Mitch Glazier, chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, says the music industry and its listeners are aligned against large AI companies in a way they never were during the Napster era. Glazier made the case in a conversation on The Verge's Decoder podcast, published November 9, 2026, with editor-in-chief Nilay Patel. Both the record business and ordinary people are unhappy that AI companies trained on everyone's work without permission and are filling feeds with low-quality generated content, Glazier said.
Patel said the interview was a full-circle moment for him. He was in college when Napster emerged, his university banned it from the school network, and he decided to become a copyright lawyer. He later represented users sued over Kazaa, then became a journalist writing about copyright law and the iPod. Patel said his views on intellectual property enforcement have shifted as AI platforms capture more of the economic value of art, and he asked Glazier where he has landed on the balance between protecting work and letting people build new things.
Glazier said balance is the right word and is not easy to achieve, describing it as a process of pivoting as barriers arise until the responses from the creative community and from fans line up. He said that alignment is happening more closely with AI than in earlier periods of disruption. He credited a democratization of the industry in which gatekeeping roles have changed, artists and their partners share revenue in new ways, and many more types of companies now meet artists and fans where they are.
Glazier recalled that when he joined the RIAA, Napster was the dominant issue and the technology shift was more abrupt than the move to CDs had been. Because he was relatively young, he was sent to college campuses to persuade students not to use peer-to-peer technology. He described hostile audiences wearing anti-RIAA shirts, and one appearance where he followed Chuck D, who was promoting peer-to-peer, by walking onstage with a garbage bag over his head.
Despite the hostility, Glazier said some of those student conversations were among the best he has had about technological change, fan-driven shifts, and the disconnect that can open between an industry and the people driving change in it. He said the difference this time is that the sides are not at odds as they were with Napster, even if they are not in the same place. Everyone involved understands that art and commerce have always been in tension and will always require a balance, he said, while preserving the connection between a human artist and a fan is paramount across investing, listening, and performing.
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