Jimmy Iovine

Things Jimmy Says on Podcasts

Jimmy Iovine is a record producer and music executive who built his career finding and developing talent, then applied the same instinct to consumer hardware and streaming. He produced and engineered records for Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks, U2 and Patti Smith before co-founding Interscope Records in 1990, where he signed acts including Nine Inch Nails, No Doubt, Eminem and Lady Gaga. On AI and music, he is skeptical of full substitution: AI can produce sound, in his view, but cannot grow up in a hard home or have a broken heart, and he has argued that the prompts, and the people behind them, deserve to be paid. After Interscope merged into Interscope Geffen A&M, he co-founded Beats Electronics with Dr. Dre in 2006, building Beats headphones and Beats Music before Apple bought the company for three billion dollars in 2014; he then ran Apple Music until 2018. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022. He appeared on TBPN in September 2026 to discuss what AI can and cannot do in music and creative work.

Where to Find Them

Jimmy Iovine has been a guest on Masters of Scale (3 times) , TBPN (2 times) and David Senra .

Recently: “Jimmy Iovine on AI: “The Great Artists Will Show the World How to Use It”” on TBPN (September 2026); “Yapping in Neuralese, GoPro v2, Jimmy Iovine in the Ultradome | Nikesh Arora & Andrei Serban, Kurt Tenenbaum, Philip Johnston” on TBPN (September 2026); “Jimmy Iovine, Interscope Records & Beats by Dre” on David Senra (February 2026); “The power of mentors: Alex Rodriguez, Angela Duckworth, and more” on Masters of Scale (January 2025); “Jimmy Iovine: Harness fear to drive innovation, part 2” on Masters of Scale (June 2023); “Jimmy Iovine: Harness fear to drive innovation, part 1” on Masters of Scale (May 2023).

What They Said

“…what AI can't do is grow up in a terrible home. AI can't have a broken heart.” — Jimmy Iovine, TBPN

Iovine had been conceding a lot of ground — that AI will make songs easier to produce, that influencers will make records, that there was always going to be crap either way. His limit is biographical rather than technical: the thing a model cannot acquire is a life. Two turns later he put it more bluntly, saying AI is not going to be Dolly Parton.

TBPN · 2026-09-02 Permalink → Listen →
TBPN Around 27:44 into the episode
Jimmy Iovine

That's right. The prompts the prompts should get paid.

John Coogan

Yes.

Jimmy Iovine

Right? Yeah. So but there's a lot of cowboys, and they're gonna run around doing this stuff, you know, but that's not I don't think that's where the it's gonna shine. You know? Like, can people make songs, you know, easier? Can somebody who was Instagram influencer go out and make a song because they know how to dance and jump around and get people's attention? Possibly. But there's crap now. There'll be crap then, there'll be crap now. Maybe the crap will get more interesting, who knows? But as far as the great artists, you know, Kendrick Lamar, Alicia Olivia Dean, you know, some great people that are CMAT, some of these young artists that are just you know, Saint Harrison, Some of these great, great could sing Harrison. There ain't no AI that can sing like that kid. Yeah. You know? So something like that, you know, is, you know, not not gonna they're they're gonna be there. Because see, yeah, what AI can't do is grow up in a terrible home. AI can't have a broken heart.

John Coogan

Yeah.

Jimmy Iovine

You know? So, you know, AI is not gonna be Dolly Parton.

John Coogan

Art has always been about stories. You look at the modern art museum and there's the cost to refrain. My kid could have drawn that, but you didn't and there's not providence and there's not a journey and a story

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