Agentic AI is moving from a buzzword to a business tool. We spoke with three MI retailers to hear how they’re using it to streamline operations in their dealerships. — By Kimberly Kapela
T he agentic AI era is no longer on the hori- zon for music retailers. It’s already here. Across the MI industry, dealers are begin- ning to move beyond basic AI chatbots and automated customer service prompts into a next evolution of AI-powered systems capable of independently executing tasks, setting goals and streamlining operations. What Is Agentic AI? U nlike traditional AI tools that primarily re- spond to prompts or provide information, agentic AI systems are designed to take action. These semi- or fully autonomous systems can set goals, orchestrate workflows, integrate with existing software and complete tasks with minimal human supervision. The term “agentic” refers to these models’ agency, or their capacity to act independently and purposefully. According to multiple analyst firms, the global agentic AI market has surged to between $9.14 billion and $10.86 billion in 2026, up from ap- proximately $7.29 billion in 2025. Analysts at Grand View Research estimate the market could skyrocket to $139.19 billion by 2034.
At Easy Music Center in Honolulu, owner Peter Dods sees coding agents and workflow automa- tion as one of the most transformative uses of AI currently available to retailers. (And it’s also the topic of his column this month on page 24.) “I’m planning to work with my office manager to see if we can use an agent to automate how we match up our bank ledger with our account- ing system,” Dods said. “That’s a great example of where a true agent might excel over a rigid workflow, because it can dynamically reason through edge cases, weird transaction descrip- tions and unexpected discrepancies that could break a standard piece of code.” Rather than relying on a single AI ecosys- tem, Dods experiments with multiple LLMs and agent frameworks and said he’s currently “blown away” by the speed and cost of Gemini Flash 3.5. “I generally consider myself an AI agnostic and don’t have a ‘home team,’” Dods said. “That said, I’ve personally been working mostly with Claude and Gemini. As far as agents go, the company names that you hear aren’t really the agents that people are using as far as I under-
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