIA's AI.

And so you see this shift where they kind of...

They seemingly used their litigation, and these are major companies, right, UMG and Warner, to involve themselves in these companies that were certainly, it's not hard to perceive them as threats, if you're a record label, as a means of what seems to me to be hedging their business in the future.

A, they don't know.

What the hedge is essentially looking like from where I sit is there's a non-zero chance that in some manner, AI becomes the primary way in which people consume music-related content or just all content.

And if that does happen...

These companies want to make sure that they're involved in that, that they have partnerships with these companies or that they have equity in these companies, right?

That their business isn't crippled if the way people consume content changes dramatically and we never go back, right?

Now, I don't know that that would happen.

And the idea of, you know, can UMG sell an AI artist, for example, can they sell straight up AI generated tracks, that would be a hard sell.

There's a lot of artists on these labels that are not a fan of what's happening here.

These labels don't want to piss off their major artists, because that's their current business model.

And making sure you have the fandom of Taylor Swift is important to not, you know, push away.

I think that kind of idea of how can we allow users or consumers, people and audience to remix something they already like, to live in it in a different way, to somehow customize it to them.

I think that's what the record labels are looking at as a potential way to not alienate their current artists and not alienate and destroy their current business as a record label of people.

while opening themselves up to additional opportunity in that kind of new experience, whatever that music experience looks like, while hedging themselves, you know, in case that new experience becomes the only experience or the only major experience.