Sir Lucian Grainge, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group, has been named the inaugural recipient of Northeastern University’s Global Entrepreneur Award.
The award was presented at Northeastern’s seventh annual Global Leadership Summit, held at BAFTA in central London on Thursday (June 4).
Grainge was introduced by Diane MacGillivray, Northeastern’s Senior Vice President for University Advancement, who described him as a pioneer.
In a fireside chat with Northeastern President Joseph Aoun, Grainge discussed the impact of AI on music and the creative process.
“I think AI is a brilliant stress tester for people’s imagination and people’s creativity,” said Grainge. “If you’re a writer and you just can’t finish a song – you can’t get that middle eight, you can’t get the chorus, the lyrics don’t work – I think that technology can help you accelerate being the best of yourself on your best day.”
“I think that responsible AI, using the technology for artistic brilliance, in the same way that sampling, when that came in, made an enormous difference to the creative process,” said Grainge.
“You wouldn’t have acts like Soft Cell or Human League, or Depeche Mode, without that sampling technology for instance.”
Elsewhere during the summit, Grainge said the appetite for music made by people remains, and he framed AI as a way to extend that creativity, according to Northeastern Global News.
“The beauty of someone’s creativity can be harnessed and expanded as a result of this technology,” he told the BAFTA audience.
“AI is a brilliant stress tester for people’s imagination and people’s creativity.”
Sir Lucian Grainge
Grainge said new fan-facing AI tools should only go live “as long as the artists opt in.”
“I’m critically sensitive about that,” said Grainge. “They have to want to be part of it.”
Grainge said AI belongs to a long line of changes in music technology, pointing back to sheet music, vinyl and the arrival of electronic instruments.
He also said synthesizers had once stirred the same fears for live musicians, opera houses and concert halls, and that those worries never came true.
Aoun compared the moment to the rise of streaming, which parts of the music business initially fought.
Grainge had helped set streaming in motion years earlier, putting UMG’s catalog on Spotify when the service reached the US in 2011.
The summit, now in its seventh year, brought together 300 alumni, students, trustees and partners.
Previous editions of the Global Leadership Summit were held in Paris, Shanghai, Mumbai, Accra, Singapore and Miami.
Other speakers at the summit included former GSK CEO Dame Emma Walmsley, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach, Biogen CEO Christopher Viehbacher and General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja.
In May, UMG and Spotify struck a licensing deal to let fans create AI-powered covers and remixes of participating artists’ songs.
Grainge made similar comments on AI the same month at Britain’s GREATER Together trade mission in Los Angeles, where he called artist opt-in protections “critical.”
The Spotify deal is the latest in a series of AI agreements struck by UMG, which settled its copyright lawsuit against AI music platform Udio in October 2025.
In his annual memo to UMG staff in January, Grainge warned against “irresponsible business models” that promote “AI slop.”
Grainge has been at Universal Music since 1986 and has held the role of Chairman and CEO since 2011.Music Business Worldwide
