Absolute Label Services Launches AI-Powered Music OS for Indie Sector

Absolute Label Services opens AI-powered Anthology business management ‘Music OS’ to indie sector: ‘Infrastructure is the next logical thing to democratize’

September 30, 2026 By Murray Stassen

UK-based Absolute Label Services is opening its AI-powered Anthology Music Operating System to the wider independent sector.

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The white label business management platform launches with Cherry Red Records and Blue Raincoat Music , which is part of Reservoir Media , as its first named customers.

Anthology is also in use across Absolute ‘s label services client base, which includes The Fuel Music and Management and Wise Music Group , the company says.

Music OS is Absolute ‘s own term for software that spans a rights company’s data and operations rather than a single function of it.

Anthology connects global digital and physical distribution, neighboring rights registration, marketing, financial reporting, stock and supplier management, and invoicing, according to Absolute .

Running through all of it is Anthology ‘s own LLM, Ant , which Absolute unveiled alongside the platform in June 2025 , when the operating system was still only being used in-house at the company.

The tech’s creator told MBW ahead of Anthology ‘s rollout that some of the broader industry’s creative and legal arguments about AI have crowded out discussion of what it can do for rightsholders.

“There are completely legitimate concerns about what AI means for creativity, copyright and the value of human-made music. We share a lot of them. But AI is much bigger than music generation,” said Simon Wills , who heads up Anthology and runs Absolute as co-Managing Director alongside Henry Semmence .

“We deliberately concentrated on the parts of a music business where AI can assist people in their jobs rather than trying to replace the reason the industry exists in the first place.

“So let AI monitor data 24/7. Let it find anomalies. Let it spot a royalty issue or a commercial opportunity that somebody might otherwise miss.”

Wills said the Ant LLM is “rooted in a huge music industry knowledge base that Absolute has developed over decades”, and that customers keep “complete data sovereignty” over what they put into it.

“So this isn’t a generic AI being dropped on top of a music platform and being asked to figure out what everything means,” he explained of Ant .

“The irony is that I think technology like this ultimately makes the human parts of music companies more valuable,” Wills said. “That feels like a much more positive use of AI to us.”

Absolute was founded in 1998 and has been running Anthology internally since July 2024 , having spent five years and a multi-million pound investment building it , Wills told MBW in January.

It is being offered via two routes, Wills told MBW .

“If you’re a rightsholder that already has a lot of your own infrastructure, your own team and licensing deals, Anthology can become your bespoke tenanted environment. For independents that require additional infrastructure and support, the most effective route is probably through a label services relationship with Absolute ,” Wills added.

“What sets it apart for us is its modularity and flexibility; we were able to launch immediately with a focus on neighboring rights, transforming how we register sound recordings with CMOs globally and manage claim feedback in real time,” said Alison Wenham , COO of Blue Raincoat Music .

“There have been times when we’ve had to replicate data across 15 different platforms for a single release. And we might put out 30 releases in any given month,” said Matt Bristow , Director of Business Affairs and Licensing at Cherry Red Records . “[Anthology] will potentially save us many hours of work every month.”

Following Absolute ‘s own investment in AI-powered business management technology in recent years, Wills advocates that music companies start acting more like tech companies to keep pace with broader industry developments.

He noted, however, that becoming a technology company does not mean Absolute stops being a music company: “Quite the opposite.”

“For most of the digital era, technology companies have come into music and changed the industry from the outside in. Apple with downloads, Spotify with streaming, YouTube , TikTok and so on,” he said. “Those innovations have created enormous value for music, but naturally those companies are building technology primarily around their own businesses.

“What we’re interested in is the reverse of that: a music company building technology from the inside out, based on what rights holders, artists and music teams actually need.

“And that is becoming necessary because look at who we now sit across the table from. Google . Apple . Meta . Spotify . TikTok . Investment funds and financial institutions. These are enormously sophisticated organizations with extraordinary data and technology infrastructure.

“You cannot be operating through PDFs, spreadsheets and disconnected portals while the organizations on the other side of the negotiating table are running on live intelligence and expect there not to be consequences eventually.

“So for me, becoming a technology company means the music industry beginning to take ownership of its own technological capability.”

Wills argued that the music-industry-focused agentic AI category into which Anthology fits could only have come out of the independent sector.

“Independents have always innovated. They’ve had to,” he said. “But I also think a genuine Music OS almost has to come from the intersection of a technology company and an experienced music company.”

Wills added: “Independents have repeatedly discovered artists, created scenes, invented genres and built culturally important businesses. The majors have spent decades signing successful independent artists and acquiring successful independent companies.

“The part where independents have traditionally had one arm tied behind their backs is infrastructure.

“So when we talk about technology being the next area of innovation, we’re absolutely not saying technology is somehow the future of music. Music is the future of music.”

> “DISTRIBUTION HELPED INDEPENDENTS REACH THE SAME MARKET. INFRASTRUCTURE CAN HELP THEM OPERATE AT THE SAME SCALE.” SIMON WILLS, ABSOLUTE LABEL SERVICES

Wills said the independent sector has been through a comparable shift before, with digital distribution.

“Digital distribution changed the independent sector because it removed one of the biggest structural advantages the majors had,” he said. “Suddenly, you didn’t need to own a physical distribution network around the world to get music into the global marketplace. That was hugely democratizing.

“Getting your music into the market is no longer necessarily the hard bit. Running an increasingly complicated global music business around it is.

“That’s why infrastructure is the next logical thing to democratize. If independents can access the kind of operational capability, intelligence and automation previously associated with companies of enormous scale, then you remove another structural advantage.

“Distribution helped independents reach the same market. Infrastructure can help them operate at the same scale.”

Looking ahead, Wills predicts that a company’s infrastructure will become an essential factor behind an artist’s choice of industry partner.

“If you’re choosing between partners, why wouldn’t you want to know how that company operates? How quickly can it see what is happening around your music? What gets missed?” he said.

“Our ambition is for Anthology to help create a genuinely new period of growth for independent music where scale doesn’t automatically mean surrendering independence.

“Technology does more of the machine work and, strangely enough, the differentiating factors become more human.” Music Business Worldwide

_Originally reported by [Music Business Worldwide](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/absolute-label-services-opens-ai-powered-anthology-business-management-music-os-to-indie-sector-infrastructure-is-the-next-logical-thing-to-democratize/)._