'You can hear me now or pay me later': CEO claps back at college grads who boo him for mentioning AI

Then there’s Scott Borchetta. On May 9, the founder and CEO of Big Machine Records delivered a commencement speech at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro — the same college that was renamed in his honor last August after he donated $15 million. He, like so many others, was booed by graduating students after praising AI. Unlike some speakers who appeared flummoxed by the audible disapproval, Borchetta pushed back.

“AI is rewriting production as we sit here,” Borchetta told the crowd. When the boos came, he said, “I know it. Deal with it. Like I said, it’s a tool. Hey, like I said, you can hear me now, or you can pay me later.”

The line, while a challenge to the graduating class, was met with laughter.

The genie won’t go back in the bottle

Borchetta opened by walking graduates through the disruptions he’d witnessed over four decades in the music business.

“I’ve lived the changes of the last four decades of the record business and have helped shape many of them,” he said. “Our biggest challenge today, pretty easy guess: AI.”

His speech leaned heavily on the concept of disruption, particularly the arrival of Napster in 1999. He recounted how record-label executives, panicked by free downloads, sued their own customers — a strategy that famously backfired when the Recording Industry of America targeted, among others, a 65-year-old grandmother.

Napster collapsed within two years, he reminded the crowd, but the streaming model it inspired permanently restructured how the industry made money.

“[AI] is admittedly a much bigger genie, and it ain’t getting back in the bottle, but it is a tool,” he said. “The things you learned in your first year here may already be obsolete.

“Invest in the skill and art of creation and not the platform or the system. Platforms and systems come and go,” he added.

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