Memory is Margin
By George Karalexis & Donna Budica
For the past two decades, media companies have scaled by leaning on compute. More data, more servers, more spend. Infrastructure became a blunt instrument: powerful, but inefficient. As digital catalogs balloon and rights complexity deepens, this approach is reaching a breaking point.
A recent breakthrough from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab offers a new direction that aligns closely with what we’ve operationalized at Ten2 Media: memory, used intelligently, can outperform raw processing power.
This is a strategic inflection point.
Why Memory Matters
At its core, memory is the ability to retain and recall relevant information to make better, faster decisions. For media companies managing tens of thousands of assets across fragmented platforms, is foundational.
Ten2 has embedded memory into every layer of our operations, and the results are decisive:
Rights clearance is accelerated by recalling historical clearance logic instead of restarting from zero
Content delivery is prioritized based on known performance patterns and contextual memory
Audience targeting evolves across campaigns allowing personalization to compound over time
Metadata and monetization systems build on previous decisions to reduce redundancy and increase precision
We are reducing decision duplication at scale, freeing up resources, and expanding margin.
Strategy, Not Systems
The industry often treats infrastructure as a cost center—something to be streamlined but not central to business value. That is a mistake. When memory is applied with purpose, it becomes a force multiplier across rights management, distribution, monetization, and marketing.
At Ten2, we’ve seen this firsthand with our partners, including legacy catalogs and frontline artists. Our ability to recall, reuse, and act on prior logic has allowed us to out-execute larger competitors with leaner teams. We are faster to market, cleaner on compliance, and more precise in how we monetize.
What Leaders Should Do Now
Media and music executives should ask themselves three questions:
Where are we reprocessing decisions that should already be known?
How much of our infrastructure is built to recall, not just compute?
Are we compounding knowledge or resetting with every release?
As catalogs grow and platforms evolve, companies that cannot remember at scale will slow down and fall behind. The advantage will go to those who can move fast with clarity because they have built systems that get smarter with use.
