Music Companies Urged to Move Laterally Into Technology and AI

The creation of Beats and Beats Music is presented as a response to frustration with the record business and as an example of a record-company ecosystem moving into hardware and technology. Sony’s Walkman-era expansion into Columbia Pictures and Columbia Records is cited as an earlier example of technology and entertainment intersecting. Beats is said to have become larger than Interscope within six years.

A multidisciplinary initiative at Complex is described as bringing together people from different creative fields while developing an AI product alongside it. The proposal is that record companies should own AI enterprises rather than merely license their catalogs or capabilities to others, reflecting the view that technology, design, and creativity belong in the same organizational ecosystem.